I.R.Aliens: Dermot Butler and Carl Nally’s Circle of Deceit

Circle of Deceit: A Terrifying Alien Agenda in Ireland and Beyond

Dermot Butler and Carl Nally
Flying Disk Press – 2018

The first half of this book is the boring, yet rather upsetting, account of the mutilation of hundreds of sheep on the McLaughlin’s farm in Derry. A bunch of sheep on this one particular farm had their tongues and eyeballs and other bits sliced out. The farmer believed this was being done by his neighbour, and he tried to get help from the local police force and government to put a stop to it. The police put up a few security cameras but wouldn’t let the farmer ever see the footage they captured. The authorities’ conclusion was that birds were responsible. The farmer didn’t agree that it was birds. The lad who he thought was responsible died, but the mutilations continued. The farmer was very upset that the authorities weren’t doing more to help him. It seemed like they were ignoring him.

There’s nothing about that story that’s hard to believe. Animals were being mutilated. There’s tonnes of evidence that show this. Before we go any further, ask yourself the following questions:

Are the police force and local politicians in Northern Ireland capable of not giving appropriate attention to the problems of one specific farmer farmer?
Are there people in Derry who are willing to act out on grudges that go back generations?
Are there any other possible explanations for the unfortunate mutilations of farm animals?

To me, it seems that the answer to all of these questions is a big fat yes. The authors of this book claim that the mutilations were caused by aliens. That seems unlikely to me, but I’m definitely willing to consider it. The difficulty for me is that the authors of this book claim that the authorities in Northern Ireland were trying to cover up the fact that the mutilations were caused by aliens.

Here’s another question:

Is it more likely that the authorities in Northern Ireland are so disorganized that they can’t deal with the problems of a single farmer or so organized that they are working together with global governments to cover up the existence of aliens?

I’m sorry, but this is silly. There’s a difference between being open-minded and gullible.

When it comes to this kind of stuff, I can suspend disbelief for the sake of entertainment, but after spending roughly half the book discussing real events that actually happened, the authors jump straight to quotes from the Old Testament to suggest that the mutilations on the McLaughlin’s farm were caused by aliens who are using sheep’s tongues to keep themselves alive for millennia. Come on guys, you’re supposed to ease us in. I need a little foreplay before you start quoting scripture at me. After this they go on to point out that over 100 legal firms refused to get involved in the case. They claim that this was because the legal firms were being intimidated by the government into refusing service, but it seems far more likely that the firms didn’t want to deal with the crazies that had attached themselves to the McLaughlins.

The authors go on to suggest that aliens are abducting and treating humans in the same way. They seem to believe we should all be very worried about this.

I want to believe. I really do, but this book wasn’t remotely convincing. The authors mention countless cases of animal mutilations and human disappearances, but there’s little here that sticks these cases together apart from paranoia and a willingness to ignore common sense.

The Mothman Cometh

the mothman prophecies keel The Mothman Prophecies – John Keel
Tor – 2002 (Originally published in 1975)

When I picked this book up, I expected it to be fairly similar to McCloy and Millet’s The Jersey Devil, a book describing how a strange cryptid briefly terrorized a small town; however, The Mothman Prophecies is more a descriptive synthesis of 4-5 paranormal beings and events, and it doesn’t contain a huge amount of information specifically about the Mothman apparition. The Mothman, you see, at least according to John Keel, is quite probably from another dimension, and its mothy form is likely only one of its possible manifestations.

The book describes several strange events:

The Mothman appeared to several people in Point Pleasant, a small town in West Virginia.
Several other people in this town saw UFOs.
Strange men, dressed in black, showed up in Point Pleasant, asking strange questions to these witnesses.
A few of these witnesses also received bizarre phone calls during which they would hear static, beeping, or a foreign man speaking quickly.

This stuff went on for a while, but when a bridge leading into the town collapsed, killing 48 people, the strange events seemed to stop happening.

The loss of 48 souls to a town that housed fewer than 6000 people would have been devastating, and one can sensibly attribute the cessation of paranormal activity in Point Pleasant after 1967 to its residents going into a period of mourning and spending less time looking for lights in the sky and weirdos in the streets. John Keel however, postulates that Mothman disappeared after the collapse of the bridge because his work as an ill omen was complete. Yes, Mothman has more in common with a guardian angel than he does with Bigfoot.

