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.