Whitley Strieber

The bestselling author turned UFO experiencer who reshaped modern ufology

Name	Louis Whitley Strieber
Age	80
Born	June 13, 1945
Famous for	Having multiple encounters with non-human visitors and publishing his stories in his book, Communion

Whitley Strieber was a household name within literature. He achieved distinction in the horror genre and, in fact, was up there with Stephen King in the market.

Both were prolific writers who started a new wave in horror, until Strieber went off on a tangent. From writing about fiction that frightened others, he became involved in an equally frightening event, but this time, it was one he had to experience alone.

December 26, 1985, became an unforgettable day for Strieber, for it not only changed the course of his career but also his life. Let’s unpack what happened to renowned author Whitley Strieber and how he went from a famed creative to a publicly questioned figure in pseudoscience. 

How Did Whitley Strieber’s Early Life Influence His Career?

Born on June 13, 1945, Louis Whitley Strieber spent most of his life trying to understand and dominate the arts. While studying, he was already establishing a name in the industry, juggling his role as an underground filmmaker with his attendance at the University of Texas and the London School of Film—an academic decision that ultimately led to a thriving career.

Soon after graduating, he worked as a vice president in advertising for a company. However, this was only short-lived as he decided to switch to freelance writing and blossomed into one of the bestselling authors in the horror genre.

Throughout his career, he had authored several successful titles:

• The Wolfen
• The Hunger
• The Day After Tomorrow
• Majestic

Many of his works were later adapted into films, reflecting his rising profile in the field. While he was first recognized for his vivid imagination and unsettling horror stories, he gradually expanded into themes of apocalyptic and environmental disaster. This evolution helped cement his reputation as a versatile and innovative genre writer, often discussed alongside modern alternative history figures like Giorgio Tsoukalos.

Whitley Strieber’s career trajectory would have probably been predictable, if not for the dramatic shift he experienced in the mid-1980s.

What Led Whitley Strieber to His Entry Into Ufology?

What sparked Strieber’s transition into ufology wasn’t a curiosity about the phenomenon. It was due to a personal experience. Just after Christmas Day in 1986, he came face-to-face with what he later described as “non-human visitors” in his cabin in New York, an encounter often mentioned alongside cases such as the Meng Zhaoguo Incident.

A series of events would then soon follow that piqued the author’s interest, essentially shifting the muse of his books from the grotesque to the unknown. This would lead him to publish Communion, the first of his extraterrestrial-themed works that would redefine his reputation.

The book elicited polarized reactions. On the one hand, believers were impressed and intrigued by the depth of his story and experiences. On the other hand, critics were dumbfounded by this shift and doomed his career. He was labeled the author of a troubled imagination, someone who threw away his reputation in pursuit of self-delusion and an elaborate lie.

However, Strieber was adamant about the authenticity of his stories. He insisted that these materials were more factual than fiction—a recounting of his experiences, not imagination. By then, he was no longer simply an author, but a witness whose claims demanded investigation.

What Were Whitley Strieber’s Encounters with the “Visitors”?

Whitley Strieber has made it clear that his sudden interest in the extraterrestrial didn’t stem from a desire for popularity. Instead, he merely wanted to understand what had happened and was continuously happening to him.

Throughout interviews, he has recounted his fair share of extraterrestrial experiences. Below are some of his most significant stories, each of which makes a substantial contribution to his role within the UFO and contactee communities.

His First Encounter: December 26, 1986

I woke up in the middle of the night, I guess, it was on December 26, 1985, in a little room full of what appeared to be nightmare creatures. It didn’t occur to me that I was abducted by aliens. I thought I was having an exceptional nightmare, and I couldn’t wake up.

Like everyone else, Strieber’s first encounter came out of nowhere. His recollection of that night’s events came after a hypnosis session, where he claimed that he was immobilized by several beings, which he described as:

• Between 4-5ft tall
• Wearing a grayish brown bodysuit
• Having big black eyes and a big head
• Having a long, thin nose and a tiny mouth

What happened next was not like any other encounter. Unlike typical UFO sightings that only involved glimpses of these beings or, for others, an attempt at communication, Strieber’s experience was by far the most haunting.

He reported that as he thrashed around, the beings inserted a needle into the side of his head that, once turned on, repeated the phrase, “What can we do to help you stop screaming?”

However, for what they were doing, he could only think that nothing could stop him from reacting so. He claimed that they mechanically elicited a sexual response from him to collect his semen—something which he only came to comprehend the reason for in the coming years.

The day after the event, he woke up with a sense of having had a horrible experience, but with no recollection of what had actually occurred.

What Happened After the Event?

Over the following weeks, Strieber struggled with pain in his back. He decided to have himself checked with a doctor, and that’s when the physical evidence of that night became apparent: There was a lesion in his rectum.