Most of the book is taken up with descriptions of strange lights seen in the sky. When I reviewed Whitley Strieber’s Transformation, I noted that he had given up the idea that aliens are extraterrestrial and that he now believes that “the visitors are likely trans-dimensional inhabitants of Earth”. It is quite possible that Strieber got this idea directly from Keel. (Strieber was a member or at least attended the meetings of Keel’s New York Fortean Society.) Keel reckons that UFOs are manifestations of something that exists outside of the dimensions that constrain our reality. Whatever it is that is causing the UFO phenomenon is probably the same thing that made people believe in fairies and religious events. If you think about it, a Mothman, as imagined by Keel, is basically the same thing as a Banshee.

Strange lights in the sky and cryptids sightings are cool and all, but the really interesting parts of this book are the bits about the peculiar men who dress in black and spend their time pestering UFO witnesses. Keel wasn’t the first person to write about the Men in Black; that honour, along with the honour of being the first to write a book about Mothman, goes to Keel’s friend, Gray Barker. Originally, the MIB were assumed to be government agents trying to keep witnesses quiet about their UFO encounters, but by the time this book was published, Barker and Keel agreed that the MIB were themselves aliens. Their descriptions in this book are actually pretty cool. They’re always dark skinned (although Keel repeats several times that they’re not black), they have pointy faces and unsettling smiles, their clothes are ill fitting, they don’t understand what common household items are for, and they speak like characters from a Samuel Beckett play.

Overall, the book isn’t very convincing. I had been looking forward to reading it, and it took me quite a bit longer to get through than I had expected. Keel didn’t have enough material to write a more focused book, so he seems to have crammed in any old crap he could find. He starts to contradict himself in the latter half of the book, but he realizes that he’s doing so and attempts to make these contradictions part of his argument. (See the Paranoiacs Are Made, Not Born chapter.) The Men in Black have been so successful in their attempts to obfuscate the public’s understanding of what happened in Point Pleasant that Mothman researchers can’t really know what they know about the topic. I read a review somewhere that described the book as John Keel’s descent into paranoid madness, and if you were to accept all of its claims, I’m sure that reading this book would drive you quite mad.too.

I’m not calling John Keel a liar, but many of the links he propounds are rather tenuous, some of his descriptions are vague, and much of his reasoning is plain shoddy. He was also admittedly very selective with the material he chose to use for this book. I’m not complaining about this (I’m all for that kind of writing!); I mention it only in response to the claim that Keel was paranoid. This is sensational, speculative non-fiction filled with what-ifs; it’s use your imagination stuff. Keel wasn’t mad at all; like he rest of us, he just enjoyed a good conspiracy.

I was fairly disappointed with the cover of my copy of this book. It’s a shitty, ugly version that came out to coincide with the movie version of 2002. (Earlier editions have really cool covers.) I watched the movie there too. I’m still not sure what to think of it. It’s set in the 90s or early 2000s instead of the 60s, and it doesn’t strictly adhere to the events in the book. It also cuts out all of the MIB and UFO stuff, so it’s not quite as all over the place. It looks pretty good, and there’s definitely an atmosphere to it, but I can’t imagine it making much sense to anyone who hasn’t read the book. It’s a little more cohesive without the MIB and flying saucers, but these omissions also render it a little dull, and while it’s not tough to sit through, there’s so little explanation given that you finish the film wondering why they bothered making it.

Well, that’s that. Another Fortean classic for the archives. Some of my long time followers may have noticed that I’ve upgraded this blog with a fancy .com address. My url is now https://nocturnalrevelries.com/. Any old links to the site should still work, but due to an irritating fuck-up, I managed to delete all post likes and cut my traffic in half. Still though, the blog must go on, and I have ordered some seriously atrocious sounding books for my summer reading. Expect to see posts about perverted werewolves, Lovecraftian magick, Satanic Nazis and rock’n’roll themed horror showing up here very soon.

