
   ... the following appeared in the November, 1988 issue of BASIS, the Bay
   Area Skeptics' BBS....


                    The "Transformation" of Whitley Strieber

                               by Robert Sheaffer


        On September 21,  1988, viewers of the popular daytime television
        show  "People Are Talking" on KPIX,  Channel 5,  in San Francisco
        saw an amazing thing.  Whitley Strieber,  author of such  popular
        works  of fiction as "The Wolfen",  and "The Hunger",  as well as
        the  best-selling  and  supposedly  true  accounts  of   humanoid
        visitation   in  "Communion"  an  "Transformation",   indignantly
        refused  to  let the hosts of the show do any  promotion  of  his
        latest  book!  No  doubt  the  viewers of  that  show  are  still
        scratching  their  heads about such inexplicable behavior on  the
        part of a guest doing a book promotion tour.  As the other  guest
        on that show,  the one who was all but ignored by the hosts,  let
        me explain why that strange scene happened.

        You  see,  forty-five minutes before air time,  I arrived at  the
        studio  and  was  escorted to the Green Room,  where  guests  are
        groomed and prepared.  There I came upon Whitley Strieber in  the
        midst  of  a  world-class  temper  tantrum.  He  was  indignantly
        refusing  to go on!  He apparently expected to be the only guest,
        and  to  have an entire hour to expound his fantasies  about  the
        humanoid  "visitors" who are said to be lavishing their  unwanted
        attention on him,  unchallenged and unquestioned.  I later  found
        out  that while he had left instructions with those arranging the
        tour that under no circumstances would he appear on any show with
        Philip  J.  Klass,  he  had not ruled out - at least  to  them  -
        appearing  with some other skeptic.  The producer of "People  Are
        Talking,"  Karen Stevenson,  a young woman of great firmness  and
        tact,   was  sitting  there  quietly  enduring  Whitley's  verbal
        assaults.  "I  don't know who this man is," complained  Streiber,
        "and  I  don't know what he will say!" Apparently he expects  all
        opposing opinions to be cleared in advance! Karen firmly repeated
        that  she had made all arrangements with his publisher,  and with
        his publicist,  in accordance with their instructions,  and  they
        had  raised  no  objections.  The young  woman  representing  his
        publicist  sat  there quietly and somewhat  nervously,  obviously
        wishing she were somewhere else.

        Whitley continued his tirade.  Pointing to me,  he shouted  "that
        man is going to go on and challenge my mental health.  He's going
        to call me crazy!  He's with that CSICOP, they're just as nuts as
        those new-age people.  They have a religion of disbelief." In his
        short  tirade against the skeptics,  who he says are in the habit
        of calling anyone who disagrees with them crazy,  Strieber called
        us  "nuts"  or "crazy" three times.  I pointed out the  irony  of
        this, but it was clear from the reaction of all involved that the
        best thing I could say at this point was nothing.  I kept  silent
        for a while,  enabling him to resume his tirade.  He had received
        long letters from Philip J.  Klass of CSICOP,  he said, that were
        "crazy," and made no sense at all. He also charged that the hosts
        of the show were bound to misrepresent his experiences by  saying
        that they are alien visitors,  while he has never claimed to know
        whether or not "the visitors" are extraterrestrial.  Those people
        who  claim  alien  encounters are just as  crazy  as  CSICOP,  he
        charged.

        Streiber  also claimed to be upset about the previous time he was
        on  the  show.  Karen recalled that it had gone  very  well,  but
        Strieber insisted it was a "stupid" show.  She suggested that  he
        was  perhaps  confusing it with a show in some other city  called
        "People  Are  Talking,"  of  which  there  are  several.  No,  he
        insisted,  he remembered it perfectly.  The audience at this show
        was  "stupid",  they  asked "stupid" questions,  and they accused
        him of being crazy. "I don't need your show," he continued, "your
        stupid  show!  My book ("Transformation") is number four  on  the
        Best-Seller list.  I don't need to do these shows! I'm getting so
        fed up with going on shows and having everyone laugh at me!"

        Karen emphasised that a live show would be starting very soon, on
        which  he  had  agreed  to appear,  and that  he  must  meet  his
        commitments.  But  Whitley still refused to go out and appear  or
        debate  with  me.  "Let him go on first.  I'll just do the  final
        segment.  And DON'T mention my book!  I don't want you to mention
        my  book at all if he is going to be criticising it!" Karen  once
        again  reaffirmed that he had made a  commitment.  Then  Strieber
        must have realized that he couldn't win this battle. He gradually
        decreased his level of objection, the bluster slowly fading as it
        became  clear that he was not going to be able to keep me off the
        show. "All right," said Whitley, "I will go on - but I WON'T LIKE
        IT!"  The magnitude of that threat stunned all who were  present.
        "And I'll never come back!"

