In one universe, Whitley had never met his wife Anne. In another, she had died and he was walking with a young grandson by the sea. He describes being inside multiple consciousnesses at once, realizing that the individual self is only a fraction of a larger wave form moving through time. Throughout the experience, a small unseen being repeatedly pulled his fingers to keep him conscious for the journey.
Whitley also recounts an earlier incident near the Paramus Mall in New Jersey where he took a highway exit and found himself driving through streets lined with strange flat-roofed sandstone buildings bearing carved snake reliefs. Art and Whitley discuss whether physical death simply means moving to another parallel existence, and whether some missing persons cases might involve people who slipped through and never came back.
Key Moments
The drone photos - most are real, but the German hoax claim: Strieber pushes back on the consensus that the famous 2007 'drone' UFO photos were all CGI hoaxes. He says most of the still photographs were vetted by him and Linda Moulton Howe and came from real, ordinary people, while one elaborate German website that claims credit refused a follow-up interview after speaking comfortable English on the phone.
Thousands of communion letters in a warehouse, ignored by science: Strieber describes the storage space holding thousands of detailed letters readers sent him after Communion - the only systematic ground-level dataset on the abduction experience - and says despite his efforts, no scientist and no foundation has been willing to touch them. A wealthy man is now talking about digitizing them.
Oxford mathematicians: parallel universes are real: Strieber reads from a September 2007 press release on Oxford mathematicians' result that parallel universes - long a theoretical idea - have been narrowed down to the point of being mathematically verified, and he uses this to frame what happened to him personally on a recent night when he experienced his life unfolding simultaneously in multiple universes.
Got into a different bed - and there were dogs: Strieber recounts the specifics of his anomalous night: he meditated in response to a strong urge from The Key, went back to bed agitated at 2 AM, was awake writing emails at 2:17, then got back into what looked like the same bed - but immediately there were dogs on the floor, in an apartment where no one keeps dogs. He thought his late wife had let them in.
Walking to the sea with Anne - in a universe where she didn't die: Strieber describes the most emotionally loaded slip of the night: in another universe, his wife Anne - who died in 2004 of a stroke - was alive, and he was walking with her and his much-younger grandson down toward a bay on the sea in the middle of the day. He says either he has the most extraordinary imagination or some kind of reality was actually involved.