Hopkins was a large, intense man with one of the kindest faces I have ever seen. I later discovered that he was bright and canny. but at the time he assumed a guileless appearance.

The moment our interview began, Hopkins explained that he was not a therapist but he could put me in touch with one if I wanted that. He then got the facts front me that I have recorded here.

As I sat there in that man's living room, listening to him tell me that I wasn't alone. that others had gone through very much the same thing, the tears rolled down my cheeks, and I went from wanting to hide it all to wanting to understand it.

It was during that first meeting that he asked me if anything else had happened in the past, anything unusual. My initial reaction was to say no. One of these ludicrous and horrible experiences was quite enough. But the question seemed to trigger something in me. After a moment's reflection, I blurted out, " I seem to remember a night the house burned down. But it didn't burn down."

All hell had broken loose on a night in early October. There had even been an explosion that woke up the whole household. Strange things had happened, but for some unknown reason we had simply put them out of mind. We'd hardly even discussed them. But that time they didn't happen only to me. We'd had houseguests. If anything had really happened, they would certainly remember. Here was a chance to put this to the test. If nobody remembered anything, I would be able to dismiss this embarrassing business of aliens.

I left Hopkins's house a happy man. He'd said that judging from his experience, the October events may have been caused by the same agency that was responsible for the disturbance of December 26.

Wonderful. I'd contact the witnesses. They would of course report that they remembered nothing. Then I would begin the painful but thankfully well understood process of accepting that I had been the victim of some unusual mental phenomenon. would enter therapy and learn to forget the mysterious visitors.

No other outcome seemed possible. Of course not. I had solved my problem.

October 4, 1985

As I walked down Sixth Avenue toward my end of Greenwich Village, what had happened on October 4 became clearer in my mind.

Why had I not thought of or discussed these events before? The answer is straightforward: I had tucked the whole episode into the catalog of open questions and forgotten it. In retrospect the only reason I can advance for having done this is that I did not want to face just how strange the events of that night had really been. But when I thought them over, they began to seem distinctly eerie, even frightening.

We often deal with fear by rejection — and to this case, as will soon be evident, there was more than enough reason to be terrified.