A Novel Hobby
Sometime around 1987, I decided I needed a hobby that wouldn’t require me to change clothes. I was spending ten and twelve hours a day in front of a computer, developing software, and I needed to take occasional breaks—but nothing that would take too much time. I just needed to work my brain in a different way, so I decided to write a novel.
The next question was, a novel about what? It had to be a mental challenge, because I wasn’t writing for profit; I was writing for diversion. I toyed with doing something about the Greek myths, following the original plots but using modern psychological knowledge to provide believable motivations. However, I discarded that notion in favor of one involving UFOs and contact with aliens.
This was an odd choice for me. Although I have always loved the science fiction genre (as most computer programmers do), for some reason I had always avoided UFO stories. One of my favorite authors is Larry Niven; I had read every single one of his books except Footfall, the alien invasion novel he wrote with Jerry Pournelle. Yet now I intended to write one.
—But not just any UFO novel. Remember, this was to be a diversion. I knew there were a lot of books out there by people claiming to have actually met aliens. I didn’t believe any of them had, but just suppose...! I decided I would, as research, read every alien contact book in print and then, take what I assumed would be wildly differing tales by hoaxers, come up with some kind of plausible background against which the reader would say, “Wow—then all those crazy stories could be real!” Sort of like when you watch the first Batman movie and say, “Oh—the costume’s bulletproof. That’s why no one ever shot him!” You still don’t believe in Batman, but your mind has been given an unexpected little twist. It’s fun.
—Except, in doing the research—and I read all or part of nearly 60 UFO-contact-related books in the next year—I found out two very disturbing things.
The tales of UFO contactees were not “wildly differing”. In fact, the aliens, their ships, and their methods were all reported within a few decimal points of “same”. Moreover, the evidence wasn’t for single-occurrence, random-chance contact. It indicated that abduction was a life-long ordeal, and that it affected entire families, not just individuals.
The signs reported by other abductees were present in my own family.
As I studied, I wrote the novel; it reflected my own growing understanding of the matter. I had originally identified in the literature two species of aliens visiting Earth: one so human-looking as to blend in, the other, more common in the literature, a gray-skinned, large-headed, big-eyed biped that could never go unnoticed this side of San Francisco. Originally I made the humanoids the “good guys” and the Zeta Reticulans (called Greys or Grays in most abductee literature) the “bad guys.” Eventually I came to realize that the situation was more complex than a simple good vs. evil story, and let that ambiguity work its way in as well.
After I finished the novel I started writing in the technical field. But I couldn’t stop the research. It was amazing: in my life there had been no end of “odd” little things I couldn’t explain. I had just figured, that’s life; but most other people didn’t have the list of weirdnesses I did. Now, in the context of alien abductions, suddenly every individual "weirdness" fit into a consistent pattern...a pattern that suggested I, myself, might be an abductee. Though I certainly didn’t remember any such thing.
But look at a partial list, arranged chronologically:
I have an excellent memory. I can describe the apartment we moved out of when I was a year-and-a-half old, and I remember sitting in my high chair watching Pinkie Lee on television. That alone is unusual, I know. But my very oldest memory is even more peculiar. I was in a “white place”, yet I could see through the whiteness to my parents' car down below. My baby sister was with them. I cried for them to get me, but they didn't hear. I have always been profoundly disturbed by this memory, even as I repeatedly dismissed it as being some kind of bizarre dream. (But how did I, as a 1½ year old, know what a car looked like from the air?)
When I was four or maybe five, my Dad, who worked evenings, would come home at 11 and he and my Mom would watch TV. They left my bedroom door open and I could see the flickering blue light from the black-and-white television. However, one night I awoke to see a figure at the end of my bed, outlined in the bluish light from the living room. To me it looked like the statue of the Blessed Virgin at church. I thought my parents were still awake because I could see the blue light, but I was too terrified to say anything or move. I shut my eyes. After a while, as soon as I was able, I screamed for my Mom, who took forever to get to me—she’d been in a deep, deep sleep, as it turned out. I told her the Blessed Virgin had been in my room—at that age, I thought the statue was the "Blessed Virgin"—and of course she said I was only dreaming. She no longer remembers the incident, but I'll never be able to forget it. And it was not a dream. (It turns out, many abductees remember awakening as youngsters of five or six and seeing a figure at the end or side of their beds. The blue glow is also a common feature of abductions.)
When I was seven we moved to Victory, Vermont, a million miles from St. Johnsbury or any place else in the civilized world. At that time (1958) Victory didn't even have electricity; we used kerosene oil lamps until my Dad bought a generator. I remember us pulling into the driveway one night. The cousin who drove us, and my mother, had seen a "funny light" near the house which they announced was the reflection of our car lights in the eyes of a wild animal. We sat quietly in the car for (it seems like) an hour before my two younger sisters and I quietly got out of the car and filed into the house and went to bed. We were a rambunctious bunch; we never quietly did anything. But we did that night, and looking back it strikes me as odd behavior.
One night I got out of bed and went to the top of the stairs. My mother and sisters were standing in silence at the foot of the stairs, staring out the window. I joined them and asked what they were looking at. “The Northern Lights,” my mother replied, and I looked, but I couldn't see anything. Finally I went back to bed, leaving them standing fixed at the window in silence. They no longer have any memory of the incident at all.
