A Million Little Pieces Of My Mind

By October of 1992, I had settled into a routine in the new townhouse. My Mom had left for my sister's in Florida in September, so I had the place to myself. I left the walls white, except for an "accent wall" in the living room that I painted sea foam green to match my new vertical blinds. I made a cool table out of an old aquarium stand by getting a glass shop to cut a mirror to the dimensions of the top. (That was an original idea, and I was very proud of myself for having thought of it.)

Mom had the front bedroom; I created an office out of the "spare" bedroom. There I worked on my books and class materials and experimented with a new thing called CompuServe, which was a way to have typed "chats" with people anywhere in the world. I used it mostly to contact computer vendors and download up-to-date software patches and hardware drivers.

Across from my office was my bedroom, which extended over my next-door-neighbor's living room and looked out over a large field that contained only grass and the complex's satellite TV dish. The entire complex was atop Wellington Hill, on the outskirts of Manchester; so at night it was very, very dark out my window. When it was clear I could see the stars from my bed, and for a few days each month the moon drifted past, shining directly on me. It was quiet, peaceful, and calm…or so it seemed.

This was the first time I'd lived alone in my life, other than a very short stint as a student in Tampa. That had been a disaster, mostly because I had no money. This was a joy, and only partly because I no longer had to worry I couldn't pay the rent or eat.

Every other week or so I would drive to the airport, fly to some city such as New York or San Francisco or Normal, Illinois, and teach a one-week class in writing Windows applications in Visual Basic or Visual C++. My expenses while teaching were all paid for, and at the end of the week I would return home.

Whether I was in Manchester or San Francisco, every few mornings I still awoke with painless bruises, usually on my upper arms, as if someone or something had gripped me too tightly during the night—which I wouldn't have minded so much if I hadn't been going to sleep and waking up alone. At least the fingertip soreness had stopped. I still had to assume that aliens or some other entities were causing the bruises; but as long as that was all that happened, it was a mystery I could try to solve but not otherwise a great concern.

Then, one night at home, I was awakened by the sensation that I was sliding off my bed. My first thought was that my waterbed had collapsed, and the mattress was slinking to the floor and taking me with it; and my first impulse was to grab hold of something to stop myself. However, I couldn't grab anything, because I couldn't move. I was paralyzed.

Everyone experiences a rush of adrenaline when suddenly awakened; it's the sensation of fear and I had that. But the realization that I was paralyzed was followed instantly by the terrified understanding that I was being abducted. Right then. Now. I had read too much about the phenomenon not to be aware what the paralysis, the night hour, the sliding sensation meant. Although my eyes were closed, I knew that around me would be eight or ten "little grays," short beings who were taking me off my bed. They would then lift me out my second-floor window and into their waiting ship.

When I was in junior college, I learned how to perform hypnosis. In fact, I got quite good at it. And I experimented with self-hypnosis as well. One of the classic hypnosis tricks is to impose paralysis on a subject. "You will not be able to move your arm no matter how hard you try." In experiments under laboratory conditions, subjects who were paralyzed under hypnosis could be made so stiff that they could lie with their head on one chair and their feet on another, with nothing in between, yet be able to support the weight of the hypnotist sitting on their stomach. The feeling of paralysis I had, felt like hypnotic suggestion.

Which meant, I might be able to shake it off by giving myself a counter-suggestion. I might at least be able to open my eyes and get a real-life look at the creatures I was certain surrounded me.

But as I considered this, I also realized that if I did open my eyes and see these non-human creatures in my room…I wouldn't be able to stand it. What was happening to me was bad enough; to see it and know I wasn't imagining it, was more than I could bear. Not to sound too dramatic, but I was certain I would go mad.

And then the question became moot. I was pushed asleep.

Have you ever had general anesthesia for a medical procedure? Then you know how it feels to be "pushed" to sleep. You aren't tired; you aren't even relaxed. The anesthetist is talking to you and then…you just aren't. Discontinuity. Later, you wake up with a complete and clear memory of everything that happened up until your loss of consciousness, which might well have occurred in mid-sentence.

That's what happened when I awoke. I was still paralyzed, still terrified, and still in my bed. However I had been on my stomach; I was now lying on my back. There was no sound in the room and I felt I was alone. But I had to prove it. I broke the paralysis, turned on my bed light and looked around the room. No one else was there, and nothing was amiss. However, I was lying on top of my comforter, nude, covered with goose pimples and damp sweat.

It was 4:30 am.

Usually when I awaken at night, I have a good idea what time it is. My feeling was that I had been dragged off the bed about 2:30. If that was correct, I had been unconscious for two hours.

There was no way I was going back to sleep. I went downstairs, had a bowl of cereal and watched Nick At Night on cable until the sun came up.

I tried to work during the day, but it was very hard to focus. I considered calling the psychologist but I had stopped seeing him; he had never helped me (actually asked questions like, "Why do you think you'd want to be abducted?") and I had gotten tired of solving his personal problems on my nickel.

Thing is, I felt foolish because I'd been aware this was happening for months, now. Nevertheless, there was a difference between believing and knowing. Believing had come relatively easy. Knowing was like being kicked in the gut.

And this time, there were no bruises, nothing amiss in my bedroom. There was no evidence anything had happened at all. Yet, I was certain. My own experience trumped any lack of external proof.

That night, I tried to go to sleep but failed. Logic told me there wouldn't be an abduction every night; but each movement out my window, each scratch of a branch against the outer wall or creak of the building's frame had me clinging to the ceiling in panic. Finally I rose, ate more cereal, and spent another night with Samantha and Darrin, Jeannie and Tony, Rob and Laura, and Lucy and Ricky.

