As it happened, the week after I received Dr. Klein's letter I met a woman who has had the visitor experience; she began her story by saying that the visitors inserted a probe into her nose, which made a sound "like an apple crunching," between her eyes. She had even drawn pictures of the probe and of the entity that had inserted it. The probe was a businesslike affair, a needle with a small, knifelike handle. The entity was familiar to me because I had seen such beings also.

I then asked Budd Hopkins for information, from his cases, of reports of intrusions into the head. Of his hundred cases, four including me reported intrusions in or behind the ear, three under the eve. and eleven, again including me, up the nose. By far the largest number of intrusions were into the nostril, right into the olfactory nerve with its connection to the deepest core of the brain — and behind that nerve, the temporal lobe.

For what it may be worth, my son and I, who had injuries to the left nostril, are also left-handed. Anne is right-handed.

If the temporal lobe is being entered, then it may not be possible to decide between the temporal-lobe-epilepsy and visitor hypotheses. It could easily be that the visitors are affecting the temporal lobe in such .t way as to induce abnormalities that would later be diagnosed as epileptic conditions. As the reading of temporal-lobe electroencephalograms is such :t subjective business, I decided that I would arrange two separate temporal lobe tests, one by a neurologist recommended by Dr. Klein. and another through a different psychiatrist. This second neurologist carried out the' same preliminary examination done by Dr. Klein's man and came to the same conclusion: There was no evidence of abnormality. He was then given a version of' my December 26 story, but we never discussed hypotheses at all. That way, he felt no need to defend his findings against one hypothesis or another. I went to :t lab, took chloral hydrate, and endured the insertion of electrodes deep into my nasal cavity a few days later the re stilts came back: absolutely normal temporal lobe function, confirmed by both neurologists.

So whatever the visitors did, they did not damage me in a way detectable to our science.

And I am not a temporal-lobe epileptic. The temporal lobe-disorder hypothesis was now triply weak: The physical consequences of what happened and the witnesses mitigated against it to begin with, and now the temporal-lobe EEG suggested that I was not an epileptic.

Moreover, the beef "transients" postulated by, Dr. Persinger could not account for the elaborate experiences I had undergone. Only a full-scale epilepsy could account for them.

So far no hypothesis would explain the motive of the visitors — or the self-confidence they showed by inserting their probe through my germ-filled nasal cavity and into my brain.