One day my sister Mary Joan, six at the time, turned up missing. We looked everywhere for her, but she was nowhere to be found—certainly not in the house, and not in the usual play places around it, either. Mom and my other sister Louise and I got the idea she might have walked down the road the eighth of a mile to Gallup’s Mills, an intersection between two unpaved roads. We walked there and back, my mother becoming more and more frantic as we failed to see any sign of her. We had no phone; my Dad still worked in New Jersey where we had moved from, and I know my Mom was at a loss as to what to do. When we got back to the house, she sat at the dining room table, put her head down and started sobbing hysterically. Louise and I tried desperately to calm her down. Louise (age five) got the idea to get a cushion from the living room for Mom’s head—and found Mary Joan, sleeping deeply on the sofa. It took several minutes to rouse her. Mary Joan swore she’d been sleeping there all the time.
In St. Augustine, Florida, we were coming home from a school event. My Mom was driving; I was in the front passenger seat, and my sisters were in the back. We were just a few houses from our home, at a place where our new housing development had not yet been completed and the Florida jungle had not yet been cleared. Mom was driving very slowly. Suddenly she said, “Paul—I think I see a flying saucer!” At that, the rear door opened and my sister Louise jumped out of the moving car and ran into the woods. I jumped out, too, and grabbed her by the belt just before she plowed into the brush. I had to pull her by the belt back to the car. My mother then said it was just an airplane. When we asked her what she was doing, Louise said she was “trying to get back home!” although home was in sight and she had charged in the wrong direction. Louise and I both remember the incident, although we differ on details. Our mother does not remember it at all.
We all knew my sister Louise sleepwalked. We only saw her do it once, but several times when she woke in the morning there were blades of grass in her bed. She and Mary Joan shared a bedroom with twin beds. One morning Louise woke up in Mary Joan's bed, between her and the wall, with neither one knowing how she got there. (It is common for child abductees to awaken in places other than where they went to sleep.)
My room was apart from the other bedrooms. One night I went to bed early; I took off my glasses and put them on my bedside stand. Then, as I often did, I knelt on my pillow to take a last look through the window over my bed out at the back yard. This particular evening, I saw an intense white light blinking on and off. Without my glasses, I could only make out a white blob. I thought it might just be a fire fly; but, if it was, it was a heck of a bright one! Without my glasses it looked about as bright as a 100 watt bulb would, if it were suspended in the middle of the back yard. However, when it reached the tree line, it went behind the trees—I could still see the glow, but dimmed. When I finally reached for my glasses and donned them, the light was gone. I ran into the main part of the house to tell my mother, who was still awake. Her automatic response to that (as well as any other problem anyone ever had) was that I had "imagined" it. Just then, Louise walked into the hallway and asked for a towel because she was "cold". That was the only time we ever actually saw her sleepwalk.
When I turned off the light in my room I could always see by the light of a streetlight on the corner. On two occasions I awakened in the middle of the night, paralyzed, in terror and in total darkness. I knew that if I could just turn on my room light, I would be okay; but I couldn't move to save my life. Because my mother frequently rearranged my bedroom furniture, I also couldn't remember where the wall switch was in relation to my bed. After a period of time the paralysis faded and I was able to get up and fumble at each wall until I found the light switch. After I caught my breath and calmed down, I turned it back off. The street light was on and my room was back to normal. (The phenomenon known as sleep paralysis is common among abductees.)
- I remember many times going to sleep in terror as a game. I would imagine that two men were going to break into my room and take something, but as long as I pretended I was asleep they wouldn't hurt me. I followed this “game” to the point of trying to breathe and shift in bed naturally, as a person who was truly asleep might do. But the terror was real. My heart pounded as I lay in a cold sweat; and even though I had “made them up,” I felt like the “men” were really on the other side of my door, waiting to come in.
During our teenage years, all you had to do to make my sister Louise freak out was point at an imaginary flying saucer. At parties we would take turns interrupting the conversation to look out the window and yell, "My God! A UFO!" and Louise would literally dive under the nearest table. We could (and did) do this time after time, until we made her cry. (That’s what passed for teenaged entertainment in the innocent days before drugs and gang warfare.)
I saw three UFOs over St. Augustine around 1 am on the night of my senior prom (1969). I had just dropped my date off. It had been raining earlier, and after I parked in my driveway I looked up to see if the weather had cleared. It had, and the stars were brilliant, but as I started into the house I realized I had seen movement in the sky and I looked up again. I expected to see a seagull caught in the glow of the town, but instead I saw three oval lights traveling due east at an irregular speed: first one would lead, then another, then the other. In just fifteen seconds they had gone from straight overhead to below the tree line. I went inside and wrote a three-page description of the event addressed to the Air Force, which I never sent. I also didn't keep it, which is odd for me; I still have stories I wrote in first grade. In any case, I remember going to sleep after 4 am, not thinking that I’d spent an awful long time to write three crummy pages of description. (Sighting a UFO is considered a “marker” for being an abductee. “Missing time,” like spending two hours on a minor task that should take a couple of minutes, is also common.)
I have an odd mark on my left shin, an indentation as if a bit of bone underneath the skin had been scooped away. Mary Joan has a similar mark, as does our mother. I also have an odd red mark on one knee which suddenly showed up when I was a teenager. Recently a new scoop appeared on my calf; Louise has several similar “scoops” on her leg, which also "suddenly" showed up. (Scoop marks are common among abductees, and members of a family often have identical marks.)
This is what I knew in the spring of 1992. I had managed to convince myself that maybe there was such a thing as alien abductions; and maybe it had happened to me...in the past. But fortunately, if it had ever happened before, at least it didn't seem to be happening now.
I couldn't have been more wrong.