Lasting Love and Other Unexplained Mysteries

In 1987, Whitley Strieber’s non-fiction account of a series of paranormal experiences at his cabin in New York State reached the top of the bestseller charts, plunging him into scrutiny and Christopher Walken into film adaptations of his story. Over two decades and several books later, he and his wife Anne remain delightfully, tenaciously in love. They have agreed to sit down electronically with The Hairpin and tell us how they’ve managed it.

Let’s start with the easy stuff: How did you meet?

Whitley: We were both lonely kids in New York in 1969, and we answered ads in the Village Voice for a “computer” dating service called Mind Mates and ended up on each other’s lists. When I walked into the place where Anne was working, I said to the beautiful receptionist, “I’m here to see Anne Mattocks.” When she replied, “I’m Anne,” I almost collapsed! But she went out to lunch with me and that was it. So smart, so much fun, so gorgeous — I was just hoping she wouldn’t throw me over.”

Anne: “I saw this tall, good looking young man come into the office, and was I glad that he turned out to be my lunch date! He was so interesting, and he wanted to be a writer, of all things. That afternoon I just kept hoping he would call me again — and he did!”

Anne, would you say that Whitley’s experiences with the paranormal or the public scrutiny around his decision to write about them placed greater stress on your relationship?

The whole thing was extremely stressful, but at its worst before Communion was published. He secretly thought he was becoming psychotic and kept trying to get me to divorce him so he wouldn’t be a burden for me if he ended up in an institution. Finally, when he had run out of other options, he explained what he had been doing, and then said “but I’m not going crazy. I think I’ve been abducted by aliens.” I have never been so relieved!

After Communion was published, we began receiving what finally became hundreds of thousands of letters. I was the one who read them, and I began to see patterns that were not consistent with alien abduction, but were consistent with a genuine unknown. For example, it is common for people to see their dead friends and relatives in the company of the so-called aliens. So what is really going on here? From the beginning, I wanted Whitley to keep it all in question both in our public and private lives, and he has done that.

In the days after his December 1985 encounter, he was a physical wreck and still bears scars from the experience. So something physical happened to him and it was definitely accompanied by other worldly events. What it all means, though, we still don’t know.

In the same vein, how were your friendships altered by the book? And, as a couple, do you find that it’s easier to form friendships within the community of individuals interested in the same questions, or has that not been your experience?

Our social life in New York was destroyed by Communion. Whitley became an embarrassment to most of our friends and they would no longer have anything to do with us. His political life came to an end. We were isolated and ostracized. Our son said to him, “You really are the most embarrassing father in the world,” and he was right. But Whitley has a big family in San Antonio and when we moved there, I developed a large circle of friends among them and through them. The social world of San Antonio would never abandon one of its own, and neither would Whitley’s wonderful family.

We have not developed many friends among the community of UFO researchers. A few, certainly, but most of them are much more directed toward research than social life.

When I’ve read mainstream articles about Whitley, I’ve noticed a reliably aggravating dichotomy: does the writer think he’s crazy, or that he’s lying? And, generally, because he seems extremely sincere, the writer tends to “charitably” conclude that he’s crazy. Anne, did you ever think he was crazy, or sick?

Whitley was desperate, not crazy. He was reacting to a threat that he did not understand. He put in an alarm system. He prowled around with guns at night. I knew that something was terribly wrong, but I wasn’t sure what it was, to say the least! He is an expert with guns, so I wasn’t too worried that something would go wrong, but why was my husband terrified? THAT did worry me.

After the experience, he took all kinds of physical and mental tests. He was physically normal, he didn’t have any seizure-related diseases and his psychological profile showed a highly intelligent man under extreme levels of stress. Also, he is no liar, as I have known since the day I met him. If anything, he is honest to a fault. To see him characterized as either crazy or a liar breaks my heart. Working together, Whitley and I have gained some truly extraordinary information about something very strange but also very important. I find that the rejection of this, and the failure of the scientific community to follow up on the evidence, saddening and pitiful.

