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The Communion Letters
THE HEART OF THE MYSTERY
They are called Others, Visitors, Grays, Friends, or Strangers. No one knows who or what they are. But due to intense investigations of the past few years, resulting from the publication of the controversial bestseller Communion, their reality is no longer a question.
THEY ARE AMONG US.
These letters, often awkward, sometimes incredulous, and always searingly honest, document the fact that hundreds of thousands have experienced the Communion phenomena: childhood visitations, the "nine knocks," mysterious scars and implants, abductions, sexual encounters, and "black sedans."
It's all here. Unvarnished and irrefutable. Assembled for the first time, these letters lead us to the heart of the greatest mystery of our age. For it is in these authentic personal encounters of ordinary men and women that we come closest to the truth about who They are and what They want with us. In the dramatic words of Whitley Strieber, these letters report--a courtship.
They are called Others, Visitors, Grays, Friends, or Strangers. No one knows who or what they are. But due to intense investigations of the past few years, resulting from the publication of the controversial bestseller Communion, their reality is no longer a question.
THEY ARE AMONG US.
These letters, often awkward, sometimes incredulous, and always searingly honest, document the fact that hundreds of thousands have experienced the Communion phenomena: childhood visitations, the "nine knocks," mysterious scars and implants, abductions, sexual encounters, and "black sedans."
It's all here. Unvarnished and irrefutable. Assembled for the first time, these letters lead us to the heart of the greatest mystery of our age. For it is in these authentic personal encounters of ordinary men and women that we come closest to the truth about who They are and what They want with us. In the dramatic words of Whitley Strieber, these letters report--a courtship.
304 pages, Kindle Edition
First published December 1, 1997
142 people are currently reading
261 people want to read
About the author
Whitley Strieber
152 books1,258 followersAmerican writer best known for his novels The Wolfen,The Hunger and Warday and for Communion, a non-fiction description of his experiences with apparent alien contact. He has recently made significant advances in understanding this phenomenon, and has published his new discoveries in Solving the Communion Enigma.
Strieber also co-authored The Coming Global Superstorm with Art Bell, which inspired the blockbuster film about sudden climate change, The Day After Tomorrow.
His book The Afterlife Revolution written with his deceased wife Anne, is a record of what is considered to be one of the most powerful instances of afterlife communication ever recorded.
Strieber also co-authored The Coming Global Superstorm with Art Bell, which inspired the blockbuster film about sudden climate change, The Day After Tomorrow.
His book The Afterlife Revolution written with his deceased wife Anne, is a record of what is considered to be one of the most powerful instances of afterlife communication ever recorded.
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
January 7, 2017
This book has an alien face on the cover. It's about alien's, right?
Nah.
For starters let me say that I liked the book. To me, three stars is where books that I liked, but that weren't particularly amazing, live. Now, what keeps it from being particularly amazing I will deal with in the rest of this review.
In my opinion, these are mostly the letters of people with some mental issues writing someone that they hope can help them. Or maybe they are folks in desperate need of attention, writing the king of alien abduction in the media in an attempt to ride on his coattails. Maybe a few of them actually had bizarre experiences that they felt they needed to share.
Strieber's introductions to each "category" of letter are at the same time well considered prose and meaningless banter. Have you ever seen the show Ancient Aliens? The narrator to that show is constantly jumping from mere idea to conviction of absolute fact. Here, too, this happens—idea to assumption and back again in a bewildering pattern that spans book.
Are the aliens really aliens from another planet or merely "visitors?" Are they an advanced form of humanity that time travels, or are they beings of the spiritual realm? Are people having these experiences physically, or, as is often the case, are they experiencing them "out of body," or in a dream state? What is happening here!?
In a way that's the point of the collection of letters, I suppose. Whitley is simply putting them out there and saying to the reader, "gee whiz, what could this mean." In that spirit, I can respect this. However, when he starts to draw conclusions without evidence to back them up my eyes roll so hard that I'm amazed they remain in socket. The "three knocks" or "nine knocks" phenomena being linked to the Freemasons, for example. I mean, my goodness, can we have at least one mysterious occurrence that the Freemasons aren't presumed connected to in any way or do they have a legal monopoly on the paranormal?
It's a quick read with some genuinely spooky stories, think of it like a ghost story book that will creep you out and you will probably have your expectations in line. Even so, in my opinion there are just a few too many dud letters in here that offer very little, some of them even very small in word count, to the point that I wonder why they were included at all. Then there are those few that, when you finish, you will just think to yourself, "no way that person isn't just straight up crazy." This happens so often that Whitley spends a large part of his afterward as an apologist for the writers of the letters, assuring us that he's read letters from a lot of genuine crazy people and these letters make a lot more sense than theirs.
