Whitley Strieber details his 1985 abduction by Greys and a Nordic soul slave, recounting a terrifying fall into space where he confronted intelligent monsters after hypnosis with Dr. Donald Quine recovered suppressed memories. He contrasts this success with a failed session involving Bud Hopkins due to his own paranoia, noting how media outlets like the New York Times initially spiked reports of his reality. The discussion expands to listener Jose's sighting of a hovering SUV and sky spears near cattle, while promotional segments feature AI video reconstructions of UFO encounters and Jake Barber's experience with a sacred feminine presence, collectively challenging scientific skepticism regarding extraterrestrial contact. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: CohereLabs/cohere-transcribe-03-2026, Qwen/Qwen3-ForcedAligner-0.6B, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Greys Playing Patty Cake00:02:09
I've seen them in a shop stealing things while controlling the minds of all the other people in the shop.
All of a sudden, a man, a ridiculously disguised gray, and this gigantic little boy show up.
What is going on here?
Then the gray and the giant little boy start playing patty cake.
And they start playing patty cake, and their hands start to move so fast it's making like a.
You can't see their hands.
A crowd gathers.
I mean, we're in an airport at the baggage claim area.
It's not secret.
And people are watching this, and you know, they're clapping, and the little boy sort of bops a couple of times and turns and walks toward the wall, and suddenly he's just gone.
The guy beside me says, Did you see that?
I said, Yeah, I think they want companions, as I say, but they'll take slaves if they don't get companions.
I know them too well.
What does that mean?
They'll take slaves.
It means soul slaves.
It means they'll take over your soul.
You knew for certain it was not a human being.
How did you know?
I can't get into that, but suffice to say, it was in a.
Situation with a.
It was in a situation where I was once involved in this with some people from the Defense Department.
He was a Nordic.
Was there anything particular about this being that felt unhuman?
His eyes.
On occasion, people have come into close, into physical contact.
With the Greys after meeting me.
Maybe it'll happen to you.
What's the end look like?
You have to look at yourself, it's you becoming self aware.
You, Chris.
Becoming Self Aware00:06:57
Hey, my name's Jose.
Back in 2013, I had just gone off work around 10 p.m.
Until I got to this stop sign, there was an SUV stationary, still running.
It was right across from me.
The car was empty, but still running.
I then slowly drove past the car and heard a loud humming noise coming from the east of me, maybe about 50 yards or so.
When I looked over, I saw what appeared to be a car-sized object floating in the air, looking at cattle.
The object was beautiful.
The colors kept changing from purple to red and green and so on.
I then drove off, looked up into the sky, and I saw these three large spears in the air.
All right.
Well, we are rolling.
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to another episode of Debriefed here today in the studio.
I'm joined by none other than the legendary Whitley Strieber.
Thank you for joining me, Whitley.
Already a legend and yet still so young.
Absolutely.
I would consider you a legend in this field and definitely an iconic figure.
Author of, how many books have you put out?
Like 40?
Yeah, something like that.
It's too many.
But most recently, I mean, obviously, more famously, Communion, which was a New York Times bestselling book, stayed up there, number one spot for like six months.
This Book here, which I have here, which I was going to ask you, by the way, at the end of the podcast, if you wouldn't mind signing them?
Of course, I'll sign them.
And I'll keep one for myself.
And then I like to do some giveaways for the audience here so that they can have them as well.
Absolutely.
Possibly the most recognizable cover in, if not the UFO space, but like this whole phenomenon space.
Haunting, haunting story, profound.
I think this book obviously resonated with.
Millions of people around the world, and especially uh, experiencers, uh, who didn't know how to put words or images onto the things that they were experiencing until this came out.
That's right.
But then, most recently, and this is something I do want to talk about today, is The Fourth Mind.
Yeah, The Fourth Mind.
This is a book where you cover, um, not only the biology and the anatomy of these uh, visitors, but also, I mean, you delve heavily into sort of The consciousness part of it and the reasoning behind it.
And I just thought it was an endlessly fascinating read.
So I'm really looking forward to talking about that.
So, Whitley, thank you so much for joining me today.
Well, it's a pleasure to be here.
And I have never been to Montreal before.
It's nice to be in Canada.
So I'm glad to be here.
Well, Canada's glad to have you.
And I know that you're from LA.
So this is a bit of a, or around LA.
So this is a bit of a striking difference in terms of weather.
Yeah, the snow is real.
Very surprising.
Was that a conspiracy in LA?
No, no.
