Communion: A True Story

Whether its true or not, if you can let go of your disbelief and read it as Strieber presents it, it's a very frightening book. I love it when these books (hauntings, ufos etc) are presented as works of fact. It makes them just a little scarier than if they were published as novels. If you cant

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shed your skepticism, you might not finish it.

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For me, it wasn't whether or not Streiber's account actually happened the way he described, but whether he knowingly lied about it. I don't believe he lied, but I also don't believe his fantastical recollections are even mostly true. So if you can suspend your incredulity, Communion will envelope

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you in one the strangest, most frightening, most dreamlike experience you'll ever read.

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Whitley Strieber was a firm sceptic regarding the existence of such things as flying saucers and such beings as extraterrestrials, but then he began to have terrifying, unexplainable experiences.

Whitley and his wife owned a log cabin in “a secluded corner of upstate New York”. It was here that

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at the end of 1985 the frightening experiences began.

In the middle of the night, he experienced a “whooshing, swirling noise” as though a number of people were moving rapidly around in the living room downstairs. One of the double doors leading into the couple’s bedroom was moving closed. Then he saw a “compact figure” moving around the door. This figure was about three and a half feet tall. Later he saw the face: “two dark holes for eyes and a black down-turning line of a mouth that later became an O”. It seemed to be wearing some sort of breastplate or armoured vest.

The figure came rushing into the room. His next recollection is of being in motion, naked, arms and legs extended, moving out of the room.

He was in a state of paralysis and panic. Then he was in a depression in the woods together with several small beings. He could only move his eyes.

One being, whom he felt was a woman, made a particularly strong impression on him. He felt that she was very old, and in fact later, she admitted that she was old and he got the impression she could be Ishtar. He was taken over by extreme dread where he felt his personality “completely evaporate”. This was a profoundly physical experience. He “ceased to exist”.

He was in a small “messy” chamber with tiny people moving around at great speed.

The beings inserted a needle into his brain and he began to scream.

He had seen four different type of beings: 1) the small robot-like being he had seen initially 2) short stocky beings in dark blue coveralls 3) a being with black slanted eyes and a verstigial mouth and nose 4) a smaller being with round, black eyes like large buttons.

The beings inserted a mechanical device into his rectum and took samples, perhaps of faecal matter. It felt like he was being raped.

The author tells us in depth about his various experiences and what friends who were present at the time, and his wife Anne, experienced. He let himself be hypnotized and during the hypnosis sessions he recounted similar experiences he had had throughout his life, starting from an early age. He contacted an expert called Budd Hopkins who was also present during the hypnosis sessions.

At one point when he says to the female being “You have no right!” she replies; “We do have a right:” However, this is not expanded on.

Though the beings who visited him were clearly not human, and they certainly seemed to be extraterrrestrials, the author termed them “visitors”, since he was very much in doubt as to who or what they really were.

One explanation was that he was losing his mind, but the psychiatrist he consulted assured him he was completely compos mentis with no indication of any psychoses. He does not think that the visitors were necessarily from another planet, but perhaps were similar to fairies. Perhaps they are “our own dead”: we are a larval form and they are the adults of our species. (I regard this as an extremely fanciful and unrealistic explanation.) He also suggests that these beings, whom thousands of people have encountered, could be created by one’s own unconscious mind, be from another dimension, parallel universe or another time. He does not mention the possibility that they come from within the Earth, a theory that I have encountered elsewhere.

The title of this book is “Communion”, which the Oxford English dictionary defines as “the sharing of intimate thoughts and feelings” (Though I don’t really trust this dictionary completely after reading its definition of “extraterrestrial” – “fictional being from outer space”.) The author says the eyes of the visitors “that seem to stare into the deepest core of being” are asking for more than simple information, and the goal seems to be “communion”. So I understand him to mean that the visitors seek a (deep) sharing of thoughts and feelings, or the like.

The book is well-written and Whitley discusses his experiences and ideas in depth. He also tackles the history of such experiences going back in time to AD 300. Sometimes I felt the book was somewhat too comprehensive, spreading over too many subjects.

But I highly recommend that you read the book if you have any interest at all in the subject, in fact even if you are absolutely sceptical about the veracity of Whitley’s experiences. Remember that Whitley is himself a deeply sceptical man. Also take a look at Whitley’s newest book about the after-life.

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I actually enjoyed reading this book. I am very interested in the idea of E.T.'s visiting earth, and it made me think. I would recommend it to anyone who is curious about the subject.

I think I read, or skimmed, this book when I was 12 or something.
The Christopher Walken movie based on this book was hilarious (And helped me get over my irrational fear of Roswellian Grey Aliens.) I'm gonna give this one a go next time I see it in the Salvation Army where they have about 5 copies

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or so.

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Strieber's appearance on Johnny Carson led me to this book. Thirty years later and I am still blown away by this man's life experiences.

This is one of the strangest stories I have ever read. The strength of the book is the author takes a very logical and methodological approach to explain what happened to him. Was he visited, poked and prodded by alien visitors or not? The reader is left to his own conclusions. If nothing else, it

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is a good read except for the end where Strieber attempts to analyze what he went through. That portion is nearly unintelligible, but 90 percent of the book is highly readable.

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Communion is Strieber's autobiographical accounts of his abductions and interactions with aliens. The book describes what he is convinced are real events spread over many years.
This was a disappointing addition to Strieber's body of work. He's an excellent horror author. I tried to imagine this as

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just another horror story by him with a false framing story for verisimilitude, despite knowing going in that he truly believes in the abductions and alien interactions described therein. I even have some old pictures of my father reading this and tried to think of it as a way of connecting back to his experiences as a reader. I couldn't do it. I couldn't take it seriously. What I'm sure was supposed to feel menacing felt silly, what was supposed to feel hopeful felt ludicrous. The recovered memory tropes don't work as we know in the field of psychology that they're virtually always fictitious. The conspiracy theories and paranoia come across as mentally ill.
I guess, if you consider yourself a survivor of these sorts of abductions you'll probably enjoy this. It just makes me feel sad for Strieber though.

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