Yeah, if you have to explain that these people aren't crazy, it just reaffirms my belief that many of them are.
Perhaps the best positive summary of this book is written by the author himself in the last paragraph which I will reproduce here:
"At present—and at the very least—all we can do is enjoy the mystery of these stories, and wonder at what must have come out of the night or the secret reaches of the mind to disturb the lives of these witnesses.
What indeed."
Nah.
For starters let me say that I liked the book. To me, three stars is where books that I liked, but that weren't particularly amazing, live. Now, what keeps it from being particularly amazing I will deal with in the rest of this review.
In my opinion, these are mostly the letters of people with some mental issues writing someone that they hope can help them. Or maybe they are folks in desperate need of attention, writing the king of alien abduction in the media in an attempt to ride on his coattails. Maybe a few of them actually had bizarre experiences that they felt they needed to share.
Strieber's introductions to each "category" of letter are at the same time well considered prose and meaningless banter. Have you ever seen the show Ancient Aliens? The narrator to that show is constantly jumping from mere idea to conviction of absolute fact. Here, too, this happens—idea to assumption and back again in a bewildering pattern that spans book.
Are the aliens really aliens from another planet or merely "visitors?" Are they an advanced form of humanity that time travels, or are they beings of the spiritual realm? Are people having these experiences physically, or, as is often the case, are they experiencing them "out of body," or in a dream state? What is happening here!?
In a way that's the point of the collection of letters, I suppose. Whitley is simply putting them out there and saying to the reader, "gee whiz, what could this mean." In that spirit, I can respect this. However, when he starts to draw conclusions without evidence to back them up my eyes roll so hard that I'm amazed they remain in socket. The "three knocks" or "nine knocks" phenomena being linked to the Freemasons, for example. I mean, my goodness, can we have at least one mysterious occurrence that the Freemasons aren't presumed connected to in any way or do they have a legal monopoly on the paranormal?
It's a quick read with some genuinely spooky stories, think of it like a ghost story book that will creep you out and you will probably have your expectations in line. Even so, in my opinion there are just a few too many dud letters in here that offer very little, some of them even very small in word count, to the point that I wonder why they were included at all. Then there are those few that, when you finish, you will just think to yourself, "no way that person isn't just straight up crazy." This happens so often that Whitley spends a large part of his afterward as an apologist for the writers of the letters, assuring us that he's read letters from a lot of genuine crazy people and these letters make a lot more sense than theirs.
Yeah, if you have to explain that these people aren't crazy, it just reaffirms my belief that many of them are.
Perhaps the best positive summary of this book is written by the author himself in the last paragraph which I will reproduce here:
"At present—and at the very least—all we can do is enjoy the mystery of these stories, and wonder at what must have come out of the night or the secret reaches of the mind to disturb the lives of these witnesses.
What indeed."
October 8, 2019
This book contains a collection of letters from experiencers who in some cases were able to relate to the book The Communion and even were able to recall all or missing parts of their own experiences.
I recommend digesting its content if you are interested in reports of experiencing content with non-human entities.
I recommend digesting its content if you are interested in reports of experiencing content with non-human entities.
July 30, 2015
Let me tell you a rambling, disjointed story about a dream I had when I was seven...
April 6, 2008
Powerful accounts from people who are not afraid of our society's derisive and superstitious views against the possibility of an imminent and higher form of intelligence than our own.
April 13, 2015
Lunatics write letters to their king, Whitley Strieber, about the imaginary adventures they have had with their imaginary friends. Hijinks ensue.
February 2, 2022
sleep paralysis dude
March 29, 2022
Ramblings of mentally disturbed people, and not even cool ramblings. Dumb ramblings and weird but not cool weird - just boring weird. I didn't believe a word of it.
May 21, 2024
A COLLECTION OF LETTERS, WITH COMMENTARY
Louis Whitley Strieber (born 1945) is an American writer originally known for his horror novels (e.g., ‘The Wolfen,’ ‘The Hunger’), but since his 1987 book ‘Communion,’ has become considered as a UFO ‘contactee.’ He continues to write both fiction and nonfiction. Anne Strieber (1946 -2015) was his wife.