I WANT TO BELIEVE – Alien Encounters and The UFO Phenomenon

cool-ufo
A little over a year ago I did a post on three books from the Time Life Mysteries of the Unknown series. I decided to come back to the series and to read both of its books on aliens. The UFO Phenomenon was published first, and Alien Encounters repeats quite a lot of the same information, but there is a slight distinction in the subject matter. The UFO Phenomenon deals fairly specifically with… UFOs, while Alien Encounters looks more at abductions and contact. I was again impressed by the quality of this series. These books are lovely; they look and feel great, and they are surprisingly in depth. If you can find a complete set for a reasonable price, make sure to pick it up.

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UFOs exist. There have definitely been, and presumabably still are, things in the sky that have not been identified. That these objects harbour alien beings from other planets is far less certain. I try to keep an open mind about this kind of stuff. I have no problem believing in the likelihood that there is life on other planets, but the idea that those lifeforms could reach Earth is too much for me to accept. My knowledge of space travel is extremely limited, but I understand that the closest planets that could possibly support life are simply too far away for their inhabitants to ever bother coming here.

The UFO book was cool; I have read lots of other books about ancient alien theories and specific alien encounters, but I didn’t know much about the history of UFOs. It was interesting to see how the flying saucer turned an American cultural icon

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I sometimes ponder over how modern technology has affected the acceptability of evidence of alien life on/around Earth. Nearly everyone has constant access to a camera these days, and there is no excuse not to document the spacecraft that are abducting us. At the same time, any form of digital media is susceptible to quick, easy and convincing editing. Not only that, but our skies are now so full of drones and other human made machines that we soon won’t bother to question what’s in the sky… This indifference will leave us vulnerable to external threats… In fact, the more I think about it, the more likely it seems that the aliens deliberately gave our governments their technology in an attempt to lead us into this complacency. We’re falling into their trap! Fuck it. All eyes to the skies!

tomatoman
The above picture is of a famous alien corpse known as Tomato Man. (I have digitally enhanced it for full effect.) The original photo looks like a burned pile of rubbish to me. Some people have wondered how the glasses frames right underneath the alien’s shoulder got mixed up in the debris of an crashed spaceship.

One of most fascinating things about UFOs and aliens are the people that worship them. One particular group, the Unarians, pop up a few times in these books. I had seen some bizarre videos about the Unarius Academy of Science on youtube years ago, and their appearance here convinced me to research them further. It turns out that they don’t believe in imagination. All imagined thoughts are actually memories of past lives. All science fiction is true. Star Wars is real.

The Unarians were led by a lady named Ruth Norman who claimed to be the latest reincarnation of the entity who had previously lived as the Archangel Uriel, Isis, Peter the Great, queen Elizabeth the first, Johannes Kepler, Buddha, Zoroaster, Emperor Charlemagne, Quetzalcoatl, the Dalai Lama, King Arthur and many other aliens and mythical characters. Ruth preached that the space brothers (friendly aliens) were going to descend to Earth and teach us their ways, but she died before this happened.

uriel Uriel, the Legend.

There’s a decent documentary on the Unarians called Children of the Stars that can be viewed here. It doesn’t criticize or question their beliefs; it merely presents them. The documentary goes on a bit too long, but it’s worth watching just to see how mental these people are. Here is the trailer if you are only a little interested, and if you’re super interested, here is Jello Biafra’s documentary on the same group of people.
There’s definitely similarities with the Church of Scientology (although the Unarians deny that they are a religious organization), but unlike L. Ron Hubbard, Uriel genuinely seems to believe her own nonsense. I think she was pretty cool.

rael
This silly looking gobshite also appears in the book. I noticed his interesting necklace and decided to google him. When an image popped up of the same lad in a white suit, I realized that I had seen him before. His name is Claude Vorilhon, but he calls himself Raël, and he claims to be the messenger of the Elohim (alien creators of humanity).