He reported this to the criminal investigation division, thinking he had been assaulted. However, after thorough examination, no other evidence affirmed his assumption.

It was only when he met Bud Hopkins that he began considering the possibility of a UFO encounter. Strieber contacted the ufologist, who connected him to Dr. Donald Klein, a forensic hypnotist, to help him recall the events and find an explanation.

However, this session didn’t close the story as Strieber expected. Instead, this was only the beginning of his enduring brush with extraterrestrials.

His Son’s Abduction

This other event occurred when Strieber’s son was seven years old. During spring break, he brought his family back to their cabin in New York, which, over the years, had slowly become a hotspot for extraterrestrial encounters.

One day, at three in the morning, he woke up, panicked. Knowing his previous experiences, his first instinct was to check on his family, and there, he saw that his son wasn’t in his bed.

I went near the bed, and I couldn’t find him. I ran outside. There was this huge star in the sky, and these two tall men came toward me.

Strieber claimed he saw a craft just hanging above the treeline. He remembered that it had been enormous, almost filling the sky. Two tall men came with it, and when they approached him, he quickly retreated into the cabin. He went back up to his son’s room and saw him in his bed.

The next morning, everything seemed normal. His son suffered no apparent injury, but it was the conversation they had that left a mark in his memory.

We want to go out beyond the quasars to see what’s there.Reality is God’s dream.

Strieber recited these two lines, allegedly from the many poems his son had written about that night. And although he had suffered no physical injuries from it, Strieber’s son recalled floating to the woods and claimed that he had seen this massive eye looking down at him.

In the next months, Strieber would realize that he and his family weren’t alone. The encounters they were living through weren’t isolated incidents, only occurring around the cabin. Instead, they had been happening all over New York, popularly known as the Hudson Valley UFO wave.

His Implant to Communicate with the Beings

In his interview with Ross Coulthart, Whitley Strieber made a shocking revelation. He claimed that during one of their visits, the beings placed an implant in his ear that allows him to communicate with them.

One night in his cabin, he heard crunching noises in the driveway. This caused him to reach for his rifle instinctively and, in the process, saw a man and a woman standing at the foot of his bed. He recalled that they didn’t look like the earlier beings he saw. Instead, they looked human.

I heard a man’s voice in the backyard say very quietly, “Condition Red,” meaning I had woken up. They rushed toward me. I tried to resist. I ended up unable to see, lying on my right side, and my head was being pushed down into the pillow in waves.

He must’ve fallen unconscious in the midst of everything because he shared that the next thing he knew, there was a big flash and crashing in the woods. He jumped and grabbed his pistol before bolting through the cabin. However, he couldn’t find anything unusual and just ended the night sitting on his bed, thinking if everything had been a lucid dream.

Strieber presumed this was when the implant was inserted in his body. When asked how it works, he detailed:

A slit opens up in my right eye, and you can see words racing through it. It looks like it’s typed and is in English. I can’t read it usually. It’s moving too fast, and I need to have a white wall to see it. It always appears when I’m working.

His Encounters that Left Physical Evidence

Throughout Strieber’s numerous encounters with non-humans, he also has his fair share of “evidence,” although their nature isn’t as compelling.

One of which was the bruise on his arm. The encounter that caused it happened just a few months ago, and this time, he wasn’t in his cabin. This only points to one thing: his encounters happen not because the cabin is a hotspot, but because these beings followed him.

I had a physical experience of some kind. There was someone in the room, and I jumped away in my sleep and got scratched, and this injury came. It’s a subcutaneous bleed. The scratch is at the top.

The other physical evidence he had gathered was a weird photo he had taken while these beings were allegedly trying to communicate with him.

During one of his podcasts, Strieber discussed their hieroglyphic-like language, and shared that on one occasion, he randomly saw it on a building in New York. He recalled that the signs were carved on the building’s pillars, and it glowed orange.

However, his friends, who were with him at the time, didn’t seem to notice, so he took out his phone and snapped a photo. The first image that came out was washed out. To check if something was wrong with his phone, he took another picture, but this time, it came out normal.

What Were Whitley Strieber’s Beliefs About UFOs?

Whitley Strieber’s beliefs about the phenomenon are evolving and nuanced, so they’re sometimes difficult to categorize. This is one reason why he stands apart within the community.

UFO Encounters Have a Generational Factor

Strieber believes that there’s a genetic component to why encounters happen. In his journey to understanding his personal experiences, he had come to realize that more people in his family are connected to the phenomenon, primarily his uncle.

A few months after his book Communion came out, his uncle, Lt. E.M. Mickey Strieber, came to him to reveal a secret. Mickey Strieber claimed he was present at Wright Field during the Roswell Incident and the retrieval of debris.

This was also when he introduced Whitley to General Arthur Exon, who revealed more about the incident than the officials had let out.