The following day was worse. I had now not slept in most of two nights. But that evening the same thing happened. When night fell I couldn't sleep, however exhausted I was. The third morning after the abduction I knew I had to do something. I made an appointment with my medical doctor.

As physicians go, Gary was cool. He would listen to me recite my symptoms and my own diagnosis. Sometimes he'd agree with me; sometimes he offer another possibility I hadn't considered. I always felt that we were responsible for my health, and I appreciated that. I had told Gary I was gay and he hadn't batted an eyelash, not even when we ran into each other (naked) at the locker room at the gym to which we both belonged.

So I told him what had happened. I didn't expect him to believe me, but he was polite about it. "You realize there's no medication I can give you that will prevent aliens from materializing in your bedroom," he said, dryly.

I nodded. "I just need something to let me sleep," I said. "If I can get some rest, I can process this and deal with it. Right now, I can't do anything."

Gary left the room to look up an appropriate sedative, and I peeked at my chart. "Night psychosis," he had diagnosed. I looked it up, later. Turns out, "night psychosis" is the diagnosis for patients who see aliens in their bedrooms. And in spite of all the sleep labs and sleep studies on thousands of patients, night psychosis has never been observed in a laboratory setting!

Gary came back with a scrip for a mild sleep aid, just five pills. "You shouldn't need more than that," he said. "It's easy to become dependent on sleeping pills. So just take one when you really need it."

I had the prescription filled on the way home, took one, and slept for sixteen hours. I felt a lot better when I woke up; I ate, bathed, and by the time I'd watched a little TV it was nighttime again. I took the second pill and slept through the night.

The next night I didn't take one. I was very sleepy and the idea I might be abducted again didn't even scare me. I sank into the mattress and was out like a light.

—For awhile. Suddenly I came awake—partially awake, anyway, feeling as if I were drugged—eyes opened, to find myself being carried down my stairs toward my front door. I didn't see who belonged to the hands supporting me, but directing the operation was a tall being, pale, with enormous eyes and no other features I could make out in the dimness. I was paralyzed, but now I knew how to shake it off and did, grabbing hold of the railing and kicking like a madman. My foot caught one of the little guys beneath me in the head; it thudded against the wall, then fell down the steps to where they took a ninety-degree turn to the right.

The tall guy instantly reacted; he had some kind of wand which he touched to my head. Instantly I was out. When I awoke, I was again in my bed, paralyzed, on my back, above the comforter. But this time—I was sure I wasn't alone.

In a waterbed, you know exactly where you are relative to the frame, by the way you sink into the water. I knew where I was and I knew where the switch to my bed lamp was. In one motion, I threw off the paralysis and turned on the lamp and looked around my room.

My bedroom door was closed. In front of it stood the tall being, with one other, slightly shorter being behind it. The tall guy turned when the light came on and stared at me. Although his face had no eyebrows or cheeks or anything else that might reveal its emotions, I nevertheless got a sense of annoyance. Those great, black, eyes stared at me and…it vanished. As did its companion.

Moreover, I now thought I had imagined seeing them in the first place! However, I quickly recognized this as a hypnotic suggestion.

When I was experimenting with hypnosis, one subject I worked with was a girl named Janet. We did an experiment where I gave her a post-hypnotic suggestion that, when I snapped my finger, the book I was holding would disappear. When I snapped my finger, she claimed it did. I held my hand up behind the book and asked her how many fingers I was holding up. She couldn't answer, and I asked, why not?

"I can see your hand," she insisted. "But it looks a little fuzzy. I can't…quite…make out your fingers."

"Come closer," I invited. But the fingers (hidden behind the "invisible" book) remained indistinct to her.

Finally I asked her to describe the area of indistinctness. She described a rectangle of perhaps six inches by ten, within which she could see, but not make out details. That rectangle, of course, was the size of the book.

As I looked at the door where the alien had been, I realized there was an alien-shaped indistinctness against it, through which I could not make out details. In fact, there were two such indistinct areas, one behind the other.

Here's how my bedroom was shaped: The door was in the north end of the west wall. The wall of my closet, also built against the same wall, created a short entryway from the door. The windows were in the south wall; my bed was against the north wall. I had a dresser against the east wall.

The "invisible" aliens were crowded in front of the door, facing the wall of the closet.

They walked through that wall.

90° from that wall, my closet doors were slid open. My closet is like Fibber McGee's; anyone who tried to walk into it would kill themselves. Yet the hangers never moved; the clothes didn't shift. I know because I was extremely alert, in that way one becomes during an attack, and I was paying attention.

The abduction literature describes aliens coming in to or leaving a room by walking through walls. However, it does not have the corresponding eyewitness accounts from the outside of a house, describing aliens coming or going that way. The closet wall these guys walked through, led nowhere but into my closet. I suddenly realized, they hadn't walked "through the wall" at all. They had some kind of interdimensional tunnel set up against it; they had simply stepped through. Why put it against a wall? So they wouldn't have to watch their backs when they entered a victim's room. Why that wall? I gasped as I realized the answer. That short wall was the only one in the room that didn't contain electrical wiring.

I knew they wouldn't be back that night, but it was again 4:30 am and there was no point in trying to go back to sleep. I headed downstairs for more cereal and sitcom, but stopped short when I reached the stairs.

There was a dent that had cracked the dry wall, right where I now recalled kicking the short alien. There was another, less pronounced ding in the wall at the turn of the stairs, near the carpeting.

I never had those dents fixed; I showed them to everyone who came to visit as long as I lived there. When Michael moved in with me in 1997, he saw them.

But those dings were not to be the last impressions the visitors would leave in my apartment.