Surely it would be at least a little like what we would expect.

But there are deep, deep waters running here. If these are indeed visitors, they know us well... better than we know ourselves. More than visitors, they may simply be "others," an aspect of being which we have not yet understood.

No matter what exactly is made of it, the combination of all the flying-disk sightings over the past two generations and the smattering of abduction accounts certainly suggest that something strange is going on. Maybe just a strange form of hysteria, but if so an awfully strange one... that combines huge lights, little scampering feet — and intimate intrusions into the soul.

Budd Hopkins told me that first hypnosis sessions were often traumatic. These memories are buried for a reason: They are frightful in the extreme. When they first emerge, the mind lives through the panic it has been avoiding. While my experience with the wand is almost unique, the being I saw wielding it is of a type commonly reported.

It was during this week that I began to have a relationship with my own memories. There had been a being present. I had seen it. And I had seen others in December. I remembered the way they had smelled, the way it had felt to be carried by them, the way their pace had looked inside.

I felt complex emotions, ranging from the deepest inner unrest to what I can only describe as an urgency to compliance. I wanted to come together with them on my terms, to find some sort of mutuality.

I have never felt so tiny, so helpless. My boy's words haunted me—"... a bunch of little doctors who took me out on the porch..." There is nothing so hard as being a parent frightened in the night for your child.

When I returned to Dr. Klein's office, I described myself as "uneasy." He said, "Is that all?"

I admitted: "Terrified."

"Very understandable."

We began the session covering December 26 as soon as I was comfortable. Again, Budd Hopkins was present and allowed to question me under the same rules agreed to in the previous session.

"I want to take you back to December twenty-sixth. Going back to December twenty-sixth. Arid you are having supper. You are going to talk to me now, but stay completely asleep. Completely, deeply asleep. Where are you having supper?"

"In the country."

"Tell me who's there."

"Anne and our son."

"How are you feeling now?"

"Nice."

"What are you doing?"

"We're having super."

"What are you eating?"

"Goose. Cold goose. It's a used supper ..

Christmas dinner. And cranberry sauce. Sweet potatoes."

"How do you feel?"

"I'm very happy. I'm feeling great."

"Had you been feeling great the previous few weeks?"

"[Long silence.] I had a hard time up until Christmas."

"What sort of hard time?

"[Long pause.] Was-scared. Unhappy. I felt like the world was caving in on me. Kept thinking there were these people hiding in the closet. Went all through the house every night.