1968 Summer, London, MA4/AN4 303
“A letter from a British woman begins:
“At the lecture by Jacques Vallee at the London A.A. [Architects Association] on the 12th of December I was surprised by one of the slides of a Phoenician seal showing a winged sphere held up by two creatures which he described as “Scorpion men.” Perhaps I have seen such a man myself...“
It was the summer of 1968, about 4:00p.m. She was driving from London to a place near Stratford to visit friends for the weekend. She had a companion in the car with her. Just outside Oxford they both saw a shining disk in the sky. They slowed and then stopped to watch it as it darted and dodged. Another car stopped to watch it, too. Eventually it sank behind the trees. They resumed their trip, but the really striking events took place after the disk had appeared:
“During the drive between Burford and Stratford I had some startling, and to me, novel insights into what I can only describe as the Nature of Reality. They were connected in some way to this shining disk, and have had a profound effect on me, causing what is commonly known as a personality change. I won’t try to explain what those insights were since almost all the religions of the world have tried to do this and have failed. (In that afternoon I changed from agnostic to gnostic, if that means anything at all.) However, these insights hit me like bolts from the blue, as though from outside, one after the other. I’ve never had a similar experience since.”
The letter continues with a description of what the woman saw that evening after supper, a description that seems to come straight out of a John Fowles novel: the guests were in the sitting room, which had open French windows leading out onto the lawn, and the woman went over to the window to get a breath of fresh air. The weather, she wrote, was “very hot and close.”
“The light from the room shone in an arc of about ten feet around the window. In that area I saw, as soon as I came to the window, a strange figure. My perception of it was heightened by the state of frozen panic it produced in me. It was for me with any doubt, a demon, or devil because of my Western oriented interpretation (I imagine) of the vision or creature or animal or man, or whatever it was I saw. Like the “Scorpion man,” as well as Pan, it had dog or goat-like legs. It was covered in silky, downy fur, dark, and glinting in the light. It was unmistakably humanoid, and to my mind malevolent. It crouched, and stared, unblinkingly, at me with light, grape-green eyes that slanted upwards and had no pupils. The eyes shone and were by far the most frightening thing about it. It was, I think retrospectively, trying to communicate with me, but my panic interfered with any message I might have received. If it had stood to its full height it would have been about four to five feet tall. It had pointed ears and a long muzzle. It gave the impression of emaciation; its hands and fingers were thin as sticks.
Eventually, convinced that I was hallucinating, I went and sat down for a while, until the panic had subsided. Then I went to see if it was still there. It was, except that it had moved further into the shadows on the edge of the arc of light. I made sure I kept away from that door for the rest of the evening, and left the next day. I told no one. That it may have been connected with the shining disk I only realized when I saw that slide.”
I have other reports in my files of such forgotten observations that the witnesses only recollected when their memory was triggered by a slide, a book cover, or a lecture.”
“At the lecture by Jacques Vallee at the London A.A. [Architects Association] on the 12th of December I was surprised by one of the slides of a Phoenician seal showing a winged sphere held up by two creatures which he described as “Scorpion men.” Perhaps I have seen such a man myself...“
It was the summer of 1968, about 4:00p.m. She was driving from London to a place near Stratford to visit friends for the weekend. She had a companion in the car with her. Just outside Oxford they both saw a shining disk in the sky. They slowed and then stopped to watch it as it darted and dodged. Another car stopped to watch it, too. Eventually it sank behind the trees. They resumed their trip, but the really striking events took place after the disk had appeared:
“During the drive between Burford and Stratford I had some startling, and to me, novel insights into what I can only describe as the Nature of Reality. They were connected in some way to this shining disk, and have had a profound effect on me, causing what is commonly known as a personality change. I won’t try to explain what those insights were since almost all the religions of the world have tried to do this and have failed. (In that afternoon I changed from agnostic to gnostic, if that means anything at all.) However, these insights hit me like bolts from the blue, as though from outside, one after the other. I’ve never had a similar experience since.”
The letter continues with a description of what the woman saw that evening after supper, a description that seems to come straight out of a John Fowles novel: the guests were in the sitting room, which had open French windows leading out onto the lawn, and the woman went over to the window to get a breath of fresh air. The weather, she wrote, was “very hot and close.”
“The light from the room shone in an arc of about ten feet around the window. In that area I saw, as soon as I came to the window, a strange figure. My perception of it was heightened by the state of frozen panic it produced in me. It was for me with any doubt, a demon, or devil because of my Western oriented interpretation (I imagine) of the vision or creature or animal or man, or whatever it was I saw. Like the “Scorpion man,” as well as Pan, it had dog or goat-like legs. It was covered in silky, downy fur, dark, and glinting in the light. It was unmistakably humanoid, and to my mind malevolent. It crouched, and stared, unblinkingly, at me with light, grape-green eyes that slanted upwards and had no pupils. The eyes shone and were by far the most frightening thing about it. It was, I think retrospectively, trying to communicate with me, but my panic interfered with any message I might have received. If it had stood to its full height it would have been about four to five feet tall. It had pointed ears and a long muzzle. It gave the impression of emaciation; its hands and fingers were thin as sticks.
Eventually, convinced that I was hallucinating, I went and sat down for a while, until the panic had subsided. Then I went to see if it was still there. It was, except that it had moved further into the shadows on the edge of the arc of light. I made sure I kept away from that door for the rest of the evening, and left the next day. I told no one. That it may have been connected with the shining disk I only realized when I saw that slide.”
I have other reports in my files of such forgotten observations that the witnesses only recollected when their memory was triggered by a slide, a book cover, or a lecture.”
- Dimensions, p. 38-39.