Whitley, if you hadn’t had such a supportive spouse, what would the mid-1980s have looked like for you?

After the horrific reception of Communion, I would have committed suicide. Despite the support of this wonderful, brilliant and strong woman, I almost did it anyway. She held onto me, though, as a result of which I am still here.

Whitley has spoken about how writing, for him, is an act of desperation, and that he’s rarely satisfied by the finished product. Anne, in your experience as a novelist, do you feel similarly? And as a dual-writer couple, what does the structure of your work day look like?

I get up at 5:30 and start working on our website. I’m the news editor and responsible for all the stories. Whitley gets up at 7:00 and we have breakfast and read the papers. Right now, we are working together on a book called Bumping into God, which is about my 2004 stroke and its aftermath. I had a near-death experience during the stroke that changed me profoundly. My part of the book is about that change. Whitley’s is about his experiences during my recovery. Collectively, it is about the profound spiritual journey that my almost dying brought us. At one point during my NDE, I was given a choice to either keep going into death or to return to my family and my life with Whitley. I chose to come back to this life of ours and so have gotten to see our son happily married and to become a grandmother twice over. And I have the unfolding joy of my marriage to look forward to every day of my life.

I have been not only a novelist but Whitley’s first editor. Before he was published, I was his only editor. From this experience, I learned how important it is to look deeply into the lives of one’s characters, to find as far as possible, their human truth. So I am also obsessed with rewriting, but I don’t feel the angst that Whitley does. He is torn, conflicted and driven in his life. I am, I think, much more confident.

As Catholics, how do you feel the Church has reacted to your work, if at all?

Whitley: It depends on what part of the church. Pope John-Paul was interested in the subject in general, so we were invited to a private meeting with one of his confidants in the Vatican. We talked about our experiences. Pope Benedict apparently is not interested, or little interested. The priests and brothers I know in San Antonio are very open minded about me because they know me well enough to know that I am no liar and not a nut. It’s a different story here in Santa Monica.

When we moved here, we attempted to become active in the local parish, St. Monica’s. We went to the new parishioner meetings and offered ourselves as volunteers for all sorts of projects. They would have nothing to do with us. Apparently, they assumed that Communion was some sort of heretical book because of the title and the picture on the cover. Of course, it is not about religion at all. St. Monica’s motto is “all are welcome.” But not Whitley and Anne Strieber. So we are not practicing Catholics at this time. We have no parish in which to practice.

Those with an interest in the paranormal have really enjoyed the boundless possibilities for connection provided by the internet. You both devote a great deal of time to your website, The Unknown Country — does it become overwhelming? Do you ever burn out on your subject matter? And has it been a challenge to avoid being bombarded with queries and personal accounts?

Anne: We have to be there for the people who have encounters. We both feel a deep obligation to do what we can to serve their needs. Nobody has ever been deeper into this experience than us, and we want to help others who are struggling with it, and also to keep up the pressure for a sane response to it.

Whitley: I am dismissed as crazy by most of the media, but the truth is that I live in a society that is crazy because it will not address the UFO and close encounter material in a coherent manner. In the long run, this is going to be discovered to be one of the most important events in human history, and this generation’s response to it one of the most inadequate in that history.

This is just a fringe question for my own purposes: I recently re-purchased Communion after realizing I’d misplaced my old copy, and I noticed that the iconic image on the cover had been swapped out. Was this a conscious decision on your part?

No. I was disappointed to see this.

You’ve deliberately chosen to avoid identifying your experiences as necessarily extraterrestrial in nature. Has that resulted in any hostility from individuals who explicitly identify as alien abductees?

People who have closed their minds about this are hostile to questions, and that goes for witnesses, researchers and skeptics alike. Anne and I are trying to bring this matter into the general intellectual dialogue in terms of questions. There are, as yet, no certain answers. But believers don’t like questions. They make them mad. So yes, we do experience some hostility, but over time it has grown less, I think, as people have realized that this is not going away and, one way or another, it has to be accepted as a question first, with answers to come later. As for the believers all across the spectrum, that only makes them madder!