OVO

From Chris Gross to Trevor Blake, 27 April 1990
… I heard from the Striebers this week. Looks as if l might be sitting in on a Communion meeting. I should be hearing from Anne about it some time next week. I dunno how those ‘experiences’ of mine stack up next to those other folks, but this whole thing is getting interesting. Especially since I had two almost waking ‘experiences’ last week and I’ve begun to remember some dreams that might be relevant (and which pre-date Communion). One concerned ‘visitor’-like beings with high, squeaky voices that came at me with scissors – but they took too much off the top and left the back too long.

I’m generally pretty detached when I dream (unless the dream is an overt nightmare, which isn’t often). But some of these ‘dreams’ do seem to sneak up on me later on. For example, one of those two ‘experiences’ last week was a very vivid dream of being back at my parents house in the Poconos. I was ‘awakened’ by some moving white lights at the front and side of the house. I went to the window and saw something with a pale, bobbing head that I couldn’t identify. The first time l saw it l ducked away from the window, thinking ‘I can’t let it see me!’ I looked again and the thing seemed much less threatening, almost like a scarecrow. I also saw a small (about 2 inches high) skull and crossbones sign in the yard. A glance out the front window didn’t reveal anything In the front yard and there was nothing in the house. I woke up feeling very apprehensive. The dream itself was very tame, emotionally; I don’t know why I acted so frightened afterward. At any rate, it was hours before I got back to sleep. The room had a very haunted feel to it.

The second ‘event’ was very scary at the time (it involved my brother Richie, who once told me that he’d seen ‘an elf with black eyes’ in the woods behind the house) but it seems to have worn off…

From Chris Gross to Whitley Strieber, 1990
Dear Mr. Strieber:
I had been planning to write you after having read Transformation but I’d somehow put it off. Your talk at the New York Fortean Society meeting made me finally decide to sit down and type this up.

I was deeply affected by Communion because it was the first time I realized that other people had been having experiences similar to mine. I’ve been a Fortean (as a member of INFO) since about 1980 and have come across some bizarre stories I think should have rung a few bells in my mind when l read them – but at the time they were just more bits of data to be collected. I never connected them with anything in my own life. The “visitors” paradigm, now that it is a paradigm (though not a firm one) had helped me link up many strange events in my life that seemed unconnected at the time they happened.

I won’t go into detail about these events in this letter because I don’t want it to run too long. I’ll outline them in a separate enclosure. If you would like any further information about the events described in the outline I would be happy to provide it.

In any event, I’m glad to see The Communion Foundation is off the ground. I will be subscribing to the newsletter as soon as possible, and I hope The Foundation will be able to help the people who have been ‘visited’ to cope with their experiences. In that regard, I think that my research in Fortean activities has helped me to take this sort of thing in stride; after years of reading about spontaneous human combustion, chocolate-chip cookies falling out of the sky, etc., the “visitors” seem a bit easier to take!

I’m now going to go back and re-read Transformation so I’ll sign off. It was a pleasure to see and hear your presentation, and I hope the enclosed is helpful.

Sincerely,
Chris Gross

1. DREAMS
I have always had a very vivid dream life; my dreams are usually very detailed and dense with information. One element of certain specific dreams had always puzzled me these dreams involve places I’ve never been to (or which don’t exist) and people I’ve never met. One of these dreams featured the theme of experimentation. As far as I can remember it took place between 1979 and 1981 I was in college.

In this dream, I was in a strange, grey painted room with three or four other people. We were all lined up, straddling a bench and facing what looked like a large gray plastic shield of some sort. This shield was at least six feet high and resembled a welder’s mask seen from the inside. As the person in front of the line underwent some sort of treatment and was escorted out of the room, the rest of us would move forward one space and the process would begin all over again. When my turn finally came, I found myself facing a gaunt, white-haired man (identified in the dream as “Antionette”) who began pricking my face with a long, thin needle. The experience was very painful. The needle felt as though it had been electrified. I was then escorted from the room. I have no memory of the people who led me out, apart from the fact that they were wearing dark overalls. My strongest emotion at this point was anger. I felt as though I had somehow been used. The dream then became more unreal in texture and degenerated into a revenge fantasy against “Antionette.” I also began to experience what I later learned were called “haggings;” I would wake up paralyzed and unable to breathe properly, with the feeling that someone else was in the room with me. The haggings eventually got so bad that I sought help; the results will be mentioned in an upcoming section.

In the mid-’80s, (I wish I could be more specific about some of these dates but I was reluctant to write these experiences down) I experienced a series of dream whose texture was very different from anything I was used to. These dreams were extremely vivid and emotionally intense but my sense of time and the visual imagery were vague. I can only compare the experience to a delirium. In these dreams, some sort of non-human entity was trying to enter the house either through the TV set or my bedroom closet (depending on the dream). One repeated image tied all these dreams together: several hairless, slow-moving creatures with huge dark eyes approaching me through a darkened hallway. I am an occasional freelance writer, and I incorporated this image into a horror-movie treatment I was writing at the time. The general tone of these dreams was absolute panic, although the actions of these creatures was not threatening. They seemed to be possessed of a form of demonic energy that they were struggling to hold in check.

