Whitley Strieber, Communion, and the Question That Won’t Go Away

In this episode of From the Void, we examine one of the most famous — and most controversial — alien abduction accounts ever recorded: the experiences of Whitley Strieber.

Strieber wasn’t a fringe figure chasing attention. He was a successful horror novelist living in upstate New York when, in the mid-1980s, he began reporting a series of disturbing encounters that would ultimately lead to the publication of Communion — a book that changed the public conversation around alien abduction claims forever.

What makes Strieber’s story so enduring isn’t just what he claimed happened — it’s how seriously it was taken by many researchers, therapists, and readers, and how deeply it continues to unsettle even decades later.

In this episode, we explore:

• Who Whitley Strieber was before the abduction claims
• The events that led to the writing of Communion
• What Strieber reported experiencing — and how those memories emerged
• Whether there were corroborating sightings or reports in the area
• Why the emotional consistency of those involved complicates easy dismissal
• And how Strieber’s case sits at the crossroads of psychology, trauma, folklore, and the unknown

Rather than arguing for a single explanation, this episode asks a more difficult question:

What do we do with experiences that feel real to the people who lived them — even when they defy explanation?

Who Is Whitley Strieber?

Before Communion, Whitley Strieber was best known as a bestselling author of supernatural and horror fiction. His credibility, literary success, and reluctance to frame his experience as entertainment made his story uniquely disruptive.

Strieber never claimed certainty about what happened to him. Over time, his explanations evolved — ranging from extraterrestrial encounters to consciousness-based phenomena — but the emotional core of his account remained strikingly consistent.

Why This Case Still Matters

Strieber’s story sits at the center of a much larger pattern:

• Thousands of reported abduction experiences worldwide
• Common themes across unrelated witnesses
• The role of memory, sleep paralysis, hypnosis, and trauma
• And the uneasy overlap between subjective experience and objective reality

Whether Communion represents contact, psychological phenomena, or something else entirely, it remains one of the most important primary texts in modern UFO and abduction lore.

Featured Works & References

Whitley Strieber

• Communion
• https://www.harpercollins.com/products/communion-whitley-strieber
• Transformation
• https://www.harpercollins.com/products/transformation-whitley-strieber
• Breakthrough
• https://www.harpercollins.com/products/breakthrough-whitley-strieber

Related Researchers & Context

• Budd Hopkins — abduction researcher and author of Intruders
• Dr. John E. Mack — Harvard psychiatrist and Pulitzer Prize winner who studied abduction experiences
• The broader wave of abduction reports in the U.S. during the 1980s–1990s

(Future episodes will explore Mack’s work and how researchers attempted — and struggled — to study these experiences scientifically.)

A Note on Approach

From the Void approaches stories like this with care.

We distinguish between:

• Verifiable facts
• Personal testimony
• Psychological explanations
• Cultural and historical context

We don’t rush to conclusions — because the most honest answer is sometimes uncertainty.

Listen & Continue the Conversation

If this episode left you unsettled, curious, or conflicted — that’s the point.

Because some stories don’t ask us to believe.

They ask us to listen.

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