The problem was that the Yakima meeting was impossible to take seriously. It was held in the basement of a bingo hall, just a half dozen middle-aged men and some of their wives, bored out of their minds. None of the men had been abducted, though a few said they’d seen UFOs. In fact they saw them often, they said, it was just a fact of life near Mount Rainier. Had they ever made contact? No. Were they trying? Not really. The men seemed to enjoy withholding information. I felt they were competing for who could be most mysterious. Then the questions turned on me: What was my agenda? Did I fully understand the danger of what I was writing about? By the time the meeting adjourned, I had virtually nothing of use in my notes.

But on the drive back to Seattle, the story started to creep. Soon a man emerged, a composite figure. I identified him as Craig Sweeney—he requested that we use a pseudonym—a logger from Union Gap. He’d been the star of the meeting, the other men treating him with an almost holy respect. Sweeney claimed to have been abducted one night in the late ’80s. Coming home from a fishing trip on the Columbia River, Sweeney found himself drowsing at the wheel and pulled off the highway for a nap. That’s when he saw a blue light, like a torch above the trees. He approached it, the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen, then felt wind rushing through the pines, so powerful he felt his skin might rip away.

He awakened. Standing over him were short, hairless creatures with domed foreheads and tiny black eyes. For three days and three nights, Sweeney was held in what he described as a benevolent captivity. But when he was set back on the forest floor, totally naked, only scraps of memory remained—the cold blue heat of the light, the stampeding wind, and the aliens’ glittering eyes.

“What gives Craig such credibility,” I quoted one of the ufologists as saying, “is that he’s just a regular guy. He doesn’t want the fame, he just wants to share his story, let people know this stuff is really out there.”

That’s why I used a pseudonym, I explained. In Sweeney’s words, “I’ve seen how guys like me get treated. People think they’re looney tunes.”

In the article on the table before me, everything about Sweeney was underlined.

My editor had loved the piece, it was exactly what he’d sent me out to find, but even at the time it turned out to be more trouble than it was worth. A few of the ufologists contacted the editor, saying Sweeney didn’t exist and the article had clearly been planted—but by whom, and why? Their conspiratorial zeal undermined their complaint. My editor didn’t believe them.