He appeared on the Late Late Show when I was a kid. I remember being very unimpressed by him talking about how Jesus had been an alien. (My, how the times have changed!) The interview stuck in my head, and I’ve only recently thought of looking him up, but I didn’t know his name. Once I discovered his name, I did another quick search and I found footage from one of his earlier appearances on the same show! Normally I dislike when talkshow hosts needlessly talk down to their ‘weirdo’ guests, but I have to say, Gaybo’s swarminess is actually pretty funny here. Apparently Raël wasn’t too upset by it anyway; he went on to appear on the same show two more times. (Unfortunately those episodes are not currently online.)

proof-of-alien-existence A 5 year old drew this, and some people took it as evidence that aliens abducted him.

Reading these books, I wondered how often they were consulted by the writers of the X-Files. The Mysteries of the Unknown series were released between 1987 and 1991. The first episode of the X-Files was written in 1992. I find it hard to believe that some of the ideas for the show weren’t lifted directly from these pages. Just reading over the titles in the series, I’m able to think of specific episodes that refer to the content of nearly each book. In saying that, each of these books presents a fairly comprehensive overview of its topic, and if the X-Files writers weren’t taking their ideas from here, they were certainly getting them from more specific texts on the same topics. All of the mythology episodes (at least up to season 6) could easily have stemmed from the ideas in the two books I have just reviewed. We’re talking alien abductions, disinformation, alien human hybrids, implants, government conspiracies… all that great X-Filesy stuff.

Also, speaking of influencing hit TV series; check this out. There’s a small section at the end of The UFO Phenomenon that called to a mind a more recent science fiction show:
strangerthings Stranger Things, anyone?

I’ll leave you with this. It’s an image of some unfortunates being tormented by demons. It was included in a section on the book proposing that aliens could be the modern equivalent to demons. The similarity being drawn here is that aliens, like demons, have been known to probe their victims. Check out the demon in the bottom left corner. Observe his calm demeanour.

bold “In and out, I’ll lance her clout, Hi-Ho! Hi-Ho! Hi-Ho! Hi-Ho!”

My First Attempt at Writing Short Fiction

Recently, I had to take a writing class as part of my degree, and one of the assignments was to write a short story. I’ve long wanted to write fiction, but I always felt unprepared. The class I took was pretty great though. The instructor’s attitude was; “I don’t care if you don’t feel ready. You’re handing me in a story at the end of the week, so shut up and get to work.” It was the kick up the hole that I needed.

There were no topics assigned, but it was suggested that we write about something that we were interested in. Before putting pen to paper, I had to sit down to think about what interests me. I glanced at my desk, noticed the books on aliens and black magic that I had been reading, and shrieked, “Eureka!”

Here is the story I came up with. It may not be a masterpiece, but I feel that it’s a decent first attempt, and I think that anyone with an interest in the books I review will probably enjoy it. I definitely plan to write more short fiction in the future.

Night Shift – Duke De Richleau

Preparing for Contact: A Metamorphosis of Consciousness – Lyssa Royal and Keith Priest

Royal Priest Research – 1994

Worst of the blurst. This is a new low.

This is a book about how to prepare yourself to communicate with aliens. It’s made up of a series of messages that were sent from a several different extra terrestrial entities through a channeler named Lyssa Royal (now Lyssa Royal Holt). These entities are doing their best to help us prepare to change humanity’s mass consciousness in order to make free and open contact with the inhabitants of other worlds.

On deciding to read this book, I took one look at the cover and thought to myself; ‘Sweet Jesus, this is going to be worse than Whitley Strieber’s bullshit.” Oh, you can only imagine the hearty pat on the back that I gave myself when I opened it up to see that the first chapter opens with a quote from Transformation. (There’s another at the beginning of the 11th chapter, and the 10th opens with a quote from Communion.) Think about that for a second; the people who create this book actually look up to ol’ WhitStrieb.

Channeling is something that annoys me greatly, and nobody makes me want to publicly fill my britches with scat more than J.Z. Knight, the horrendously ugly mutant woman who has undergone failed plastic-surgery and claims to be a channel for Ramtha, a 35,000 year old, Atlantean paedophile. One day, I was watching a video of her and sticking pins into my gooch when one of the related videos caught my eye on account of its title being written in Chinese. I clicked it, and I was very glad that I had done so. It was a video of a bald man pretending to be an alien. At one point in the video, the alien’s accent becomes a hilarious mixture of Indian and the way Irish people sound in American movies. I became fascinated with this character, and I’ve spent more than a reasonable amount of time watching his videos. His name is Darryl Anka, and the alien he channels is named Bashar. Now this might seem only tangentially relevant, but as it turns out, Bashar actually appears in this book! Lyssa intrudes on Darryl’s turf and summons Bashar into her body in one of the final chapters of the book. Reading that part was like meeting an old friend.

