Hypnosis
FISHING IN THE PAST. PART ONE: THE SHALLOWS
SESSION DATE: March 10, 1 996
SUBJECT: Whitley Strieber
PSYCHIATRIST: Donald Vein, MD
[Once we reviewed this apparent past material. Don Klein and I decided to go fishing in it.
This and the next would be the last times that Don would hypnotize me. Despite the fact that many complex experiences took place between April and October of 1986. our interest shifted after March from exploring new material to discovering some physical cause for it.
We will return to hypnosis in the future, but — while it is obviously of great interest — it does not advance any real understanding of the origin of what is happening, only of its content. Why, as I am no longer terrified, the more recent events should still be difficult to remember in their entirety without hypnosis is unclear.
We decided to cover the night at my grandmother's house. the fall of 1980 to New York, and anything else that might be of interest. We both recognized. and I wish to make this clear, that there might well have been a degree of degradation taking place, in the sense that I might have been unintentionally fulfilling expectations of seeing the visitors. While at the time of the hypnosis sessions recorded here and in the next chapter I was still avoiding reading books about anything connected with this sort of material, simply dealing with my own memories must have affected me, altering and changing my perceptions in ways that are probably impossible to detect. Despite this, there was confirmation from another witness that one of my memories was indeed of an extremely strange event.
At this session, Don and I examined an incident that took place in the country on an October or November afternoon in 1984. I was driving back to the house from the grocery store when I suddenly saw a fogbank. It was a clear fall day, the air dry. I got curious about the fogbank and drove off the highway onto a dirt road to try and get a better look at it. The next thing I recall, I was in the fog in my car and two people in dark blue uniforms were leaning in the windows. Then I was back on the highway, returning home. I had dismissed this whole thing until just recently, when I thought about it and decided to go back down that dirt road. I went to the exact spot on the highway where I had turned off. I remembered it because it had a lovely view; and I had looked at that view just before making the turn. The dirt road I had seen there didn't exist anymore, and there was no sign of a road ever having been there.
Budd Hopkins had wanted me to cover this incident first, before any further hypnosis, because of its similarity to one of the most common abduction scenarios. the removal of' the subject from a moving car. He did not tell me what I have subsequently discovered, that confusion of place is common among abductees. There are stories of roads that don't exist, beaches that aren't there, structures that later prove never to have been built. There are also cases where clouds came down to the ground or strange fogs proved to contain something more than droplets of water. One might be tempted to ascribe such reports to trance states, but that does not explain what happens to the victims' cars while they are in the trance — and there are often hours of missing time involved. In addition, many experiences take place while moving cars are filled with people. Some period of time passes, and the occupants all wake up to find the car moving in a different direction, or at the wrong place on the highway, or some such thing. They do not find themselves where they ought to be: in a ditch.]
Dr. Klein: "You're in the car, in the car —"
"I went right past the turnoff. I went right past the grocery store and I keep going. I don't know . . . I want to take the car for a little run. Listening to WAMC'
"What do you hear?"
"It's Don Giovanni." (So I said, but it sounded awfully strange.) "Going . . . down the highway toward the interchange. I keep thinking I see something above the car. I'm a little nervous. I turn off the radio. I roll down the window then roll it up again. I don't know why- I missed the turnoff, and I'm going to turn around and go back. But I don't. Isn't a soul around. I calm down, I turn the radio back on again." (I remember flipping the switch to find that a was already turned on. It had stopped working — which was typical of the car I had then.) "I get down past the diner, there's a real nice view off to the left. Looking out the window of the car. A white truck goes past. I — it's like the white truck isn't right. There's a — I don't know what is going on here. Now I want to go home. I feel terribly sick to my stomach. Awful feeling. I don't want to tell you what's happening to me."
"Perfectly all right. Just relax. You don't need to tell us. Only if you can. Relax. Tell us what you can."
"I was driving my car, all of a sudden there was this white pickup coming toward me. Funny white pickup with a black windshield. And the next thing I know, I'm just stupefied. I wasn't thinking about — I just wasn't thinking about them at all, and just die damndest thing. I'm sitting there in a long room. And there's this — being — standing in front of me. A long gray room. Bang. And I jumped down and wanted to get back in my car. I didn't know where the hell I was, what had happened to my car. anything. It was totally immediate. And then there's this-I feel like I'm being stared at. I have the feeling there's a lot going on but I'm just so totally stupefied. I can't describe how I feel right now. It's like I just got turned inside out. And one thing I do feel, which is my stomach feels terrible. I just can't credit — I can't understand it at all."
"Don't try to understand it. Don't try."
"There's this one right in front of me. I'm sitting on the floor with my legs spread apart. I'm dressed in my clothes. Wearing my brown sweater and I can see my shoes. 'Cause I'm sitting with my legs spread out in front of me. And somewhere there's someone watching me with great big eyes. Big black eyes. Just watching me. One second I think they're mean, the second second, I don't know what to make of it. I'm not scared now. I'm just amazed and totally — totally — it's like — just like I —I turned the corner and all of a sudden I was in Arabia or something.
"And I'm thinking, there was this white truck — I'm trying to figure it out. What happened? I was sort of scared because I feel like I've done something wrong or gotten into the wrong end of the tunnel or something. And over here [gestures left], there's somebody who's moved around a lot. No one says a word. I don't say a word."
"Moved around?"
"I could see out of the corner of my eye someone or something is moving around a lot. Just sort of darting around. And there's a whole row of people — little people — standing quietly over there on a little — they're a little higher than I am. And I'm still just — my mind is whirring and whirring and whirring like I'm short-circuited. I mean, it's a — a — on — like I'm on overdrive or something. And I have this feeling that I could kick my way out or dig my way out or something."
"Are they communicating with you?"
"You're just there?"
"I'm just sitting there."
"Are they paying attention to you?"
"Yes. There's one of them now sitting down in front of me staring right at me, and she's completely different from the others. The others are all very small people. This one is tall and thin. And she's sitting down. She's all gangly. I don't know what to ale of that. I don't know what to make of this. Where the hell — how the hell — you know, it's like I can't see. I just don't know what the hell to make of this. It's just impossible. It's totally impossible. It can't be like this."
"Maybe it's not like that."