We were running, but we didn't know it.

We didn't remain in Cos Cob for a full year. In early 1979 I was awakened by the bizarre impression that there were people pouring in through the windows of our rather isolated house. I was terrified. We had a new baby. I remember trying to get to him and that is all I remember. A few nights later we were awakened by the neighborhood filling with terrible screams. Even though we called the police, they never came, and nothing was ever said by neighbors about the shrieking. Within weeks we had left Cos Cob because we were "tired of the country" and wanted to get back to city living.

An interesting further occurrence of screaming took place in August 1986 in Provincetown, Massachusetts. We were staying with friends. In the middle of the night we were awakened by truly bloodcurdling shrieks coming, it seemed, from above the house.

Neither our friends nor anybody we spoke to the next day had any memory of anything unusual happening that night-except for one person. When I asked him if he'd slept well, he said that he'd been awakened by screaming. His house was about a mile from ours. He, also, has had a visitor experience in his past.

In January 1980 we took an apartment on the top floor of a high rise on East Seventy-fifth Street. All went well until September of that year. This episode began when I saw a strange light streak down the night sky. It moved faster than an airplane and left me with the feeling that it had something to do with me. I was deeply and inexplicably moved, and left with an obscure foreboding. In the middle of the night we were awakened by our son's crying. He was desperate, almost wild with terror. I rushed into the living room, heading for his bedroom. I recall the impression of a small, dark figure dashing toward the sliding doors that led to our thirty-third-floor balcony. Then there was a terrific explosion and beads of glass burst out of the pantry. I kept running for my terrified baby. reaching his crib after what seemed an eternity. I cradled him in my arms while Anne rushed through the house turning on lights.

Then she took our son and I went to see what on earth had happened. A siphon of seltzer had exploded, so violently that the glass was reduced to ads, to dust. There wasn't a trace of the water that had been inside. Anne cleaned up the mess while I calmed our son. Then we went back to bed.

In November we closed on a co-op and by January 1981 had moved again, this time to our present apartment in the Village. A dozen times I have told a story of being menaced by an old college acquaintance, whose terrifying appearances and phone calls had driven us from our Seventy-sixth Street walk-up to Cos Cob, then from there to the East Seventy-fifth Street high-rise. and finally to the Village. A part of this myth is the kindly detective who hypnotized me and enabled me to identify this individual by listening to his voice on a tape.