Of course, there are others, most likely students of Anka or Priest, who summon the same types of aliens. Here’s another channeling Bashar. This one seems particularly challenged. Fuck, the world is a silly, crazy place.

I’m not going to provide a cohesive summary of the book as that would require looking through it again. Instead, I’ll just mention a few of the more memorable ideas contained in this collection of silly nonsense.

Don’t expect to make face to face contact with an alien. Aliens don’t ‘exist’ in our ‘reality’.
Sometimes aliens ‘exist’ in our ‘reality’.
How will you know that you’re actually talking to an alien and not just yourself? Well, it doesn’t really matter; aliens are often just our future selves.
Aliens live too far from Earth to actually come down and visit us.
Sometimes aliens come down to visit us.
If we really want to communicate with aliens, the best thing to do is draw pictures and feel good.
Every one of us has already made contact with aliens. In fact, we make contact with aliens on a regular basis. Whenever we enter the ‘theta reality’ we communicate freely with all kinds of entities. The theta reality is basically the state that we exist in between dreaming and waking up.

There were legitimately interesting aspects of this book. I was actually quite impressed with the comprehensive nature of the dogma that the authors are setting down. If you want to hear voices in your head badly enough, you will. The only difficulty with this will be for you to accept that the voices in your head are other than your own. If you manage to convince yourself that these voices are actually aliens, even if they’re only mildly alien versions of yourself, then it’s going to be quite difficult to argue with you; however, although I can’t prove that the voices in your head aren’t aliens, I can avoid you and tell all my mates that you’re a stupid cunt.

This is basically a new-age self help book with a bit of science fiction thrown in to spice it up. (It’s full of the same “let’s enter the next stage of human evolution” crap as Morning of the Magicans and the last chapter of Wilson’s The Occult.) The ideas are utterly moronic, but the author’s aren’t trying to convince their readers to kill themselves; they’re trying to encourage people to get together and be creative and open-minded. It was a shitty experience to read this book, but that’s because it was boring, repetitive and stupid. At least it wasn’t boring, repetitive, stupid and morally reprehensible like a christian self help book. I’ve also watched some videos of Lyssa Royal (skip to 12:50 to get to the summoning bit), and she’s simply too silly to dislike.

This book was written more than 20 years ago, and those 20 years have seen none of its predictions come true. That being said, there’s still people who are into this nonsense. It really does baffle me when I think of how weird and insane the human race can be. It seems that some people feel the need to believe in something greater than themselves, and all things considered, I suppose that telepathic aliens aren’t the lamest available option.

Oh, and just to remind you; there is a facebook page for this blog for anyone that wants to keep updated with all of the newest posts.

Transformation (The Breakthrough) – Whitley Strieber

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Avon – 1989
A few months ago, I reviewed Whitley Strieber’s Communion. I had planned to wait a year or two before reading the sequel, but I was leaving for work the other day and I needed a book for my train ride that would fit in my back pocket. Transformation was the first within reach.

Communion was garbage, and Transformation is worse. At this stage, Strieber is no longer hanging out with Budd Hopkins, and barely considers the possibility that his ‘visitors’ are from outer space. Strieber wants to be seen to be as carrying the cross of every human being who has ever claimed to have had an encounter with the paranormal, and to state that he was abducted by Martians might prevent him from being able to speak on behalf of all those loonies who believe that they have met fairies, elves, or Gods. Instead, Whitley has decided that the visitors are likely trans-dimensional inhabitants of Earth. They may not be from this planet, but nor are they not from this planet.