If you see snow in LA, it's going to be in a theme park.
I see.
Yeah.
Okay.
I have some questions here that I mean, I'd love to answer all of these questions, but I also just don't want to be too distracted from this.
And I, you know, we've had a brief conversation here and getting to know each other, but that's something I'd like to do within the next few hours is just kind of get to know each other.
Can we start by talking about just communion a little bit?
Sure.
Perfect.
It was for me, I only read this recently.
And, you know, for me, that book is, yeah, it's haunting.
There's some wonderful things in there, but there's some terrifying things in there as well.
There is a line in the book that stuck with me that I've sort of had in my mind ever since reading it.
And it really, for me, sums up the experience.
And it was, I wish I lived in a prison.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I remember that.
And I felt.
After the experience gelled, and it took a while because right afterwards, I mean, I was in no way expecting aliens to show up in my life.
I mean, I didn't even know they were out there.
I'd had experiences, a lot of experiences when I was a child, but they were so buried by that time.
No idea, none, that this could happen.
Eventually, after struggling with it for about six, four to six weeks, I was left facing the fact that it was real.
And what that line expresses is that the ground came out from under me, and I found myself standing in empty space and falling and falling forever.
And I thought to myself, this is a fall that has no end.
I'm just here.
And I think when I wrote that line, that was what was in my mind.
Yeah, it's a scary thought to wish yourself into a place like that, but a place like that, perhaps, that provided a little bit of protection as well.
Exactly.
The idea was it would provide protection because, you know, I'm used to the visitors in my life now and I love them dearly.
I'm glad they're here.
But that was not true then.
Then it was like, it was really like, Real monsters who were far smarter than I was.
They're not actually far smarter than we are, but that's how they appear initially because you don't know what's going on.
And they're in complete control of the situation because of abilities that they have.
But so it was overwhelming and terribly frightening.
And I thought to myself, how do I get out of this?
How do I get out of this?
And there was no way.
I could push it under the rug.
I could pretend it didn't happen.
I could be pissed off for the rest of my life about what did happen.
Or I could go for it.
Facing The Encounter Head On00:02:17
And sometime during the writing of communion, I decided I would go for it.
I was going to do this.
And I said, Annie says, Well, what are you going to do?
And I said, Well, why don't we do this?
Why don't we go out in the woods, like at 11 at night, and back to the place where I'm pretty sure it happened?
She says, We?
I said, Yeah, well, of course.
She said, Whitley, it happened to you.
I've got a little boy.
In the sleep in the bedroom, in his bedroom.
I'm not leaving the house.
You do it.
And I thought to myself, whoa, I'm kind of alone here.
But I did it.
I did it anyway.
Crazy guy.
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Bud Hopkins Hypnosis Session00:08:19
Yeah.
I mean, it takes a.
It takes a special kind of drive to be able to do something like that or to be able to face this head on.
It's a special kind of craziness.
I don't want to, don't think of me as a hero.
I was too scared to do it and too scared not to do it.
I had to, I had to face my fear because I couldn't live with it.
And that helped you over, overcome it to a certain extent.
I didn't overcome it.
I got used to it.
There's a huge difference.
Yeah.
And I just recently, the lady who had a close encounter had an experience where they did something to her to make her fear go away.
She sent me an email about this.
And I thought, boy, I wish they'd done that to me.
Interesting.
Have you ever thought of, because obviously, you know, through these hypnotic regression sessions that you've had to, Sort of recollect a lot of these experiences.
Have you ever thought of using those same techniques to maybe attenuate some of the fear or?
I don't want to attenuate the fear.
And, you know, the whole issue of hypnosis was a huge one in my life because even though at the time I would, you know, because I'd been a writer, I had brushed up against hypnosis once or twice as not something I'd never done, but as something that interested me enough to read about it.
And, uh, The problem with hypnosis is when you're in a state of hypnosis, you're unconsciously attempting to please the hypnotist.
And I was initially very concerned about that because Bud Hopkins, who very kindly took me under his wing, wanted to hypnotize me, but he wasn't a professional hypnotist.
So I said to him, No, I'm not going to do that.
And he said, Well, what if I got you?
Someone who's very practiced.
I said, Well, yeah, then I would.
He calls me a few days later and he says, Well, I've got Dr. Donald Quine.
And I look him up.
He's the head of the New York State Department of Psychiatry, the top guy in psychiatry in New York.
And not only that, he's a world famous forensic hypnotist who's found all kinds of, it solved crimes and done all kinds of things with this forensic hypnosis.
