Beyond Communion | The Key | Whitley Strieber announces he has started writing about the Toronto Experience

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Notice: This website does not generally reproduce news articles from Whitley's World. However, since our intention is to archive the writing process, the following excerpt appears here in that context.

Whitleysworld News
14 Sept 2000
(excerpt from Whitleysworld News e-mail newsletter)

I woke up at three fifty-eight on Wednesday morning in a state of considerable pain and disarray. My pajama pants were on backwards and the right side of my abdomen hurt badly. I had a very disquieting memory of being slugged in the stomach by a child of about twelve – hit hard. There was also a memory of somebody screaming at me, demanding that I remember something, accusing me of being an idiot.

I think that this is a vestigal memory of an abduction experience, the first one I have recalled for some years. And I find myself in an interesting situation: I don't believe that there is any reliable way to deal with this. Hypnosis might help, but it's unsure. There has been no money for the brain scan program I suggested in Confirmation, where the difference between real and false memories can be determined using the PET Scanner, so there is no means available to verify hypnotized recall.

So I'm helpless. If I remember more, I will write more.

However, there could be a reason that this happened. I have begun my book about the lengthy encounter in Toronto that took place in June of 1998. Unlike the recent event, the reality of this one isn't in question. It was with a human being who possessed incredible knowledge, and who appeared almost magically in my hotel room at three in the morning. I was wide awake. I took notes. (One thing he said, summing up how climate cycles work, was the inspiration for Superstorm.) I have about fifty pages of conversation between us, and it is totally incredible.

In the past, the visitors have made their presence known when I've started writing about them. Maybe it just happened again.

Whitley Strieber ~

Whiteysworld News 14 Sept 2000
© 2000 by Whitley Strieber
All Rights Reserved.
Excerpt presented under the terms and provisions of Fair Use.

Wednesday, 04 Oct 2000
(posted on Whitley's World message board in response to an inquiry about the Toronto experience)

I remember the guy in the hotel room as a person. He was slight, older, but a perfectly ordinary looking man. At least, that's what I remember. I'm going to publish the whole story soon. I've waited because I wanted to see if he could be found. So far, one slight lead but it didn't pan out. Given that's all I've got after more than two years, I'm going to have to say that I can't prove he was real, which is too bad, because this will inevitably diminish the impact of his often stunning words.

Thursday, 05 Oct 2000

My gut feeling is that he was a member of some kind of secret society. He seemed to possess a great knowledge of human history and religion. But he spoke about mankind as "you," so maybe he was an alien after all. However, he also said that he was a Canadian, but didn't pay taxes.

I doubt that he was an intelligence agent, because nothing he said seemed designed to win me over to any of their agendas.

There is a weird story that the Knights Templar reached Newfoundland and set up a castle there, the ruins of which can still be seen. Also, that there were Europeans already in Canada when the French and English arrived, apparent surviors of this Templar colony. This is discussed in a book called The Labyrinth of the Grail. Maybe he was one of these people.

Saturday, 21 Oct 2000
(posted on Whitley's World message board)

I am having trouble transcribing a conversation that I had in June of 1998 in a hotel in Toronto with the most extraordinary person I've ever met, at least to talk to. I took some notes, then spent the better part of the next two years jotting down bits and pieces of the conversation as I remembered them. Then came time to put it all in order, and sometimes the ideas or something would affect me and I would blank out or have missing time while working. I would work and work, then fiften or twenty minutes would be gone and I would be back where I started. It was the damndest thing. I am finally finished and am going to be writing an introduction and then some comments. The book is called The Key, at least, at the moment. I am hoping to have it out late Nov, early Dec, but it could be later. I just hope that my memory has served me accurately.

Whitleysworld News 27 Oct 2000
(excerpt from Whitleysworld News e-mail newsletter)

I have been working on a new project called The Key. This is centered around a transcription of a conversation I had at three in the morning in a Toronto hotel room in June of 1998. This was no ordinary conversation, even though the man who appeared at my door looked perfectly ordinary. After the event, I thought that I would have the transcription done, based on the notes I took, in a month or so. It has taken years – not of steady
work, but certainly one or two days a week. Since writing Superstorm with Art Bell, I have concentrated on it more and more intensely. Two things have made it hard: first, I am terrified of getting something wrong. At first, I was more concerned that maybe the event didn't happen at all. I had no proof. But later, when I began to get some of the ideas down, my second concern arose. It was obvious that much of this material was totally new and original, and on the face of it, just breathtaking. I ceased to feel that anyone would think I had dreamed it up myself. It's too new, a lot of it, too original. So then my problem became: what if I am adding my own imagination to this? What if I'm messing it up?

This has turned into the most challenging writing experience I have ever had. And I don't think that the document that is produced will be longer than a hundred pages! It amounts to a completely new view of man and God, though, this hundred pages.

When I am closer to publication – hopefully before the end of the year – I will post the introduction in a separate section of the website and send you the address. You will begin to get more of a flavor of it then. ~