"The world turns into a whole red ball of fire. It just seems to burst into flames like a little ball of gasoline out in the middle of the sky. And all these . . . smoke . . . things start shooting off it . . . like great horns made of smoke. And we're all there, down there in the red fire, in the middle of it. Then I see that thing on my head and it's gone. Picked it up off my head.
"Now I'm scared of him again. Now I see . . a park.... My little boy is sitting there on the grass . . . he's all wobbly, and he's like he can't move his arms right. He's all wobbly and his eyes look funny." (They appeared entirely black, without any whites at all.) "I have to go over and pick him up and help him. If I don't help him, he's gonna die. [Long pause.]"
(At this point there followed upsetting images of my father's death, images that did not reflect what really happened, but rather my fears about what might have happened.)
"And he puts that thing down on my head again. 'I miss you, Daddy. Oh, God, Daddy, why did you die? [Gasps.] Daddy, why . . . why — I just never got to know you, Dad.' Oh. God, my poor dad, died a hard death. Oh, she couldn't help him. It's my dad dying and my mother's sitting there staring at him like he was a little animal. Why couldn't she at least give him a good-bye kiss or something? I never knew it was like that." (I saw a clear image of my father lying on the couch in our old den, his head thrown back, gasping and choking. My mother was beside him in a chair, watching, too afraid to move. This was totally different from the scene she described, which was what would have been expected from the gentle and loving relationship that had emerged as his life came to its close. The image, though, was deeply shocking to me, and so real that I felt as if I could step into the scene. I then emerged spontaneously from hypnosis once again. It is very unusual to do this, especially from a deep trance like the one Dr. Klein had induced. It was an indication of the extreme severity of the emotions I was reliving.)
"Did that make sense?"
"Did it make sense to you?"
"Yes, it damn well did. It's a picture of my dad, lying on a couch going like that — gasping — jerking . . . and my mother's sitting in a chair, watching. And he dies."
"Did it actually happen?" '
"I don't know. It's not the story she told. Maybe it's something I fear might have happened."
"Was your mother uncaring about your father?"
"No. They had their ups and downs in their marriage, but they were married for nearly fifty years, and I didn't think she was uncaring about him at the end."
Budd Hopkins: "So you feel these thoughts were maybe your thoughts?"
"They were my thoughts. They were definitely my thoughts. I mean, it sure as hell wasn't his father. He's pulling this out of my head is what — he's pulling it out of my mind. He's pulling things like my fear — perhaps there's a suspicion. First of all, when I saw that picture I felt an agony, because I never felt I got close to my father. My dad was distant. He was a loving father, but he always held something back. you know. He was from a very reticent generation. Rural Texans were very inward people. I guess I feel a little bit of guilt about that, or something. You know, I don't know what to make of all this. Do you suppose? I just don't know what to make of it."
"I don't really know what to make of it either, but it certainly sounds as if —"'
"It's just —"
"You were opened —"
"It's so unexpected. This is the last thing I would have thought would have come out of me. And what's weird about it is, why would someone come from a flying saucer and evoke that kind of impression in me? What possible reason would they have?"
Budd Hopkins: "Well, that's not to find out now. That's speculation down the road."
"Like they were trying to find out how I ticked. It really is like that. Unless it's simply that I've come to a time in my life where there's some very difficult and terrifying material that I've got to face and this is how I'm facing it, and there was no little man there. But you know, I say that and I'm telling you right now that it's not true. It's not true. It's incredible, but it's not true. The man was there. He was standing beside my bed as real as life."
"You said, originally, about the December twenty-sixth episode, that it was as if they said to you, when you disappeared, when your ego dissolved, if they had asked you what is your deepest secret, you would have told them right away."
"Right away. Yes."
"So you had an inkling about something. That your deepest secrets were coming out."
"Well, obviously I knew, because the memories were intact and they just came out of my head. Boy, though, if you'd asked me consciously I would have told you I had absolutely no idea what happened during that hour. If it was an hour. I thought I fell asleep after I saw the first glow."
"And the explosion seemed to come right after?"
"He took a little thing like a stick — a needle — and when he moved it even slightly in the air I could see it spark at the end, and he went like that [makes striking motion] and it went bang, and spread a tingling all over my face."
Budd Hopkins: "When I asked Annie Gottlieb what she would have to do to make the sound — I said, 'Suppose you were given resources to make the sound. She said, 'If you had a big, heavy door and you pushed it back against the wall, bang, like that —'"
"It was a big noise."
Budd Hopkins: "And your Anne said it was like something hitting something. Almost like an explosion."
"Yeah. Well for me it was more like a — I can't say it was like a balloon popping, because that's too innocuous a sound. It had a heavier quality to it than that, like some big energy had been released."
Budd Hopkins: "Annie Gottlieb said it had a slapping sound —"
"Not that crisp. More of a thud. It was a big noise. There was a slap, but there was a deeper resonance to it."
Budd Hopkins: "That's what Annie said. We've got four different people to come up with a description of the sound."
"Thunder?"
"It wasn't like thunder, no. Not like thunder."
"It had a clap in it?"
"Well, no, because it didn't last after it. It would be like a clap that ended immediately. It had a deep undertone to it. But mostly riot.. Actually, a clap would be the best — like a deep clap of thunder that had no echo. Just a single noise. But it had a deep undertone to it. It had a very electrical quality to it. If you could make a tiny bolt of lightning in someone's face, you would create thunder right in their face. That's what was done."
"I think we're about finished."
"Yeah, I don't want to go into the twenty-sixth now!"
"We might not be finished with the fourth."
"Now that the fear is over. The turmoil. I feel I don't have a psychiatric disorder. I feel you're right about that. You know what I've got to do? I've got to figure out how I feel about this, because I don't think I'm intellectually going to be able to deny their existence much longer. And I have to understand how to feel about these beings who would come into my house and do something so strange and yet somehow or another so productive."
"How productive?"
"Well, in two ways. One is, they learned a lot about me, if they are interested in me, for whatever reason. This afternoon I just learned a lot about myself. I learned a lot. Things I didn't have any idea worried me. About my dad and mother."
"The other fears —'
"Well, fear of war, obviously . . . and of the death of my son. There is no such thing as a good father who doesn't worry about harm coming to his kid. But the other material is a great surprise. And that's as vivid as it can be. I loved my mom and dad so much. I love my mom, still, and I want to believe that at the end it was as gentle and loving a moment as Momma has always said."