After this hypnosis session I suffered the same sort of debilitation I had felt for so long following the December 26 experience-lowered body temperature, weakness, an unpleasant sense of being somehow separated from the world around me. And the next afternoon I felt terribly tired.

Either I was overloaded by a demand for more material than I could comprehend at one time, or there was a limit to the amount of information I would be able to remember.

Or perhaps I could not comply because my unconscious mind had not anticipated the question, and had not yet had time to construct more stories.

I wonder.

Hypnosis

FISHING IN THE PAST, PART TWO: THE DEEPS

SESSION DATE: March 14, 1986

SUBJECT: Whitley Strieber

PSYCHIATRIST: Donald Fein, MD

[This time we tried for a very, very deep trance. I was concerned about complying not so much with Don's wishes, since he remains neutral, but rather with a hidden desire of mine that my memories would somehow confirm their own reality. I was hoping that a more profound trance would direct me totally toward Don and thus all my compliance would be concentrated on him, and I knew I could trust his neutrality.

The trance, which was deepened by the added suggestion that I descend two flights of stairs of twenty steps each, was profound. When I awakened it was as if I had come up out of a well. I was reasonably satisfied that I had been too directed toward the hypnotist to interfere with myself, but it is not possible to be certain of this. I noticed afterward that he seemed to have kept his questions to an absolute minimum perhaps in an effort to further reduce suggestion.

We went first to the incident at my grandmother's house in 1967. The images were startlingly real, almost as vivid as if I were there again, twenty years ago.]

"Granny's in the other room. She's reading too. I see her light is still on. Gigi's sleeping beside her bed. The rest of the house is dark. I turn the page There's an ad for a car. Just scaring at that ad. Goddamn. Something buzzing around in here. I'm fighting it. All of a sudden it puts something on my head like a railroad spike. A silver nail. A big, flat-Beaded silver nail and it hits me right in the side of the head with it. And I turn into something —else. I have — I'm heavy and big. I get up out of the bed, I feel totally different. I feel like I'm moving like I'm walking through the house, like I'm a ghost in the house. I'm in the basement.

"No I'm not. I — I'm still in bed. It's so peculiar. Because t never moved at alt. The ad's still there. I never went anywhere, I staved right there. I get up and I get a glass of water. I'm scared to death. I don't know why this happened to me."