Free Communion: A True Story by Whitley Strieber

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