Message #19048

[Bianca]

After I convinced myself that I had fully recovered from the experience, I was left puzzled by a smell of sulphur which lingered in my room for two days afterward. This smell had accompanied the other experiences and had been the most physical part of them. This time I opened my windows and used room sprays to get rid of the odour, but this did not completely dispel it. When I went to bed I still could smell it in the bedclothes. This convinced me even more strongly that I was witnessing some very real events and that I would no longer be wise to assume they had been my imagination or dreams.

I felt I should bring some IFSB officers into my room and have them witness the odour, but thought better of it. I did not want to divulge my experiences to anybody, for fear that it might be repeated and I would be thought of as a crackpot or insane. If publicity should get in the newspapers, I would become the laughing-stock of Bridgeport, and, worse, I might lose my job. My best friends would advise me to see a psychiatrist and I might even end up in a mental hospital.

I knew that people throughout history have witnessed strange events but were unable to convince others they were telling the truth. Many people are not convinced of these matters until they, themselves, experience them-then they look for believers, only to be met by charges of "fake" and "fraud".

It is a lonely position you occupy when you have looked into the fantastic, and there is nobody to believe you have actually done so. Picture yourself, say, alone on a beach at night, when suddenly out of the sky a flying saucer appears and lands a few feet from you. Strange figures get out and walk toward you. They greet you and then get back into the ship and sail away. You go home and tell others what you have witnessed, but with no proof, other than your reputation for truthfulness, to offer. They laugh and tell you that you should lay off the stuff for a while, that you are seeing much more than the average person-they see only snakes! How could you convince them; how could you win when they are all against you? I felt up against the very same thing after the happenings in my room. I did not know what to do or where to turn.

After some time went by and nothing further happened to me, I decided that I should write up the whole thing in Space Review, so I made a notation in the April number that I would make a startling revelation in the July issue. I consulted two of the officers at the meeting and took them into my confidence about everything that had happened. But they were of the opinion that I had invented the story in order to gain more publicity for IFSB, and insisted they didn't want their names dragged into it. They said they felt that the policy of the IFSB was to tell the truth and nothing but; if I went ahead with my plans they would drop out of the organisation, and such an action would make me appear as mentally unbalanced.