In other words, Bud had gotten me the best in the world.
And I thought to myself, I can't say no to this because if anyone can do this right, it's this guy.
And that's where the hypnosis from communion came from.
And I really never, I tried it with Bud later, but I was so paranoid about it not working that it didn't work.
Yeah.
That's part of, that's part of the, you know, that's part of hypnosis as well.
As a magician myself, I've practiced hypnosis for entertainment, you know, purposes quickly, understood the, Immense power that it holds.
Yes.
You know, and for anyone thinking, well, hypnosis is subjective and all this, you know, I've done it myself, right?
I've seen people who are completely familiar with these other friends, and then their friends suddenly forget words or their feet are stuck to the ground.
Like suggestion is incredibly powerful.
And so once you start understanding how deep hypnosis goes into the subconscious, And how much suggestion can dictate our reality, then you can understand both the pros and cons of hypnosis.
That, yes, suggestion can be implanted.
Right.
But at the same time, you can use it to unlock, you know, a lot of very deep and otherwise hidden memories.
That's exactly right.
And Dr. Klein knew just how to do that correctly.
Yeah.
He was very good at it.
And, you know, both of us, we started out laughing at Bud behind his back.
I mean, we were saying, you know, he's going to come in with his tape recorder.
He's so sure it's aliens.
And, Dr. Klein thought it was a crime that I'd been assaulted.
And so did I. At that point, I had not, I had no, we did, I had the big black eyes and all that stuff in my head, but Bud had been really careful to shield me from any awareness of any of that so that I didn't, you know, I still was thinking it's a crime.
And he had, I'd gone to him simply because of the fact that I had read in this book by Jenny Randalls, Science and the UFOs, that, uh, A part of it was a story that sounded like what happened to me, only it was about alien abduction.
And Bud's name was mentioned.
So I said to myself, I'll explore this avenue because, you know, I'm not going to just leave any stone unturned here.
And Ann and I went and met him, and he was very sweet and very kind and very convinced that this was real.
And we basically left the house thinking, you know, he's a nice guy, but.
He's definitely gotten somehow mixed up about reality.
Well, misguided.
Yeah, not even.
Yeah, exactly.
But then he calls me up.
He wants to talk again.
We go back over.
He wants to hypnotize me.
He's all excited.
And that's when it led to Dr. Klein.
And all of a sudden, things changed because Dr. Klein said to me, Whitley, this happened to you.
He said it just like that.
And anyone that talked to him, even privately, And I, people, a reporter from the New York Times was going to write a big story about it, but didn't because Dr. Klein said it really happened to him.
I'm standing by that.
And therefore, the story didn't appear in the New York Times because the New York Times only had one viewpoint.
It's all a big laugh.
So they didn't publish the story, they spiked it instead.
Wow.
Oh, that's the media's, the intellectual world is having a lot of trouble with this because.
They feel, I mean, I did too.
I am an intellectual, I think.
I mean, maybe my wife wouldn't agree with that, I'm sure, but nevertheless, no, I'm kidding.
She would.
But you feel like we're at the top of the food chain.
Our scientists and intellectuals, we know the best things there are to know.
And now suddenly someone comes along who's farther up on the food chain.
And not only that, they don't want to talk to us.
They just want to talk to the hoi polloi.
I'm sorry, but Mr. New York Times reporter, he ain't going to like that and ain't going to buy into that.
And so it's hard.
It's still very hard for most.
People in the sciences and the academy and in the intellectual community to get their heads around this.
Yeah.
And it's one of those things of, you know, constant shifting goalposts and where the soft sciences, it seems, you know, there's that push to get a lot of the respected quote unquote names in the soft science community to acknowledge this.
But then once they do, then it's to even bring it into the hard science.
Like there's all these different hurdles that one has to go through to even just be.
You know, able to be shared on one of these platforms like the media.
But that's, I mean, that's the lovely part about what we're doing here today.
You know, who needs the New York Times?
Well, actually, we do need our intellectual community and our science scientists to get over what they are experiencing, which is a form of ontological shock, the shock of the new.
Sharing Ontological Shock00:00:36
And they listen, they're all in it.
And even Jake Barber is in it without knowing it.
Jake Barber is, of course, the guy who has been out recently on Insider and he's engaged in various ways with the phenomenon on the secret side.
So he says.
What do you make of that?
One of the things Jake Barber said was that he had experienced being possessed by a very, what felt to him like a very sacred feminine presence.