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UFO POV
A spring 1966 UFO encounter gives Steve five years of recurring dreams; told by his friend Barry Windsor-Smith
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Source: the comics anthology Streetwise: Autobiographical Stories by Comic Book Professionals, pp. 148-158; July 2000, TwoMorrows Publishing.
EDITOR'S NOTES
This piece raises deep issues. "We Are Not Alone" is one of course, but also... the silence of suppression, when you bear memories of experiences violating your own worldview, or that you know will stigmatize you. Windsor-Smith suggests UFOs or their crews actively induce amnesia. I don't know. I spent decades silent--even to myself--about my own unacceptable experiences. Habit and culture alone can suppress what you see in the dark beyond the human campfire. So I'm skeptical--yet I can't rule out some amnesia-inducing field. I wasn't there. Windsor-Smith was.
From Carl Sagan through Stephen Pinker, prominent skeptics of the paranormal mock those who report seeing UFOs as credulous people, true believers indulging in bad reasoning, choosing superstition over common sense. This is simply false. Windsor Smith didn't believe in UFOs because he was credulous or superstitious; he saw a UFO and had trouble believing what he saw. But experience is the base for both reason and belief. Deny data and you have nothing.
As a dreamworker, I also admire how this piece shows recurrent dreams patiently prodding the brain to recover a vital memory. My own recurring dreams exposed some family secrets I was able to verify decades later. Scoffers claim "buried memory retrieval" is induced by over-suggestive therapists in malleable patients. But here (as in my life) the memory erupted on its own--no therapist in sight. Further, this UFO isn't a private confabulation or a folie à deux; so many saw it that it made the news.
Most important of all: it's Steve's act of sharing his recurrent dream that frees Barry's own memory. "We Are Not Alone" isn't just (just!) a slogan about humanity as a species. For witnesses of the extraordinary, it's personal, too.
--Chris Wayan
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