Whitley Strieber wrote in the ‘Acknowledgements’ section of this 1997 book, “[Anne] has read every letter that we have ever received, and was responsible for selecting the ones that appear here. The remarkable communication that emerges on a reading of the whole document would not be visible were it not for her rich, open-minded and questioning insight into the visitor experience, and the care and rigorous with which she made her choices.”
They wrote in the first chapter, “This book of letters could conceivably be the first true communication from another world that has ever been recorded. It does not offer a conventional message, but rather something much more arresting: the transmission of its meaning through the lives of the people who had these experiences and the determination to write them down. Their gift to the world is this: here is the voice of another reality, speaking clearly at last, offering a message and a promise that we can understand and act upon.” (Pg. 3)
They continue, “That so much supposedly educated criticism has been directed both against the reality of the close-encounter phenomenon and against the few tools that are effective in helping us learn about it, such as hypnosis, is a grave moral outrage, an assault against the progress of human knowledge by the arrogant and the ignorant. As if the implant discoveries were not enough, throughout the nineties, hundreds of hours of videotape of UFOs have poured in from around the world, most of it made by amateurs and often in the context of large assemblies of people. This video ended the debate about whether or not unknown objects are moving through our skies: they are. Taken together, these two developments have changed the situation regarding the letters completely. Denial of the existence of the visitors is now a purely emotional affair. It is absent of any empirical validity. Somebody or something unknown, operating both in the context of high theater and great secrecy, has approached us.” (Pg. 5-6)
They note, “Deep within the letters, there are certain visual themes that are suggestive of their origin in a truly nonhuman consciousness… The appearance of a large-eyed creature accompanied by two smaller blue ones also occurs more than once in these letters. Why would such a strange detail recur unless people are reporting something really seen?” (Pg. 8-9)
The letter from a ‘Mr. Dinosaur’ relates, “I am going back up and relate a very frightening experience I had on April 13, 1995, six months before the experience described above. I was a drunken mess at the time and had quit my job a month before. I was in the middle of an overpowering depression, and when this happened it kind of put the fear of God in me. I can clearly see, from my journal, that it was the catalyst that woke me up to my spirituality.” (Pg. 20)
Whitley observes before Chapter Three, “I was not too surprised… when letters started coming in, to find that the so-called typical abduction scenario is rarely reported. Much more often, what is reported is far more bizarre…. There is nothing neat clean, or even very comprehensible about these stories. If they are tales of actual alien abductions, then they suggest that we understand literally nothing about what they might be doing to us.” (Pg. 52)
Another letter concludes with the statement, “I continue in my work as the art director of an internationally known theater, and maintain a sense of composure in my quite stressful work. No one ever knows that I go home to an apartment swarming with other-dimensional beings, feeling the world is about to fall apart. Just a very normal life.” (Pg. 157)
Whitley and Anne conclude, “These stories are probably too strange to have emerged on their own out of even extremely distorted imaginations. I have read much material written by schizophrenics, paranoids, temporal lobe epileptics, and others, in an effort to compare it to the letters. While some of the abnormal material is indeed profoundly bizarre, is has a disorganized quality and a lack of coherent context that sharply distinguishes it from these letters. There is absolutely no consistent symbolic or structural content across the body of narratives produced by the mentally ill---and this makes these letters radically different from that product.” (Pg. 285)
This book will be of keen interest to those studying alien abductions, and related topics.
Louis Whitley Strieber (born 1945) is an American writer originally known for his horror novels (e.g., ‘The Wolfen,’ ‘The Hunger’), but since his 1987 book ‘Communion,’ has become considered as a UFO ‘contactee.’ He continues to write both fiction and nonfiction. Anne Strieber (1946 -2015) was his wife.
Whitley Strieber wrote in the ‘Acknowledgements’ section of this 1997 book, “[Anne] has read every letter that we have ever received, and was responsible for selecting the ones that appear here. The remarkable communication that emerges on a reading of the whole document would not be visible were it not for her rich, open-minded and questioning insight into the visitor experience, and the care and rigorous with which she made her choices.”
