Whitley Strieber: the book that gave the grey its face

Whitley Strieber was an established novelist, known for horror fiction, when he published Communion in 1987. It describes experiences he says began at his cabin in upstate New York in December 1985.

The book was an enormous bestseller. Its influence on the visual culture of the subject is probably greater than that of any photograph ever taken.

The cover

The painting on the front — a large-eyed, grey, almond-shaped face — was produced by the artist Ted Seth Jacobs, working to Strieber's direction.

Before 1987 there was no single standard image. Descriptions in reports varied widely: tall figures, small figures, human-like, insectoid, hooded.

After 1987 there was one, and it appeared everywhere — in later reports, in films, on merchandise. Whether the image standardised the reports or merely reflected them is one of the more interesting questions in the field, and the timing favours the former.

What Strieber actually claims

Less than he is usually said to.

He has consistently declined to identify the visitors as extraterrestrial. He uses the word visitors deliberately, has said he does not know what they are, and has raised the possibility that they are internal, or something for which no category exists.

That care has cost him support in both directions: too credulous for critics, insufficiently committed for believers.

What the hypnosis research actually shows

The evidence here is unusually strong and unusually ignored in this subject.

Hypnosis does not improve recall accuracy. It increases the quantity of material produced and the confidence with which it is held, without increasing its correspondence to events.

It also produces memory hardening: an uncertain recollection becomes a certain one, and the person cannot afterwards distinguish what they remembered from what emerged in the session.

On this basis, hypnotically refreshed testimony is inadmissible or heavily restricted in courts across many jurisdictions, including much of the United States.

What he published afterwards

Strieber followed Communion with further books and, for years, correspondence from readers describing similar experiences — a body of material running to many thousands of letters. He has treated it as evidence that the experience is widespread rather than as evidence of what causes it, and has repeatedly declined to draw the conclusion his readership wanted.

The problem in the method

Strieber's early recollections were developed with hypnosis, initially working with Budd Hopkins.

The research on this is not ambiguous. Hypnosis does not reliably recover memory; it increases confidence and produces detailed, sincerely held recollections that can be demonstrably false. Material recovered under it cannot be treated as testimony.

Strieber has himself expressed reservations about hypnosis and moved away from it. But the foundational material was developed that way, and that cannot be undone.