Strieber was 41 when Communion came out. That means that it contains roughly 40 years worth of abduction experiences. Transformation came out just one year after Communion, and Strieber had only managed to get abducted once or twice during this period. Accordingly, the aliens take a back seat in Transformation; Strieber’s philosophical side is the unwelcome visitor here. 80-85% of this book is taken up with him explaining how he came to terms with his weird experiences. (And in fairness to him, I’m sure it took a lot of effort and time to get over having his hemorrhoidy anal pouch violated by hobgoblins.)

In my review of Communion, I wrote from the perspective of Strieber to give my followers a sense of what reading that book was like. I’ll re-summon Whitley for a bit to give you some more insight into this one.

“I was petrified, but I desperately wanted to let the visitors know that I had accepted my role in their plans and that I was willing to do whatever I could to please them. These strange creatures terrified me, but I understood that this fear was necessary. As time passed, I realized that I was not so much afraid the visitors as I was afraid that they would not be happy with me. This fear had evolved into a combination of uncertainty and isolation. I resolved to do whatever I could to entice the visitors to keep me as one of their subjects. I stopped locking the doors to our cabin, and I began playing with my bum during masturbation (to make it looser for future probing). Ease of access is key when you’re dealing with these sinister, yet magnificent beings.

Once I crossed the threshold of uncertainty, I began to comprehend the visitors’ plan for me. Although the terror and discomfort were difficult to bear, they ultimately made me a stronger, more open person. Perhaps the visitors are so used to crossing boundaries that they do not understand or notice the negative aspects of fear, especially fear of the unknown. I now believe that they intentionally frightened me so that I could ultimately become less frightened. In any case, we must be willing to transcend our emotions if we hope to accompany the visitors into realms of unheralded experience…”
2016-05-16 22.03.33

Although there’s not as many alien encounters in this one, it does include a lengthy section on Strieber’s astral projections. He finds a way to allow his soul to escape from his body in a little bubble, and he uses this bubble to float around his gaff. He also finds a way to appear to people in different parts of the country. He tells of how he would think of a friend and then how that friend would immediately call him and tell him that she had just seen his disembodied head lurking in her bathroom. I’m not even taking the piss; he actually expected people to believe this twoddle.
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More like Twitley Strieber, amirite?

Oh, there’s a bit in here where Strieber claims that Aliens speak Irish. (Well in fairness, he actually says that a different lad named Leonard Keane has made that claim.) Unfortunately, the article that Striebs references was unpublished at the time, and it looks like it has remained unpublished. (I wonder why!) I can’t find any about Keane online either. Keane’s argument is supposedly based on an abductee’s memories of alien speech. The abductee in question was hypnotized and began to spout off the different things that the aliens said to her.

Let’s break this down piece by piece.

1. This is what the abductee claims to have heard: “oh-tookurah bohututahmaw hulah duh duwa maher Duh okaht turaht nuwrlahah tutrah aw hoe hoe marikoto tutrah etrah meekohtutrah etro indra ukreeahlah”

2. Keane claims that this sounds identical to “ua-tuaisceartach beo t-utamail uile dubh dubhach mathair dubh ocaid tuartha nuair lagachar t-uchtarach athbheoite maireachtala-costas t-uachtarach eatramh meancog t-uachtarach eatramh indeachrachlach”

3. If those words were actually pronounced in Irish, they would sound something like this: “oowa-tooishkyartock byoh tootamawl illyeh duv duvock mawher duv uckad toorha noor lagacar tooacktorock awtveeohithye marrocktawllah custos tooacktarock yatriv myancug tooachtarock yatriv indyakracklock”
Compare the two phonetic versions there. Do the sounds match up?