[General Exon said] Everyone from Truman down knew that what we had found wasn’t of this world within 24 hours of finding it. There is a memo called the Twining memo where he described the functionality of this craft, and it’s exactly the functionality that you see in the Tic Tac and Gimbal videos. And General Twining said that he hadn’t only seen the bodies but had encountered a living being that was one of these aliens.

Strieber believes that his uncle’s connection to the Roswell Incident has had a profound impact on his life, leading the beings to target him and his family.

Ross Coulthart surprisingly supported this belief, claiming that he had been talking to several people who had similar experiences and found that:

They do take an interest in people in the family, and there have been many harrowing incidents. One of the reasons people feel inside the program that it’s time for this to come out is because there’s a lot of emotion about what they have to go through and what their families have to go through.

UFOs Have Reproductive Interest

Strieber not only believes that encounters aren’t at random and have familial connections, but he also thinks there’s an underlying reason why they’re happening. After what happened to him, he believes that these beings are attempting to create “hybrids” for their benefit.

They’re trying to create beings that can relate to them and also be here—hybrids, in other words. When I say hybrids, though, I mean they’re doing something in an attempt to manipulate the human genome.

Extraterrestrials Have Two Separate Entities

Strieber believes that the extraterrestrial beings people encounter aren’t all aliens. Some are merely biological machines.

He theorized that there are two types of extraterrestrials: larger and smaller. The larger of the two is the actual “aliens,” while the smaller ones are machines with complex brains that the larger ones use to project their consciousness to and interact with the world.

A great deal of UFO crashes, the bodies are donations. They’re simply expendable biorobots they gave us to teach us more about themselves.

There Is an Institutional Cover-Up Happening

This theory is something that naturally comes up within the UFO community, and Whitley Strieber has backed it up. However, his statements had been the most undisputed, given his connections with General Exon.

One piece of evidence he has regarding this cover-up came directly from the general. Strieber claimed that during one of their conversations, the general had brought up how secretive the military had been about the entire phenomenon.

In 1998, he was going to confer with the scientific group that was working on this because so many of the meetings that had taken place in his time of activity on this subject has been pencils up because of the secrecy.

Another proof that he has about this comes from his experience. Apparently, after he published his book Confirmation, the Air Force had severe criticisms about it. A little story appeared in an influential paper, Parade magazine, that said his story was caused by temporal lobe epilepsy.

However, Whitley Strieber was adamant that the story was nothing but a lie from the Air Force. He even underwent several examinations to prove his credibility, but despite the results showing that he had a stable brain, the officials still pushed the story.

His Polygraph Tests

Strieber had gone through a series of polygraph tests to examine whether he was being truthful in retelling his experiences. Over the course of these examinations, it was found that the author remained truthful and believed that what he experienced did, in fact, happen.

His Psychological Assessments

Strieber’s psychological state had also been tested a few months after his encounter, and the results presented that “Mr. Strieber appears to be very frightened and to feel powerless.” This had been a strong indication that the experience devastated him emotionally.

Whitley Strieber’s Legacy in Modern Ufology

Whitley Strieber has done much to reshape how people perceive UFOs. Through his books and his recent podcast, Dreamland, he has continued to challenge what both believers and skeptics have believed about the phenomenon.

Although his reputation has undoubtedly received a massive blow after he transitioned to ufology, he has continued raising awareness about it.

It’s coming into focus now, and obviously, Communion, especially, initiated an awareness of this in millions of people, and in that sense, I’m glad I did it. But as to what I went through as a person, I wish I hadn’t gone through it.

His journey has destroyed his writing career, but this hasn’t stopped him from speaking about his experience. To this day, he often shares what has happened to him and his family in their cabin, and even claims that these unexplained occurrences have persisted recently.

He discusses what he has discovered about these non-humans and continues to investigate the phenomenon and their existence. This willingness to revisit his experiences and remain open-minded with his conclusions makes him a sensible figure in the UFO community.

For readers who want to explore cases like Strieber’s and examine documented encounters in greater detail, UFO Connect, a dedicated UFO research website, provides in-depth investigations, witness accounts, and ongoing analysis of unexplained aerial phenomena.

FAQ

Was Whitley Strieber abducted?

Yes. Whitley Strieber’s first-ever encounter with what he calls non-humans was an abduction in nature. He shared that he was abducted on the evening of December 26, 1985, when semen was taken from his body.

What is Whitley Strieber most famous for?

Whitley Strieber is most famous for Communion. This book details his experienced contact with non-human “visitors,” a story that popularized the modern depiction of grey aliens.

Is Whitley Strieber considered reliable in ufology research?

Strieber’s reliability is highly debated. Many researchers and believers view him as insightful, while skeptics question the verifiability of his claims. Nonetheless, his influence in modern ufology is undeniable.

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