Two other dreams occurred in the mid-’70s. In one, a doctor was giving me a painful injection in my hand (probably the right one). The needle left a pale blue mark on my skin, resembling the mark made by a fine-point Magic Marker. For some reason I decided not to tell anyone about this. I was in my teens and living at home at the time. The other dream is a vague one concerning large, dark eyes and very small features. Nothing much happened in this dream: all I did was look at the entities, who struck me as being benign.

I would like to emphasize that the preceding dreams differ greatly in “texture” from the dreams I normally have, even the ones that are very bizarre. I was more alert in these dreams than I usually am, and I also had a sense that on some level these events were actually happening. The haunted feel of these dreams often carried over into the next day, or even the next several days.

I have had several apocalyptic dreams. They all involve a limited catastrophe here in the Northeast that involves an unnatural darkness during the day (usually around 10:00 AM) and something coming out of the sky, although whatever it is coming out of the sky is never cited as the cause of the catastrophe. There is also a suggestion of a series of plane crashes, bomb scares, etc., but these seem only concommittants. One of these dreams involved a symbolic cracking-open of the sky just before the darkness fell.

In the interest of brevity I am leaving out many other dreams dealing with elements that appear in Communion, Transformation and Budd Hopkins’ Intruders. The rest can be provided on request.

2. HAGGINGS
As mentioned earlier, I have experienced many incidents of “hagging” since about 1980. Almost all of them involved the feeling that someone else was in the room when no one was. This entity (sometimes group of entities) normally seemed less malicious than possessed of immense energy and powers of concentration. In one case, however, a group of these entities seemed to have a sense of humor.  They seemed to be standing next to the bed out of visual range and laughing in an unusual, reedy manner. I mentally told them to knock it off and let me sleep. Instead, I began to hear a confused series of noises, ranging from what sounded like taped snippets of radio program played at wrong speeds to a bicycle horn. I repeated my demand that the entities leave me alone, and the noises ground down like a record player being turned off.

These experiences would often include an element of space-distortion. I would have the feeling that I was somehow facing in the “wrong” direction, although everything about my bedroom appeared normal. It was as though the room itself had been turned around, although my position relative to the room was unchanged.

My most severe hagging came in the Summer of 1988. I had attended my first channeling session the night before, at the invitation of a friend of the channeler. I came home with a severe migraine and had an attack of vomiting. I went to sleep, got up a few hours later for glass of Coke, and went back to sleep again. At about 5:00 AM I woke up paralyzed, aware of a strangely relentless being in room, and completely unable to breathe. I felt as though someone were trying to push a thin metal rod down my throat, which had closed up and gone into spasms. I lost consciousness several times while trying to fight this thing off. I never saw it, and could barely keep my eyes open. Eventually I gave up, and I fell asleep again. The next day, I called the friend who had invited me to the session (a physical therapist / hypnotist from Brooklyn) and asked if I could talk to her about a strange incident in which I had been involved. We met in Prospect Park, and I described the hagging, we were both overcome by a growing feeling of oppression. By time for lunch, we were both feeling disoriented and physically sick. We went back to her apartment, and my friend called the channeler for advice. Her assessment (l don’t quite agree with it myself) was that we were under attack by an earthbound spirit, so my friend performed a “deliverance” and we both felt much better. The haggings went away or several months, but there have been a few minor incidents since then. Luckily they were nothing serious. One interesting point is that the entity I felt during some of mess incidents had a high-pitched, reedy voice. Unfortunately, I don’t remember what it was saying. The traumatic “delirium” experience mentioned in the previous segment felt very similar to hagging, but it was much less coherent.

3. AUDITORY “HALLUCINATIONS”
These happen very infrequently, sometimes in a hypnogogic state and very rarely in a waking state, and usually take the form of loud bangs or crashes heard while I am falling asleep. Ironically, I sleep through most thunderstorms. A recurring “hallucination” this past winter consisted of a Morse code-like beeping in my right ear. It was never loud and after a while it would usually fade out entirely. The sound was very similar to that of a marine navigation beacon, which generally broadcast on the long-wave band, repeating a series of letters in Morse code. It was a repeated sequence lasting about five or six seconds. I have had many problems with my right ear (at least five middle ear infections, several times rupturing the eardrum) but my hearing has remained unaffected and there is no evidence of tinnitis.

4. PHYSICAL SYMPTOMS
I recently discovered that I have a deviated septum. The only explanation I’ve received for this is the possibility that I may have broken my nose at some point in my life. I have no memory of anything like this happening, although in 1982 I suffered a series of recurring, unexplained nose bleeds. At the time of my “delirium” experiences I began to have severe migraines. I had several of them in high school and college, but new batch was much worse. My doctor sent me to the hospital for tests (CT scan, EEG, strobe test for epilepsy), but nothing abnormal was found. I was put on Inderal, a beta blocker that seems to prevent migraines. It was only occasionally successful; the migraines only stopped after the “deliverance” although recently they’ve started up again. I came down with one after the NYFS meeting on May 20.

