The next Sunday Anne and I were at a wedding reception. I called home and our babysitter's mother answered the phone. She said that there had been some trouble, but everything was all right. Needless to say, we went home, leaving the reception almost before it had begun and incurring the permanent anger of the bride and groom. Something had happened to the sitter. She said that she'd been cooking her dinner when a child in a white sheet had startled her by peering into the kitchen from the fire escape. Only my wife heard this story. I did not. We have tried to find this sitter, but it's been years and we know that she did not remain in the area past that semester. We cannot remember her name. There is thus no way to tell whether my wife remembers the story correctly. We finally realized that there was something weird about the white thing. I have to admit that my thoughts went to Casper the Friendly Ghost. Strangely enough, there are other instances of a similar white figure appearing in the context of the visitors, and even acting very much as this one had acted.

However amused I might outwardly have been about the incidents, within a few weeks I was on the run again. The co-op went on the market, although we once again didn't relate our desire to move to any disturbances. We had decided to move back to the Upper West Side.

But this time thins weren't so easy. We couldn't get enough for our pace to enable us to have as much space in a more expensive neighborhood. We finally quit trying.

In late March 1983 something happened. I walked out to get a breath of air for a few minutes and found myself returning three hours later. Anne hadn't been home and our son was in school, but the experience was so inexplicable to me that I invented an elaborate fantasy of having imagined myself back in old New York for the missing hours. I have told many friends this lovely story. I realized as I thought back that it didn't happen. It was a pleasant cover story, obscuring some other events. The truth is I don't know what happened to me during those three hours. I don't even know if I left the apartment. I was just gone.

We finally gave up trying to sell the co-op and instead bought the cabin, which brings me back to the present.

Emotionally, I have a great deal of trouble with the notions of spaceships and visitors. I simply cannot help it, even though I have a feeling that I might seem to future generations to be obtuse. In view of the evidence, the reason for my reticence is obscure, but it is not so different from the reluctance of most of my friends with scientific or academic backgrounds to entertain the visitor hypothesis comfortably.