(I then emerged spontaneously from hypnosis.) "Explosion. I knew that. I was expecting it. I knew just when it would come. He took a little thing like a needle and struck it like a match in front of my face and it made a big bang, pow! And I thought the Mouse was on fire."
Budd Hopkins: "Was he there after this?"
"I don't know. I don't remember a thing. When I said the house was on fire I'm already out of the bed. Right away."
'This was the explosion that Anne and your son —'
"I think the explosion that they all heard. Yeah. He did it with a little needle. Stuck it in the air."
"Why did he show you those images?"
"I don't know why he showed me those images, to be frank with you. They are the most dreadful images."
" Warday? " (A reference to my novel of the same name.)
"I'll tell you the truth, what I feel. I think he showed me images of the future of our world, is what he showed me."
"What about the green?"
"It's a beautiful, green expanse. Was immediately relaxing when I saw that. And my boy. My boy is in the park. My boy is there. And he's happy. That's what I saw. But —"
"Why are you so upset?"
"Because I think the park represents death, and he's there because he's dead. That's what I think."
"Why should the park represent death?"
"I don't know. That's just my impression."
"And the other scene of the world blowing up?"
"It's funny. It's not like of the world blowing up. I've gotta calm down here. I'm told it's the world blowing up. It's a red fire, a big, red, fierce fire with all these horns of smoke shooting out from it in every direction. And they said that's the world blowing up. I mean, Christ. I think we've got a monkey on our back."
Budd Hopkins: "No doubt about that. Other people have been shown this kind of an image, too."
"You know, I feel a tremendous relief right now. This is good, to be able to remember. It's not an easy memory. But it's good to remember. Because I've been fighting to keep it out of my head."
"I can understand that."
"You know. I had a dream back in November. Of Cleveland blowing up. It was me remembering this image of the explosion but I thought it was a single city. so it wasn't so scary. Trying not to be scared of that image."
"You said he had a bald head?"
"He had a bald head and I would say he had slanted eves. It was real hard to see because he kept putting this thing on my head. Almost every time I would move he would put this thing on my head."
"And then you would see an image?"
"I would see these images, yeah. I thought at first the thing was talking but when you hypnotized me again I could see the -images. He had a little ruler thing chat had a silver tip on it, quite silver. because I could see glimmers on it and it's dark in the room. Did you try to light up the room for me or something when you said the room was light?"
"I didn't."
"Because the room was dark. It was very dark."
"I thought you said it was light."
"Oh. I also have the impression that he was wearing covering. Like he didn't — when I looked — the thing that's scary in a way, the thing that scared me at first was realizing he had been there for some time, standing over there in the corner, and y'know I have a feeling about a fierce whoosh of some kind ... . I'm not saying that I was being threatened so much as warned. That was my feeling. There was a very stern warning . . . or maybe it wasn't. Maybe if I had not been afraid of nuclear war and perfectly happy, when he touched that thing to my head other images would have come out. See what I mean?"
Budd Hopkins: "It certainly intersects with —"
"My own fears. Exactly."
"You spent a huge amount of time working on them in Warday. "
"Maybe it was a guy making a psychological test of me. Could it be that? I mean, maybe he was literally testing me, doing something like, as a hypnotist, you might do, using that little silver object in place of your finger. Could that be?"
"It could be, among other things."
"Including that this was some kind of hallucination, but I don't think so."
"Where did he touch you?"
"Right here." (I touched the center of my forehead, just above the bridge of my nose.)
"Very specifically right here. And every time he touched me there would be a burst of images."
Budd Hopkins: "You had no time to think between images?"
"No. This all happened quite quickly."
"They were visual?"
"Yeah, they were visions."
"Not words?"
"Absolutely not. They were pictures." (I became silent. I was aware of a great confusion of pictures in my mind.)
"Whit?"
"Yeah."
"You described two. Were there others?"
"Yeah, but the others are so jumbled up I can't tell what they were. You know. I think increasingly that they might be pictures out of my mind of my worst fears. Like nuclear war and my son being killed. And there's something else in there too that's all jumbled up. Maybe a fear so terrible that I can't even make heads or tails of it under hypnosis."
Budd Hopkins: "You said first that the figure seemed to be covered up, like with a hood."
"Yeah, but when it came close to me I could see its face "
"You said it had a bald head."
"Yeah? Did I?"
"Yes."
"Well, you see, I can sort of see that it had a bald, rather largish head for someone that size. And that its eyes are slanted, more than an Oriental's eyes And they're quite — There's a piercing glare, almost. There's a real fierce look to the whole face. I'm not sure, but at some point I almost thought it looks like a bug. But not-you know, more like a person than a bug . . . but there were buglike qualities to it. Am I getting myself dear at all?"
"Oh, yes. Have you ever seen an image like that before?"
"I don't know. The only thing I ever remember reading about this was in Look magazine years and years ago. 'The Incident' . . . the John Fuller article about people who were picked up. That's all I've read about it. And whether or not they had pictures drawn I just don't know."
"Are you sure you haven't seen an image like that before. What about the book you have?"
"No, it has no pictures like that. I don't think so."
Budd Hopkins: "What about the Hynek book? I think there's a drawing in that." (He referred to a famous book on UFOs by Dr. J. Allen Hynek, The UFO Experience, which he thought I might have read.)
"I haven't read it. But you know, in our culture, there's so much media around .... It's possible, but I don't think so, because this is so damn real. It just seems impossible that it could be an image I picked up from somewhere —"
"It could still be real, and be an image that you —"
"Maybe the drawings were right. That's possible too."
"That's possible. It's also possible that it's something quite inexplicable that you're trying to hang something on, to give it some shape or form."
"Yeah, that's possible too."
"What I'd like to do is go back to that scene again, and see if we can't get some clarification about these other images."
"OK."
"I understand that this is a wearing business, and if you want to check out at this point —"
"No, I don't want to check out at any point. I'm determined to go through with this. And it seems now that there should be more, because it's obvious that this happened to me. And I would be highly irresponsible to myself not to continue."
"The pacing of it could be too fast. I don't want you to feel you have to be a hero in this thing."
"It's not. a question of being a hero. It's much more a question of not wanting to walk out before the end of the movie." (Hypnosis was undertaken using the same method as before, ending with a count up to ten. In about a minute I was rehypnotized.)
"Now I want you to go back to the point where you are having these images. And it's going to be like slow motion now. Everything's going to be going very slow, very slow, very slow. And very dear. Very clear. Tell me what you see."