They wrote in the first chapter, “This book of letters could conceivably be the first true communication from another world that has ever been recorded. It does not offer a conventional message, but rather something much more arresting: the transmission of its meaning through the lives of the people who had these experiences and the determination to write them down. Their gift to the world is this: here is the voice of another reality, speaking clearly at last, offering a message and a promise that we can understand and act upon.” (Pg. 3)
They continue, “That so much supposedly educated criticism has been directed both against the reality of the close-encounter phenomenon and against the few tools that are effective in helping us learn about it, such as hypnosis, is a grave moral outrage, an assault against the progress of human knowledge by the arrogant and the ignorant. As if the implant discoveries were not enough, throughout the nineties, hundreds of hours of videotape of UFOs have poured in from around the world, most of it made by amateurs and often in the context of large assemblies of people. This video ended the debate about whether or not unknown objects are moving through our skies: they are. Taken together, these two developments have changed the situation regarding the letters completely. Denial of the existence of the visitors is now a purely emotional affair. It is absent of any empirical validity. Somebody or something unknown, operating both in the context of high theater and great secrecy, has approached us.” (Pg. 5-6)
They note, “Deep within the letters, there are certain visual themes that are suggestive of their origin in a truly nonhuman consciousness… The appearance of a large-eyed creature accompanied by two smaller blue ones also occurs more than once in these letters. Why would such a strange detail recur unless people are reporting something really seen?” (Pg. 8-9)
The letter from a ‘Mr. Dinosaur’ relates, “I am going back up and relate a very frightening experience I had on April 13, 1995, six months before the experience described above. I was a drunken mess at the time and had quit my job a month before. I was in the middle of an overpowering depression, and when this happened it kind of put the fear of God in me. I can clearly see, from my journal, that it was the catalyst that woke me up to my spirituality.” (Pg. 20)
Whitley observes before Chapter Three, “I was not too surprised… when letters started coming in, to find that the so-called typical abduction scenario is rarely reported. Much more often, what is reported is far more bizarre…. There is nothing neat clean, or even very comprehensible about these stories. If they are tales of actual alien abductions, then they suggest that we understand literally nothing about what they might be doing to us.” (Pg. 52)
Another letter concludes with the statement, “I continue in my work as the art director of an internationally known theater, and maintain a sense of composure in my quite stressful work. No one ever knows that I go home to an apartment swarming with other-dimensional beings, feeling the world is about to fall apart. Just a very normal life.” (Pg. 157)
Whitley and Anne conclude, “These stories are probably too strange to have emerged on their own out of even extremely distorted imaginations. I have read much material written by schizophrenics, paranoids, temporal lobe epileptics, and others, in an effort to compare it to the letters. While some of the abnormal material is indeed profoundly bizarre, is has a disorganized quality and a lack of coherent context that sharply distinguishes it from these letters. There is absolutely no consistent symbolic or structural content across the body of narratives produced by the mentally ill---and this makes these letters radically different from that product.” (Pg. 285)
This book will be of keen interest to those studying alien abductions, and related topics.
September 22, 2022
I'm one of those weirdos that believe in alien abduction. Travis Walton, Betty and Barney Hill for sure and maybe Whitley Strieber, idk, I wasn't there. Those pesky aliens are crafty.
This book however, was a great idea in theory, except, its filled with fragments of dreams.
I had a dream once, that tiny greys surrounded my bed and you know what? It was a dream. That's what you get for watching close encounters too many times.
But seriously, Communion rattled a lot of people and the image of the alien stayed in many minds, even if the conscious mind remained unaware. It makes perfect sense that the brain would conjure that while we sleep. Children, adults, everyone saw the cover of that book and most felt shaken.
This honestly was a book about the nightmares that followed imo.
This book however, was a great idea in theory, except, its filled with fragments of dreams.
I had a dream once, that tiny greys surrounded my bed and you know what? It was a dream. That's what you get for watching close encounters too many times.
But seriously, Communion rattled a lot of people and the image of the alien stayed in many minds, even if the conscious mind remained unaware. It makes perfect sense that the brain would conjure that while we sleep. Children, adults, everyone saw the cover of that book and most felt shaken.
This honestly was a book about the nightmares that followed imo.
October 24, 2017
This is a very interesting book exploring what the Strieber's call "experiencers", those people who believe they have been abducted by aliens or have had very strange paranormal experiences. The book is full of letters from people that had read Whitley Strieber's books Communion, Breakthrough and Transformation and wanted to tell their stories of extraordinary occurrences.
There are introductions to each chapter giving some idea of the contents of that chapter and an final summation of the work.
I found it very interesting and am sorry I didn't read it years ago.
There are introductions to each chapter giving some idea of the contents of that chapter and an final summation of the work.
I found it very interesting and am sorry I didn't read it years ago.
March 22, 2020
Excellent and chilling
Absolute bone chilling recounts of experiences of other people and their contract with the grays. There's a lot more to this life than we know.
