The chin was strong, very pointed, and there was a general impression that the skin was stretched over a plated bone structure.
By far the most arresting feature in this face was the eyes. They were far larger than our own eyes. In them I once or twice glimpsed a suggestion of black iris and pupil, but it was no more than a suggestion, as if there were optic structures of some kind floating behind those wells of darkness.
It was those eyes that I saw staring down at me on October 4, those eyes that gleamed so furiously in the faint night light. I remember them from December 26, too, and from the summer of 1957, and from the experience with the fogbank.
Ted asked me many questions about the eyes. When he asked me how they looked closed, I got another shock: The image closed its eyes. I saw the huge, glassy structures recede and loosen, becoming wrinkled, and the lids come down and up at the same time, to close just below the middle of the eyeball.
I described this to Ted, but he wanted to know more. How about a profile view? Had I ever seen a profile? As I sat there staring into the darkness of my own mind. I saw the image obediently turn its head.
I could hardly believe what I was observing. Was this a phantom? What was it? My research thus far has not uncovered any specific paradigm of this experience. I will not assert finally that it was a mental phenomenon as yet unidentified, but at the moment this remains a distinct possibility.
While the image stayed with me, it remained exactly the same as it was when I first saw it. I could observe any part of the body from the top of the head to the tip of the foot. I could do this again and a again, and see the same thing each time. On March 1. I made a complete physical description on tape. On March 23 I repeated the description again, then compared the two tapes. There was no difference. The image was unchanged.
Beyond the face, I was able to see the figure's back, the sides of its head, its arms and hands, its feet, torso, abdomen — every part of its body. Under close scrutiny, its surface was smooth but did not seem to have a layer of fat under the skin, which was stretched tight over the bones. The structure of the knee and elbow fonts reminded me of the knees of grasshoppers or crickets. The hands were very long and tapered when in repose, with three fingers and 'in opposable thumb. When pressed down, the hands became flat, suggesting that they were more pliable than our hands. On the fingers were short, dark nails of a more clawlike appearance than ours.
Overall, this did not appear to me to be a highly developed body , but rather a very simple one. There was a general lack of complexity shat suggested few bones and not much flesh.
I do not know how to explain this image. If it was not created by the powerful effect of Don's, asking me to visualize the creature, then perhaps it was some sort of sophisticated holographic projection. It might be possible to maintain an image in the mind if one knew how to stimulate the optic center in the right way.
Is that what happened? Subsequent events suggested that the image was something even more extraordinary than it at first seemed.
The Visitation of March 15, 1986
Late on the night of March 14, after I had come back from the hypnosis session covering events in our apartment on East Seventy-fifth Street, I sat down once again to think things through.
The image was with me, of course. I wondered what would happen if' I asked it to come to me.
Humanity has a long history of conjuring and magic. I have no doubt in my mind that most of this arose from the attempts of helpless people to affect an environment before which they were, in fact, powerless.
But what if that was not the whole story. I sat there looking at it. It looked back at me.
Nothing more happened. The thought flashed through my mind almost unbidden that anything I wrote about this experience would be far more intense if I was given some sort of confirmation. It was a true thought: that was exactly how I felt at that moment. The image responded to me with a sharper stare.
On Saturday morning we went to the country. Our son had invited a friend, and we picked this child up on the way. She was one of his school friends, also seven, and the two of them were full of excitement about their weekend together. At no time were the subjects of flying disks, visitors, or any related material discussed at all, and I doubt very much if such things were in the pantheon of either child's awareness. Our son had not been exposed to any of this material and remained totally ignorant of it.
Before dinner I took a walk along our quiet, private road. It was a moderately clear night, with a quarter moon. On the walk I saw a hair-thin streak of light come straight down out of the sky. I thought: I'm disappointed in myself — or in them. Why such a dismal little manifestation?
It was dark when the four of us sat down to the dinner table. We had been eating for only a few minutes when our son's guest suddenly shouted, "A little airplane covered with lights just flew through the front yard!"
There was real shock in this kid's face. The child looked at me, obviously distressed. My impulse was to hide under the table, but I pulled myself together and managed instead to speak in an offhand and reassuring manner. "There's an air base near here." I said. The National Guard base is thirty miles away, but it was all I could think to say. "We don't let those things bother us. Best to just forget about it."
I got up and went outside, but saw nothing. Soon the sock subsided and the children went on eating. Anne and I just sat looking at one another. She had only been hypnotized for the first time the afternoon of the previous day, and knew almost nothing about what was happening with me. From her own hypnosis she had concluded that. some sort of visitor experience might be involved, and thus the little girl's statement scared her.
After dinner the two of us went upstairs and discussed the matter. Frankly, the kid's observation, coming as it did at that moment, had convinced me that on some level what was happening must be real. Why else would the child have made that announcement? Not a word about the visitors had been said within earshot of either of the kids, and the little girl was absolutely without information about this subject.
I told Anne about my attempt at communication. "I had a feeling you'd do something like that." she said. "Too bad I can't drive: I'd take the kids back to the city and leave you here to face the music." She stopped. "No I wouldn't." We sat hand in hand in the dark while downstairs the kids read quietly together.
I wasn't sure I could drive the car-even if I had wanted to. I could barely keep my eves open. I recognized the floating sensation of alight hypnotic trance. Was I hypnotizing myself?
It's possible.
But what had our son's friend seen? The next day I asked her if she knew what a flying saucer was. She replied, "A what?"
"You know, a flying saucer."
The child looked at me like I was crazy. "I don't know what that is. Your son and I are going out to his clubhouse." Her confusion revealed her lack of knowledge.
When we went back to the city I engaged the child's father in conversation. "Do you remember flying saucers?"
"Wha — yeah."
"Ever read any books about them?"