Communion: A True Story (26 page)

Hers was probably the moat remarkable element yet to be introduced into this account.

This was because there seemed to be so much unconscious process implied by her testimony.

It really did appear that she had performed a function she had been trained to do. And then there was that enigmatic female presence. In my own hypnosis I remembered it making some sort of noises to me when it was beside the bed on the night of October 4. Anne remembered this too. Despite the slip about my screaming she had no reason to identify that presence at the bedside, or to add that it was saying something while the screaming took place.

The temptation was, of course, to say that the visitor hypothesis was now so compelling it must be true. Testimony like hers, supportive in a totally unique manner, suggested very powerfully that there was some sort of design behind our experience. They had been taking me for reasons of their own and Anne had somehow been programmed to rehabilitate me by regrounding me in life.

However, it seemed to me that a rigorously objective approach still might prove more productive than surrender to a specific view.

But how to remain objective? I was being exposed to this. I was disappearing into the night. I had remembered probes going into my brain. My wife had painted a picture of me as a sort of soldier of the night, vulnerable and helpless.

One could state a few things with certainty, if one was careful. Something happened to me and possibly to my son. Its source and nature were unknown. but there was a strong suggestion that it included some sort of physical component external to and independent of us. This could be anything from some sort of sensitivity as yet unknown to fluctuations in the earth's magnetic field to actual visitors. Another thing that could be stated was that my wife had been aware that something was happening, and she responded by preserving her own neutrality — maybe she had been trained to do this and maybe not. It could also be that she was doing it out of an instinct to help her husband. The support she had provided may have been her own invention, rather than the outcome of training or suggestion from the visitors.

Could she herself have been the woman — or the source of the female being — who at once gave me those insights on the night of October 4 and comforted me in my anguish?

Who were the old gods, really? Perhaps we gave them to ourselves. When unconscious was joined to unconscious, maybe this was one possible outcome.

In general, Anne's memories were clear until it came to anything that might have related to the visitors. At that point she became unable to remember. This was most forcefully illustrated early in the transcript when she was recalling her day alone with our son on July 30.

We have questioned him very gently about this matter, and have discovered a wealth of information, which I will deal with in a separate section. Before Anne's hypnosis I found two short essays he had written for his school Journal over the course of the fall, both of which could easily be descriptions of events relating to the visitors — or they could simply be the work of an imaginative little boy. And yet even the drawings of the "monsters"

accompanying the stories suggest the large, slanted eyes of the visitors.

As both stories concern only him and his mother, we decided that they might refer to July 30. Since the three of us are almost never separated, it was easy to pinpoint that particular date. I had gone to Philadelphia to appear on a National Public Radio program. I spent the night at the Harley in New York and returned to the country on the morning of the thirty-first.

I found everything totally normal, and my wife and son perfectly happy.

Were it not for our son's two essays and all these other strange occurrences, we never would have even guessed that something might have happened that day. Before her hypnosis, nobody told Anne that she would be asked about it, nor was any allusion made about why.

She was unaware of the essays in the journal, which we had prevented her from seeing.

She remembered her day clearly until she reached the evening. Then she seemed to think that the two of them might have been invited somewhere. Then she went almost totally blank.

Both of our son's essays refer to her fainting when the monster appeared.

Interestingly, she remembered watching "TV" at some point. I remember more than once watching a screen, such as the gray one I was put in front of when I was twelve.

Hypnosis then proceeded to a regression about the night of October 4. Neither hypnotist nor subject knew much about the events of that night, as is clear from their initial mutual confusion.

Frankly, Anne's totally unprompted allusions to a vague and powerful and very definitely female presence have been one of the things that has left me with long thoughts. I have gone to her and watched her in peaceful sleep, and wondered what it all might mean.

When she was first asked by Dr. Naiman what she remembered about the night of the fourth, she evidenced obvious distress, screwing up her face and clenching her eyes as if shrinking from a painful sight or noise. And yet when he asked her what she was thinking of, she promptly replied that she didn't know. A little persistence on his part brought a strangely conflicted memory of a night of activity that went on around her but in which she was not allowed to participate. At first she clearly remembered that the night was uncomfortably light, although she later denied this memory. As Dr. Naiman had not been apprised of the importance of the light, he made no special effort to draw information about it out of her, thus leaving both her memories and her denial intact. This also means that there were probably no hidden cues that she should recall the light more clearly.

After the session, she was asked what had made her say that the night seemed too light. "I had a vague memory of my eves closed and my eyelids all lit up as if the light was on in the room. But it was very vague."

She was asked why she repeated so many variants on the theme that it wasn't a peaceful night. Despite reinforcement during hypnosis that she would shake some of these memories free afterward, she was not able to do so. She said, "I feel like I'm a piece of spaghetti with you on one end pulling and them on the other end refusing to let go."

She finally closed this section of her regression with, "I just see a light. I mean, it's not dark. You know, it's not dark."

Later in the regression she began to make references to the house being full, as if there were something "different" about it, to use her word. We often have houseguests in the country, and the presence of Jacques and Annie was nothing unusual. Was she trying to indicate that somebody else was present in the house? The transcript was not suggestive enough on this point to be sure, but during both sessions she indicated that a woman was present. There was also that cryptic reference to "a friend" being in our bedroom, a reference that was never expanded upon.

When asked who this friend might be, she said she just had the feeling that somebody was there. Why
friend
, though, why not simply
person
?

"It was somebody we knew. An old friend."

"Jacques or Annie?"

"No. Somebody else."

"Can you picture them?"

