A letter from a British woman begins:
At the lecture by Jacques Vallee at the London A.A. [Architects Association] on the 12 th 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 4:00 P.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 disappeared:
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 an agnostic to a 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 without 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 as 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.
