Whitley Streiber sees a drone (really!)

[Gil Bavel]

repost from Whitley Strieber's Unknown Country email:

Whitley Strieber Sees a Drone

This morning at 4:53 AM, Whitley Strieber saw a drone over Santa Monica, California. The Striebers are in California seeing friends, and Whitley has sent me the following email, with permission to publish it. He will write a journal entry about his experience that will be posted on Saturday, December 8.

And remember, there are a lot of people out there lying about the drones and trying to debunk them. But these people ignore ONE THING: Linda's interviews with credible eyewitnesses. Do not be deceived about this.

This is his email:

Well, in one sense the drones mystery is solved because at 4:53 this morning, I saw one.

I had an extremely restless night, full of complex and astounding dreams that I will record in a journal on my website. They also involved my book the Key and the crop circles, and have led me to a very clear understanding that there is a new level of consciousness available to us now. The dreams lasted from about 3:00 to the moment I woke up and saw the thing outside, which was at exactly 4:53. (I know the times because I sent one of my agents an email at 2:47 about a business matter, then went to bed and was shortly asleep. When I saw the drone, I was looking across the bedroom toward the window, with my wife's lighted clock just visible below the window.)

I woke up lying on my side, and saw the thing moving just below and in the bottom edge of the clouds. It was stormy. The object was enormous, and from where I was lying it must have been no more than a few hundred feet overhead. It appeared almost level with the line of the roof that is visible outside my window. It was moving toward our building at a stately pace, gliding easily, like a dirigible. I had the impression that it was quite large, but obviously, no way to tell for sure. Because of the clouds, I did not see the characteristic tall antennae on it, but I did see structure that looked a lot like what the bicyclists photographed. I immediately woke Anne up and went to the window. But we could not see it from the window.

I looked for a while, trying to see if I could spot some edge of it in the clouds. It had not been moving fast at all, so there was reason to believe it was still there. Not seeing it, I went to the dresser and got my cellphone, which has a camera in it, and put it beside the bed. I then lay down and turned over to the same position I had been in when I first saw it--and there the thing was again, clearly visible just below the cloud cover. Now it was much closer to the house. When I moved my head to get up again, I could no longer see it. When I returned to the original angle, I could see it again. This time, it was gliding west, toward the ocean, only its lower structure visible in the clouds. I opened the cellphone, in an attempt to take a picture of it from that angle, but by then it had passed beyond the edge of the window. I saw nothing more of it, but there is no question in my mind at all but that they are real.

[David Biedny]

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm........

[Gil Bavel]

Have you guys heard from him yet?

[ABR486]

I would love to hear Strieber on The Paracast. By the way, knowing that David and probably most folks (including myself) think the Drone photos are fakes- this could make a Whitley interview even more interesting. Whitley has to know that most folks think the pics are hoaxes. I checked out the Unknown Country boards and even people on it were talking about them being fakes. So for him to come out and say this- it's definitely gonna resurrect the charges of his experiences being due to hallucinations. Has anyone definitively traced back the drone pics to their origins? I've heard a lot about them being viral marketing- do we know the company yet? I don't know, in a way I give Whitley credit for coming forward with this. He has to know he's gonna get a ton of crap. And thanks to gilbavel for sharing this info!

[Frootloop]

Theres has been a great deal of talk going on at www.openmindsforum.com regarding this. I posted a copy of the same email as above over there (I didnt post it here as I knew the general concensus here of it being a hoax).

I have to wonder if what Whitley saw was hallucination fed by an expectation of seeing the drone while in the area.

Theres been plenty of possible stories of viral marketing surrounding this story, but so far, none have been proven.

[Gil Bavel]

Get real. That's a pretty detailed hallucination. And by the way...

...Why on Earth would you accuse Whitley Streiber of hallucinating, twice, and for long enough to get his cell phone camera out?

Why don't you just call him a liar and be done with it?

Oh, yeah, he's going to risk his considerable career--right before pre-production starts on the biggest part of it, the 2012 movie--on a hallucination. Don't you think by now, Whitley knows the difference?

This came from his official web site email--he obviously wants people to know _he_ thinks he saw one... why can't you take him at his word?

Is it because YOU don't believe him, or Because you think that the consensus here is that it's a hoax?

[Frootloop]

Originally Posted by gilbavel

Get real. That's a pretty detailed hallucination. And by the way...

...Why on Earth would you accuse Whitley Streiber of hallucinating, twice, and for long enough to get his cell phone camera out?

Why don't you just call him a liar and be done with it?

Oh, yeah, he's going to risk his considerable career--right before pre-production starts on the biggest part of it, the 2012 movie--on a hallucination. Don't you think by now, Whitley knows the difference?

This came from his official web site email--he obviously wants people to know _he_ thinks he saw one... why can't you take him at his word?

Is it because YOU don't believe him, or Because you think that the consensus here is that it's a hoax?

Firstly, try Decaf.

Secondly, I have a lot of time for Whitley Streiber and wouldnt be so rude as to (as you suggested) call him a liar. I see nothing wrong with keeping an open mind either way. But who really knows how another person interprets and recalls an event?

Thirdly, is it wrong for me to question what another person sees or experiences? Surely it doesnt matter if I believe or disbelieve anyones account of an incident..... or perhaps it does... perhaps it matters to you? maybe you can tell me what to believe

[Chuckleberryfinn]

I know there are some Strieber fans on this board. Forgive me.

Communion was fascinating but everything Strieber says these days comes off as so much bullshit. Master of the Key, 2012, Pleidians following his literary career, and now he's seeing drones.

I consider him an unreliable narrator.

Master of the Key, give me a friggin break. Maybe next he'll introduce us to Guardian of the Secret Doorway.

[Michael L.]

Didn't the drones turn out to be a promotion for AlienWare or something?

Yeah, here is The Daily Grail's coverage:

http://dailygrail.com/node/5594

Personally, I think Whitley is getting a little nutty... he is hanging around with William Henry (what does he claim to be? some kind of mythologist or something... he doesn't even seem to understand that ancient, foreign cultures did not speak English) too much!

[Chuckleberryfinn]

From Strieber’s “Unknown Country” (www.unknowncountry.com)

“In the two years after I met him [the Master of the Key], I fretted about writing his words down because I feared that he was really me. Just me. So how could there be any credibility for force behind the words?”

He continues:

“So I come to a new peace inside myself. I am not going to worry anymore about the Key, and the question of whether or not the Master is really a fictional character. He cannot be fictional, because he said things that, at the time, I did not believe and would never, personally, have said. So he was, indeed, an authentic mystery.”

Whenever Strieber mentions “The Master of the Key” (Rick Moranis had already trademarked “Key-Master), he always includes a few lines reflecting on the possibility that the individual could simply be a fictional character he made up. He implies that the person could be and probably is real but concludes in ambiguous language that perhaps it’s all make-believe.

This is called “unreliable narrator.” It has been a common literary device for a long time. “Don Quixote,” by Cervantes, was one of the first books to use it so effectively. Almost all of the classical authors have used it from time to time. It makes a story more fascinating because it causes the reader to question whether the narrator is actually telling the truth. It creates mystery and ambiguity. The narrator becomes a character in the story.

That’s what Strieber is doing here, I think: standard literary practice to generate mystery and a greater readership. I’m not knocking him for it. He is obviously a talented storyteller.

And as for getting mad at people who question the reliability of his claims, Gil, consider what I’ve said here and realize that Strieber himself generates the criticism with this kind of language.

Maybe some aspects of Communion really happened -- I don’t know. But there is nothing special about 2012, there is no Master of the Key, Pledians do not follow him around at airports and read his books, and he does not see Drones.