But her testimony had a powerful effect on me. It was by no means a "typical abduction scenario" that could have been drawn from subconscious memories of things she had read in the paper over the years. It was unlike other testimony — and thus was almost certainly taken not from her cultural background but from her actual memories and perceptions.

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?