"No. It's just what I felt."

Then there was the matter of who screamed. We carried out experiments at the house to find out Just how clearly a voice from our son's room coup be heard in our bedroom above.

Screams could be heard easily. But loud talking was much less audible. and it would not have been possible that soft words of comfort could have been heard over screaming, even given our sparse soundproofing.

However, if the screaming was actually much closer to Anne, the words of comfort would also have been audible — especially if they were intended for us both and the screaming was muffled by some unknown effect.

There followed the first of the allusions that supported the notion that I ought to revise my understanding of my life. "I don't think Whitley was there very much. He was gone. You know, he goes sometimes at night. He goes and works. Or he just goes."

I don't
remember
going, though. I never work in the middle of the night. Once I'm in bed, I generally stay there all night unless I hear our son. And that happens no more than two or three times in a year.

While Anne's hidden role seemed to be that of passive supporter, her own life role is very different. It was clearly revealed by a statement she made before the second session, when Dr. Naiman asked her if her presence in his office was voluntary. "If I had said, No, I'm not going through with this,' I wouldn't be here." She is as independent a person as I know, a committed feminist who is politically and socially as active as she cares to be. Except when it comes to this. In this matter; she is passive, which is in itself awfully strange.

As the intensity of the experience built, Anne became uneasy with her role. "Things were going on and I wanted to know what was going on!" Her tone became forceful, almost angry.

When asked why she didn't simply go and see, she repeated that she wasn't supposed to.

Supporting this came the first of a number of what she feels are references to a female authority: "It was like your mother said to you, 'You have to stay here.'"

Anne's hypnosis strongly suggested that I'm taken all the time. And mine as well implied more than the two recent occasions. When she was being hypnotized Anne had no idea at all that I remembered more than two occasions when something. strange happened. So why did she say "friend," as if a familiar individual were present, and why did she assert that I go "all the time"?

When Dr. Naiman and Budd Hopkins moved to the events of December 26, there was a flavor of what it must be like living with all these strange secrets when she made reference to my talking about the crystal in the sky. I remember the image clearly, and I remember being nonplussed when I spoke of it, because even at the time it seemed like a sort of falsehood —something I needed to say in order to put some deep uneasiness to rest.

She said frankly that she did not consider me a "down-to-earth guy." I'm glad of that; after all that appears to have been happening, she would have to be incredibly imperceptive to think that I was down to earth. Dr. Naiman, quite naturally, asked her if she thought I should go to a psychiatrist. Her reply was interesting: "No. Because he — I think he can deal with these problems."

What? I'm seeing things, claiming to fly around rooms, and my practical, no-nonsense wife
doesn't
think I should see a psychiatrist? Perhaps she knew that there would be no point, because on the level she would not directly address, she was aware that these are the side effects of real experience.

I will recount briefly the incident of "flying around the room." In March or April 1985 I was lying in bed in the country house, reading a book, when I suddenly had the feeling that somebody was in the room. I was confused, because the room seemed empty. It seemed almost as if there were somebody here who was able to remain just at the corner of my eye.

The next thing I knew, I floated right out of the bed. I did not tell Anne that I saw a swirling, dizzying jumble of trees, house, and moon right after that. It just seemed too odd, so I contented myself with saying that I had seemed to float around the room. Flying dreams are not unusual, but dreams that vivid that take place when you are reading, not apparently asleep, are awfully hard to accept, which was why I mentioned it to her. I needed to talk about it. And there she was, ready to play her assigned role. Instead of asking if I thought A like to see a doctor, she just laughed and continued to act as if everything were totally normal, which was enormously reassuring, and I soon forgot the incident.

Anne's regression became a little confused at this point, because Budd Hopkins made the suggestion, "Back to that night," without specifying which night.

She thinks she then confused the nights. "It was like a party. There are lots of thins going on here now." When — October 4 or December 26? She does not remember, although she states that Jacques and Annie weren't invited, so that may mean the twenty-sixth, when they weren't there.

Yet again there was reference to the mysterious female authority figure: "It's like your mother says. 'No, you can't go.'"

Finally she volunteered that she's often felt that there are things "going on" with me that she wasn't "supposed" to know. She then revealed a definite role: "I'm supposed to kind of help him afterwards to deal with it. That's my role. But I can't stop them. you know. He just has to."

She was then specifically asked if I have hallucinations. Her reply was that I do not have hallucinations, but "they come to him because of his head."

She then related her perceptions of the "little white thing" that invaded our apartment in the Village. What it was we will probably never know, and I cannot even guess its purpose.

On listening, to the tape of her hypnosis, Anne felt that something seemed to be missing, and found it odd that she had remembered so little about the crucial periods of time-or so she thought. It appears, on careful analysis, that she remembered a great deal.

There was another reference to "the voice of a woman." She also admits that it was not Annie Gottlieb's voice, although not by saying so directly. "It was deeper. [Annie] has kind of a highish voice."

There is another possible explanation for Anne's testimony. It could be an expression of faith for a man she deeply loves and de sires to protect even from the toils of madness by a subtle act of confirmation, really a hidden communion, an indirect sharing — of an experience she did not have enough information about to confirm in convincing detail.

One night in April she talked in her sleep. I had thought to call this book
Body Terror
because of the extreme physical sensation of fear I had felt on December 26. Suddenly she said in a strange basso profundo voice: "The book must not frighten people. You should call it
Communion
, because that's what it's about." I looked over at her intending to say why I thought my title was better, and saw that she was totally asleep. Then I realized where I have heard that voice before.