10-Aug-87 19:47 MST
Sb: AP 08/07 0818
Abductions

------ By STEFAN FATSIS Associated Press Writer


NEW YORK (AP) -- What angers Whitley Strieber most is the attitude of
UFO debunkers who outright reject his claims in the best-selling book
"Communion" that he was abducted by short, stocky, big-eyed humanoids.

Strieber, the 42-year-old author of pop thrillers-turned-movies "The
Wolfen" and "The Hunger," resolutely denies inventing his 299-page
account of bright lights and midnight visits by alien beings to his
remote cabin in upstate New York.

"I believe I am telling the truth," Strieber said in a telephone
interview. "`Communion' never demands that you believe in UFOs or that
you believe that the visitors are physically real.

"All it asks you to do is place into question some of the paradigms
about reality and the nature of the mind," he said. "I'm not asking
more than that."

"Communion," which has sold more than 250,000 copies and was No. 1 on
the New York Times non-fiction best-seller list for three weeks,
details Strieber's reported contacts with alien visitors in 1985-86.

In the book, Strieber says on one occasion humanoids wearing gray
body-suits carried him to a small depression in the woods and later to
a messy chamber. The visitors, he says, physically assaulted him,
inserting a "shiny, hair-thin needle" in his head and a long, scaly
object in his rectum.

"It wasn't dreamlike in any way -- you don't get a needle mark in
your head from a dream," Strieber said. "I felt like I was being raped.
It just didn't strike me as being hallucinatory or dreamlike in
nature."

Co-author of two books about nuclear war and the environment,
"Warday" and "Nature's End," Strieber said he has received more than
2,000 letters from readers, over half of whom claim some kind of alien
contact.

He is forming a referral service network of doctors and counselors --
not UFO investigators -- for people who have written to him claiming
paranormal experiences.

"People know that something is going on and it's not understood by
science," Strieber said. "The result of this is they're just simply not
going to buy the debunkers. They shouldn't believe them. The real
problem we have now is that the debunkers are frightening the
scientific community into not taking a clear-headed look at this.

"`Communion' has been done with a lot of care and a lot of attention
to candor," he added. "There's no reason that someone with a good
reputation can't take it seriously and study it seriously."

Many details of Strieber's alleged encounters emerged during hypnosis
sessions with a New York City psychiatrist, transcripts of which are
included in the book.

Strieber says he underwent a battery of physical and psychological
tests that showed him to be normal, and also passed two polygraphs. The
bottom of each page of "Communion" asserts that Strieber's is "A True
Story."

"I believe it so completely that I can take a lie detector test and
pass," he said. "I cannot be convinced -- not by myself, not by a
psychiatrist, not by anybody -- that there is the slightest doubt this
is real."

Strieber, who includes his wife and 8-year-old son among witnesses to
the paranormal happenings, is writing a sequel entitled
"Transformation" about subsequent visits.

The author received a $1 million advance from the publisher for
"Communion" but said negotiations haven't been completed for the new
book, which details his struggle to come to terms with being the
apparent subject of alien experiments.

"Transformation" includes one "major" encounter and three minor ones
with the same humanoids, Strieber said. The sequel is about his
transformation"from a frightened victim to someone who is going to tell
it like it was, damn the consequences."

He said he no longer fears when he will be "visited" again.

"I just live my life," Strieber said. "When these happen it's always
a little startling. But I don't think in terms of when it will happen
again."

The author said he had no interest in UFOs until his first
encounters.

"It just didn't seem to matter very much," he said. "My concerns were
peace and the environment."

"When I was 11 or 12 there were (outer space) movies ... but it
wasn't something that we thought was particularly real. It was science
fiction, but you don't expect science fiction to be real."

------

("Communion" is published by William Morrow.)


Copyright 1987 by the Associated Press. All rights reserved.
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