5. ANOMALIES
My experience with UFOs is minimal. I used to see occasional star-like orange lights in the sky (two of which seemed to dip down and fly over the house) when I live in the Poconos (1971-1981). I had one further incident after moving to New Jersey.

On June 25, 1987 I was waiting to cross a street in Paramus (Forest Avenue), when I happened to look at the sky and saw a black ovoid object flying due West. It appeared to be made of some sort of flexible material; it was a flat object set up on edge rather than horizontally, and its edge rippled as it veered a bit from side to side. I eventually lost sight of it behind some trees. When I got home I wrote up a report for INFO.

The next day my phone line was severed. I called the police from a pay phone. An officer inspected the line, which seemed to have been sliced with a razor blade and told me that it had been deliberately cut. I saw what looked like crimp marks about an inch from the cut on either side. The phone company repairman told me that a passing truck must have snagged it. However, I live on a dead end street and the wire was at least 15 feet above the ground. I had been home all day except for a trip to the video store and had noticed nothing unusual.

I have had occasional phone calls from someone with a voice very similar to the ones I’ve heard in my dreams and haggings. The voice resembles that of a little girl or of the voice at the end of The Fly that says “Help mee-e-e-e… ” It also seems disembodies, as though it were coming directly from the larynx with no chest tones. These phone conversations have all been nonsensical. I generally put unusual calls out of my mind, but I do remember one that went like this:

CG: Hello?
VOICE: Hello. (LONG PAUSE)
CG: Who is this?
VOICE: WwwwhhhATT? (I should explain that one: it’s the word ‘What’ pronounced in a drawn-out manner with a rising inflection. The “t” at the end was pronounced almost as a separate syllable.)
CG: (AFTER ANOTHER LONG PAUSE) Hello?
VOICE: Hello.
CG: Who is this?
VOICE: WwwwhhhATT?
CG: I said, ‘Who is this?’
VOICE: WwwwhhhATT?

At that point I hung up. That conversation took place at about the time my haggings started, and as l recall I received two more of these calls after moving back to New Jersey in 1981. Unfortunately, I also began receiving more prank calls and wrong numbers, so I never thought much about them and eventually forgot their contents. I remember they were very short conversations, in which only a few sentences were exchanged.

For what it’s worth I was constantly being pulled out of class from first grade through senior high school and given intelligence tests. As far as I recall, I was the only one to whom this was done. I was never told who the people were who were testing me or why the tests were being given, but I guess it’s a comfort to me to know that I did very well. I was never told the results of these tests except that they were exceptional and apparently even baffling. I did overhear a remark while in high school that my sister had an IQ of 170 and that mine was higher than hers. The testing did not continue into college.

My overall view of these and other incidents as they relate to the visitor phenomenon is that my experiences, though not conclusive or even very coherent, indicates to me that something real is going on above and beyond any “hallucinations” that may be an integral part of it. I don’t know if I’ve actually run into the visitors or had some odd experiences but the events listed in your books really hit home and made me re-evaluate many of the unusual dreams and phenomena I’ve experienced over the past ten to fifteen years. If the visitors actually exist, I don’t believe that I’m in any kind of conscious rapport with them although I assume that if they are involved in my life l must be interesting to them in at least a clinical way. As to the nature of the visitors I agree that it’s very easy to anthromorphise. I get the impression that the beings I’ve encountered in my dreams and “haggings” are extremely alien in their thought processes. Either that or they drink a lot. I did feel some fear towards them at first, but I think I’ve been able to gradually rule out malice as a motive or their actions. They seem to be going about things tentatively, occasionally making mistakes (some damaging, some humorous). These days I seem to feel an amused affection for them most of the time. Maybe that’s John Keel’s influence rubbing off, since he seems to feel the same way about the Men in Black, Mothman., etc.

One intriguing aspect to my own experiences (based on a seemingly unconnected batch of vivid, recurring dream) is that these beings are involved in some sort of communications network that is occasionally tapped into by humans. These “leaks” would be symbolized in some cases by dreams of television sets, radios, newspapers, some computers, etc., bearing extremely cryptic information. This idea is very difficult to defend because it’s based on subjective experience and hunches. Maybe I shouldn’t have mentioned it, but there’s always the chance that someone else may have experienced the same thing.

As I mentioned in the letter, this is all just the tip of the iceberg. I’m just selecting the information that appears to be the most relevant to The Communion Foundation’s studies. If you would like further information on anything I’ve mentioned here, I would be happy to supply it.

From Chris Gross to Trevor Blake, 30 June 1990
… about the Strieber stuff… still no word from the NYC group. BUT – you can run the letter as is, provided that you mention that no connection with Whit is to be implied, since I took one look at the letter, signed it Popeye, and tossed it back into my files. He hasn’t read it. I’d rather not re-write it as an article, partially because the disc with the information on it has disappeared and partially because I think the letter would be more evidential. So even I don’t know what it says anymore!

(from OVO 12 SCIENCE November 1991)