        At  this  point  we broke to get on  our  makeup.  The  assistant
        director of the show,  Lisa Tatum,  had arrived in the doorway of
        the Green Room a few minutes earlier,  standing there silently in
        obvious  bewilderment.  Karen excused herself to go talk  to  the
        hosts of the show.  The makeup man, who had been listening to all
        this from the adjoining room,  expressed bewilderment to me about
        Whitley's  behavior  as he applied a light coat of powder  to  my
        face.  Returning to the Green Room,  in the few minutes remaining
        before air time,  I attempted to engage Whitley in a  substantive
        discussion,  to  disarm  his hostility.  I succeeded to  a  small
        extent.  He  objected mightily to CSICOP and everything it stands
        for,  displaying an extreme hostility to science as well. To him,
        both CSICOP and the "new agers" are "fascists", because they both
        seek to break down the individual.

        We  went  on stage at this point,  got our  microphones  on,  and
        waited for the show to begin. Whitley said nothing, and still was
        refusing  to  allow the hosts to mention the name of the book  he
        came to promote,  or to show its cover. We came on camera, and as
        I expected,  the early minutes of the show were entirely his,  to
        tell  his stories of things that go "bump" in the  night,  things
        that allegedly come into his bedroom, carry him up somewhere into
        the  sky,  and  poke needles into his skull and nose  to  implant
        probes.  He  neglected to describe at least on the air,  how  the
        beings  allegedly  inserted  a long,  cylindrical  probe  up  his
        rectum,  or  how the female humanoid was very interested  in  his
        penis,  as  was recounted in "Communion." The situation must have
        seemed at least a little odd to the viewers: here is a guest with
        many  weird  tales to tell,  but apparently without any  book  in
        which it is told!

        I  expected to be given a similar amount of time to question  the
        plausibility  and  substance of such claims,  but I had only  the
        briefest opportunity to respond. The two hosts then took the show
        to the audience for questions - previewed by them - all of  which
        except one were directed to Strieber.  It became clear that I was
        never  going  to get the time to speak I was expecting.  I  tried
        interrupting  a few times,  but after speaking only a few  words,
        the  hosts  moved on to something else.  Clearly,  some  kind  of
        "arrangement"  had  been made,  keeping my time to  the  absolute
        minimum,  probably  because they feared that Strieber might  walk
        off  the set.  One questioner asked if Strieber had attempted  to
        trap,  or  photograph the visitors.  Indeed he had,  he  replied,
        using   video  cameras,   still  cameras,   and  other   devices.
        Unfortunately, something always goes wrong with the attempt, such
        as  the  camera  batteries going dead;  "the  visitors"  seem  to
        possess  the  ability to thwart all attempts  to  document  their
        presence!  I  was dumbfounded by a question directed to me by co-
        host  Ross McGowen,  as he worked the audience:  "you DO  believe
        that men have landed on the moon,  don't you?" Apparently Whitley
        had  succeeded in "selling",  at least to the show's  staff,  his
        notion  that  to question his visions of "the  visitors"  was  as
        perversely  blind as those who insist that the space program is a
        fraud!  I responded that 99.9 percent of the scientific community
        do not accept accounts of the kind Strieber relates.

        During  the  commercial break before one of the  final  segments,
        Karen  dashed  out onto the set to ask Strieber if he wanted  his
        book to be "promo-ed".  "NO!",  he flatly replied.  I said that I
        would like to have MY book,  The UFO Verdict, "promo-ed". Whitley
        said,  still annoyed,  "Yes,  go promo HIS book!" This was  done,
        briefly.  In  the final fifteen seconds of the show,  Ross  asked
        Strieber  from across the room if he wanted to mention his  book.
        "NO!",  Whitley snarled,  then paused,  and sheepishly  muttered,
        "it's  Transformation."  Within  seconds of going  off  the  air,
        Strieber  had  left  the  studio.  The 'Prima  Donna'  was  still
        furious.

        In  the  final  analysis,  Strieber's visions of  "the  visitors"
        undoubtedly  have  more to do with religion and  psychology  than
        they do with anything extraterrestrial.  Strieber is far from the
        first  person in history to experience visions of bizarre beings,
        and then become transformed into a tireless evangelist seeking to
        convince  the  world  that they are  real.  Many  religions  were
        founded in precisely this manner;  indeed, the very titles he has
        chosen for these books about "the visitors" places them firmly in
        the  realm of religion.  There seems little room for  doubt  that
        Strieber firmly believes what he is saying. There is also not the
        slightest  bit of physical evidence that any of it is  true.  But
        truth  has never been a necessary element for making a nonfiction
        book a success, as we see from the 1987 success of "Communion" as
        a  #1 Best-Seller,  and "Transformation" now seems headed  toward
        similar success.  As skeptics,  this will not surprise us, but as
        citizens  concerned  about the future of education  and  rational
        thought, it gives us reasons for grave concern.
--

        Robert Sheaffer - Scepticus Maximus - sheaffer@netcom.com

 Past Chairman, The Bay Area Skeptics - for whom I speak only when authorized!