Absolute bone chilling recounts of experiences of other people and their contract with the grays. There's a lot more to this life than we know.
September 7, 2016
I decided to pick this up because it recently got re-released as an ebook.
This is a collection of letters received by Anne and Whitley Strieber after the publication of the latter's book Communion, and some its subsequent follow-ups. (The book came out originally in 1997.)
I've always enjoyed Strieber's Communion books because a) he's a novelist, so he knows how to tell a story b) the stories he recounts are by turns freaky and fascinating and c) they satisfy a part of me that is intrigued by the possibility that the reality we see and the reality that might be could be vastly different things. There is some scientific evidence to suggest the possibility of parallel dimensions, for example. Imagine if we had definitive proof--it would shatter our current conception of the universe. The mere thought that multiple Adam Sandlers could exist is almost too much for the human mind to comprehend.
But I digress.
The Communion Letters is loosely themed into chapters focusing on specific types of encounters with beings that may be aliens or have some connection to the dead or could be super-evolved humans come back from the future to keep us from screwing up the planet. Each chapter has a short introduction from Whitley (Anne's task was to read through the staggering 200,000 letters they received) but the bulk of the book are the letters themselves.
They range from odd incidents that may or may not be explainable through conventional means, to stuff that would fit right in with the wackiest theories floated on Ancient Aliens. The quality of the writing is just as varied, with some letters being somewhat disorganized as the authors backtrack on their thoughts or interject in the middle of a recollection with something else, while others have that "just cracked open a thesaurus" feel to them. More than a few are not just well-written, the stories they tell are riveting, filled with details of small town life interrupted by strange, sometimes wondrous and often terrifying events.
In the end no definitive conclusion is drawn by Strieber, other than a wish that science would study the people reporting these experiences, to help demonstrate that their stories are not just the products of over-active imaginations or even mental illness (Strieber says he read over many writings from people suffering mental illnesses and found a clear distinction between their work and the stories recounted in the letters they received).
At times creepy and at times so out there that I had to fight the urge to roll my eyes, The Communion Letters is an interesting showcase for ordinary people to sound off on their experiences with the "visitors." If the subject matter intrigues you, this is worth a read, even if the selection of letters could have been a bit stronger overall.
This is a collection of letters received by Anne and Whitley Strieber after the publication of the latter's book Communion, and some its subsequent follow-ups. (The book came out originally in 1997.)
I've always enjoyed Strieber's Communion books because a) he's a novelist, so he knows how to tell a story b) the stories he recounts are by turns freaky and fascinating and c) they satisfy a part of me that is intrigued by the possibility that the reality we see and the reality that might be could be vastly different things. There is some scientific evidence to suggest the possibility of parallel dimensions, for example. Imagine if we had definitive proof--it would shatter our current conception of the universe. The mere thought that multiple Adam Sandlers could exist is almost too much for the human mind to comprehend.
But I digress.
The Communion Letters is loosely themed into chapters focusing on specific types of encounters with beings that may be aliens or have some connection to the dead or could be super-evolved humans come back from the future to keep us from screwing up the planet. Each chapter has a short introduction from Whitley (Anne's task was to read through the staggering 200,000 letters they received) but the bulk of the book are the letters themselves.
They range from odd incidents that may or may not be explainable through conventional means, to stuff that would fit right in with the wackiest theories floated on Ancient Aliens. The quality of the writing is just as varied, with some letters being somewhat disorganized as the authors backtrack on their thoughts or interject in the middle of a recollection with something else, while others have that "just cracked open a thesaurus" feel to them. More than a few are not just well-written, the stories they tell are riveting, filled with details of small town life interrupted by strange, sometimes wondrous and often terrifying events.
In the end no definitive conclusion is drawn by Strieber, other than a wish that science would study the people reporting these experiences, to help demonstrate that their stories are not just the products of over-active imaginations or even mental illness (Strieber says he read over many writings from people suffering mental illnesses and found a clear distinction between their work and the stories recounted in the letters they received).
At times creepy and at times so out there that I had to fight the urge to roll my eyes, The Communion Letters is an interesting showcase for ordinary people to sound off on their experiences with the "visitors." If the subject matter intrigues you, this is worth a read, even if the selection of letters could have been a bit stronger overall.
Read
June 22, 20101st edition
March 17, 2012
Great compilation of experiences.
September 5, 2014
This was an awesome compilation of compelling, true stories. I read it every moment I had the chance to. Seriously mind-blowing and if you're a believer, skeptic, whatever, it's worth the read.
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews