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.