What may have been orchestrated with great care has not been so much the reality of the experience as public perception of it. First the craft were seen from a distance in the forties and fifties. Then they began to be observed at closer and closer range. By the early sixties there were many reports of entities, and a few abduction cases. Now. in the mid-eighties, I and others — for the most part independent of one another — have begun to discover this presence in our lives.

Even though there has been no physical proof of the existence of the visitors, the overall structure of their emergence into our consciousness has had to my mind the distinct appearance of design.

Despite what they had done to me, I did not hate the visitors. Because I knew their strength but not their motives, they frightened me. But I wished to be objective about them, even to the point of saying that they could very definitely be something from inside the mind rather than from elsewhere in the universe. That they represented a real, living force seemed hard to dispute. But that this force might be essentially human in origin remained a definite possibility.

Certainly, they did not seem human at all. Under hypnosis I described the approach of the small figure wearing the strange cards and helmet. He stood all tiny and bursting with firmness at my bedside and made a semaphore gesture with his closed fists. I leaped out of bed, threw off my pajamas, and presented myself naked to him and his soldiers, thoughts of

"the good army" filling my head. There was nothing human about him, except that he had two arms, two legs, and a head.

Given their general reluctance to expose themselves to us in an open and obvious manner, it may be hypothesized that they are trying for a degree of influence or even control over us, but one that at least presents an appearance of compliance on our part.

About two weeks after my last hypnosis session, the three of us returned to the cabin for the first time since Christmas. Anne still knew little, our son, nothing.

I did not realize until I arrived there that I had entrusted these two other people to this experience without letting them know what might be happening. But what could I say? That it could be dangerous? Was that true? Or should I have told them to decide for themselves?

Probably, but I didn't. Later, after Anne had herself undergone hypnosis and knew the whole story, she said that she would never, ever have turned away from the cabin. And our son — if he was involved there was little we could do except agonize. To hear my own mind tell the story. I had been involved most of my life.