Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 25, 1990 TAG: 9003252165
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: F4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Reviewed by JIM CHRISS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
In late 1985 novelist Whitley Strieber had a strange experience - his quiet house in upstate New York was transformed into a personal house of horrors through a series of nighttime visitations by what he thought were beings from another planet.
Later, on February 10, 1987, the now-famous book "Communion" hit the stands. In that book Strieber recounted the horrifying and puzzling visitor experiences that had continually plagued him.
A year later came "Transformation," a volume that allowed Strieber to articulate his thoughts more fully concerning his "abduction" experiences and possible explanations for the mind-numbing events of the last few years.
Now, journalist and free-lance writer Ed Conroy has taken on the herculean task of attempting to investigate and verify Strieber's sensational allegations.
Conroy is well up to the task of piecing together Strieber's past. He displays a journalistic flair for taking note of and reporting upon even the smallest details of Strieber's life.
Conroy, in an attempt to establish a baseline profile of Strieber's character, traces his development as a child growing up in San Antonio and on through his adult life. He spends a good deal of time in this endeavor - 52 of the book's 427 pages, to be exact - but Conroy, himself a native and resident of San Antonio, makes the effort pay off, giving the reader some good "inside" clues into just exactly what kind of person Whitley Strieber is.
The book then veers into some fascinating speculation concerning the parallels between ancient Irish folklore - especially tales of "little green men," leprechauns and the "Fair Faith" - and the abduction experiences Strieber purported to have experienced.
Conroy's analysis follows Jacques Vallee's similar line of thought in "Passport to Magonia: From Folklore to Flying Saucers." Also, since Strieber was concerned early on with his state of mental health, Conroy throws in suggestions concerning the possible interconnections between the "visitor" experience and its analysis via Jungian psychoanalysis. This all makes for a wonderfully engrossing, satisfying piece of intelligent speculation concerning Strieber's "visitors."
Conroy wraps up the book with a stunning revelation of his own: Apparently during his investigation of Whitley Strieber, Conroy himself began having some strange and inexplicable experiences. Foremost of these were weird helicopter sightings, helicopters that paid an inordinate amount of attention to him and which seemingly followed him everywhere. They were especially aggressive in that they tended to buzz by at alarmingly low altitudes, sometimes directing a searchlight toward him, even in broad daylight. Yes, he even has witnesses for these bizarre events.
It should become obvious at this point that Conroy realized full well that the inclusion of these revelations in the book's epilogue would serve to seriously undermine the legitimacy of his study in the minds of many readers.
The book takes on a nearly instantaneous transformation, changing from an "independent" investigation one moment into an obviously biased, certainly no independent investigation the next. The reader could easily conclude that the investigator became "contaminated" by the subject matter, that he became too involved to be able to retain any semblance of impracticality whatsoever.
Conroy grappled for months over this question, whether or not he should report his own experiences, especially in light of the consequences which would be sure to follow. I know, because while vacationing in Texas over the Christmas holidays I had an opportunity to visit with Conroy at his home in San Antonio.
Conroy and his girlfriend, Dora Ruffner, welcomed me into their home. For what it's worth regarding my own observation of Conroy and our three-hour talk, I found no reason to disbelieve him or to be incredulous toward his work on the book. He struck me as being a consummate professional in every sense of the word.
Upon leaving I couldn't help sense in his eyes the same wonderment I felt while reading the book. Something strange, odd, maybe even glorious had touched his life.
Conroy's book will probably attract no new converts, and it could in fact unnerve a few people. Conroy is trying to make sense of an extremely perplexing, not-easily-defined phenomena that has captured the attention of the world since at least the late '40s, and - if one considers the implications of our ancient bits of knowledge which are imbedded in what we now call folklore - possibly since the beginning of time.
by CNB