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54 The realization startled her, and Beth got up in great agitation. She went to the kitchen to make coffee and tried to figure out what had happened, but without success. Then she went to take a shower, and that was when she noticed that both of her knees were coated with a chalky white substance, as if she’d been kneeling in the unknown powder. But she couldn't imagine where she might have been, for the substance was unlike anything in her house. In spite of her agitation, the morning’s activities had to go on, so Beth woke up her children to get ready for work. Before he left, her son remarked that something might have happened to him during the night because he’d discovered a puncture on his forearm that he couldn’t explain. When they returned in the evening, Beth told them about the events of the previous night: the strange sounds, the missing time, the white substance, and the apparent fact that she must have been out of the house temporarily. But her son, who'd slept at the foot of Beth’s bed in a sleeping bag, said he didn’t think that was possible. “She was sitting in bed last night,” he told his sister. “She acted afraid, talking to someone. | saw a figure in the doorway,” he added, but at the time, he said, he couldn’t get up and apparently fell back asleep. Everything about the event remained a mystery. In this final account from Beth’s ongoing experiences, an event occurred which had identical details to a bizarre report | had learned about from a close relative. Beth’s parallel story confirmed that it wasn’t the imaginings of a single mind. Either the aliens were actually doing these things, activities that were not familiar from other abduction accounts, or they were creating the same virtual-reality scenario for at least two unrelated abductees. Beth was in Miami when the experience occurred, staying with a friend and sleeping on his couch. One night, she awoke and watched in amazement as “a rectangle of light, like a very thin page of paper” came in through the window. She could see an area in the center where white, pink, and purple lights were moving about. The rectangle of light stopped in mid-air, and out of its center emerged a full-grown man, very tall, wearing a tight-fitting suit and a small helmet. The man stood up and leaned over her, bringing his face very close to hers. He was above her, but as she stared into his eyes, she said she felt as if she were falling. That's where the memory ended, and Beth was aware of nothing more until she awoke in the morning, in a dazed, groggy condition that persisted throughout the day. Enduring repeated episodes of such activity, she has no clearer understanding of these events now than at first. She does, however, have feelings about it all, and certain beliefs to which she clings. Although she is never certain of who has abducted her or what they have done, Beth feels that at least one of her experiences, the 1978 event, involved a benevolent group of aliens. “They brought me an enormous sense of affinity with God,” she said, “with the universe, and with love.” But she also recognizes that other forces seem to be a part of the overall phenomenon. "There’s a battle of good and evil,” she said, explaining her feelings about the situation. “Sometimes they interact in our lives, bring pain and confusion, but | hold onto faith that my good ETs will help us.” She feels very strongly that the future catastrophic events the aliens described will indeed