It is not possible for there to be a more provocative or intimate intrusion. If, as seems clear, we cannot control the visitors in any way, then we human beings must create among ourselves a community of support. The only lasting damage I can find has not to do with any direct side effects of the visitors' activities, but with people being isolated with their experiences because of the indifference or incomprehension of competent scientific professionals.

The fact that respected public institutions such as the government and the scientific and medical establishments do not. consider this a real problem hurts people, and hurts them badly. The lack of social support irrevocably isolates them when they need help the most.

When they read false debunking stories or see others like themselves made the butts of jokes in the press, they are in effect assaulted a second time by their own society.

Cornell University professor Dr. Carl Sagan has stated many times that there is no evidence that unidentified aerial objects-and presumably visitors exist. To be precise, there is no publicly acknowledged physical artifact. The large body of encounter memories. some heavily freighted with imagination, others more sparse, amount to an artifact of something.

And there is a substantial body of carefully authenticated photographic evidence of the devices themselves that is very hard to refute in any way except on an emotional level. Of course, there are also liars who claim contact, and faked photographs — some of them skillfully faked.

It appears that there is more than a shred of evidence that there are visitors here, and that they are doing something that involves its. It is also obvious from their secrecy that they want very much to hide. Can it be that the government is inadvertently helping them do this, or even that they have somehow compelled it to act as it does? Certainly the combination of visitor and government secrecy has led to profound public confusion. We do not know what is going on There is no publicly available reason to conclude that our earth is the object of visitation, or to support any of the other hypotheses that have been advanced. Indeed, any such assertions would be premature.

Maybe the visitor experience is what happens when the human mind looks into the mirror

. . . and discovers that its own reflection is not only real but fearful to see.

Something is here. But what? And from where?

We come at last to the essence of the mystery.

Ancient Future