Edited excerpts from a letter I just sent to a friend and author Whitley Strieber:

I'm a few pages from being finished with "The Communion Letters," a collection of unsolicited correspondence sent to Whitley Strieber since "Communion" was published. The overwhelming tone of the letters, as Strieber emphasizes, is that whatever the "visitors" are, they're deeply connected to the human "spirit" -- to use a clumsy and perhaps obsolete word. He's indeed retracing veins explored by Jacques Vallee and even Dr. John Mack.

Kenneth Ring's work fits into this whole perplexing quasi-physical paradigm. There remain "nuts and bolts" abductionists such as Hopkins and Jacobs, but I find their work flawed. And I'm not just saying that because the scenario they describe is so sinister. Like Strieber, I think the "visitors" use a metaphorical (as opposed to a literal) syntax when dealing with us. They're penetrating our world and forcing us to expand our definition of reality and self. It sounds cheesy and "New Age" but it's happening nevertheless. Quietly perhaps, but I sense an agenda at work.

I don't think the visitors are necessarily altruists; they may need us in some way, so we should proceed with caution. But if they're an interstellar invasion force, it's rather strange they haven't managed to take over by now.

The risk Strieber takes in his periodic online writings is that people will think he's writing about literal "alien invasion" or demonic possession. He's in a very tricky position. The narrative structure in "Communion" handles it well; it's essentially a book of questions. Professional skeptics lashed out at it because it was reasonable -- even erudite, especially among UFO literature -- and true believers were left cringing because he never explicitly stated that he had been abducted by aliens.