3. The Irish words that Keane heard in the abductee’s rant translate directly as: “descendants of Northern peoples living groping all darkness mournful mother dark occasion forebode when weakness in high places revives cost of living high interval mistakes in high places interval fit for distressing”

4. I’m not sure who was responsible, Keane or Strieber, but somehow that jumble of words was put into the following order: “The living descendants of the Northern peoples are groping in universal darkness. Their mother mourns. A dark occasion forebodes when weakness in high places will revive a high cost of living; an interval of mistakes in high places; and interval fit for distressing events”

What a load of shit…

Leonard Keane’s article was supposed to be called “Keltic Factor Red”; on the off-chance that somebody knows where I could find a copy, please let me know! I want to thank my friend Lorcan for helping me with the Irish phonetics above. I’ll sign off with Lorcan’s message for any of the visitors that might be reading this post;

“Ná cuir aon rud suas mo hole, ET”

Communion – Whitley Strieber

Avon – 1988

Wow, what an utterly ridiculous book. Although the accounts herein are presented as fact, this book is often listed as fiction. Fiction or not, it’s not a plot driven book, and I feel that the most appropriate way to review it will be to paraphrase the entire text:

“My name is Whitley Strieber, and this book is an account of my abduction experiences. Twice in the year of 1985, I was taken from my bed by a gang of little men who then took me to a weird room in a crystal in the sky and stuck an ugly pipe into my crapper. That’s right folks. I was abducted, and the things that took me decided to jam a piece of their technology into my rectum; the alien contraption punctured my wrinkled rim and ruptured my shite-filled poobag. The dirty little bowsies were collecting a sample of my gick! [You might find it peculiar that anyone would want Whitley Strieber’s shit, but in fairness, Communion has sold 2 million copies!] Oh yeah, there was another weird lifeform in the crystal too. It looked like an insect, and it raped me. Well, I say rape, but I was actually pretty hard at the time! Can you blame me?

After this happened, I decided not to jump to any conclusions. I did however, start hanging out with Budd Hopkins, the UFO abduction expert. He recommended that I go see a hypnotherapist. I took heed of this good advice, and the hypnotherapist proved to me that I had actually been abducted a bunch of times throughout my life. He reminded me of the time that I built a rocket engine in my bedroom when I was a little kid. The aliens had told me how to make it, but afterwards they decided that I shouldn’t have that information so they burned down my parents house. How did I forget that? Silly me!

I’ve used the word ‘aliens’ a few times, but I’m not actually sure that it’s spacemen who are abducting me. I’ve no real reason to believe that they’re from another planet. They might just be elves or fairies. Whatever though, they probed my asshole and I got the shag; I hope they come back soon!

At this point, I don’t really have much else to say, but I feel like I can probably write another 150 pages or so. I suppose I’ll just fill up space with eventless interview transcripts and a ton of mystical speculation. Fuck it, yeah, I’ll just make allusions to mythical figures and tarot cards, and my book will get really popular with brainless, new-age morons. They’ll ignore the fact that nothing in this book is remotely compelling, and they’ll all think that I’m really smart.”

That’s pretty much the entire book, although I’m not quite sure I’ve captured the arrogance of Strieber’s tone. It really surprises me that something this utterly trashy could be taken seriously by anyone.

I also watched the film version of Communion with Christopher Walken playing Strieber. I have to say that this was one of the few cases in which I far preferred the movie to the book. The film has pretty bad ratings according to what I have seen, but I thought it was as good a movie as could possibly be made of this rag. There’s something really awkward about the whole film, and the special effects are bizarrely bad. It mostly follows the book’s plot, but it gets fucking weird towards the end. The most bizarre scenes almost feel like a satire on the most bullshitty parts of the text. In fact, part of the reason that I liked the movie so much was that it felt like it was making fun of the book; you could watch the film and argue that it depicts nothing more than a dysfunctional family’s bizarre descent into hysteria.

There’s a story that Strieber saw Walken’s depiction of him and told the actor that he was playing the character too crazy. Walken allegedly responded, ‘If the shoe fits…’ I have liked Christopher Walken as an actor for a long time, but if that story is true, he is truly a king amoungst men.

The book was shit, but I enjoyed reading it. I have the sequel, Transformation, and I’m sure I’ll get around to reading that one too. If you do read the book, make sure to watch the film. I’m not sure if the film would be as enjoyable if you hadn’t read the book, but if you’ve made it this far through my review, you have all the information you need. (Although I still think it might take reading the 350 pages of the book to be able to really savour the embarrassment that the film must have caused Strieber.)

School is a nightmare at the moment, and posts will definitely be slow for the next couple of months, but I have some serious gems coming in the post that you are going to want to read about.