Interstellar Fellers

More from the files of Flying Saucer Week at Paranoia Strikes Deep:

I was joking with a coworker one day. He had a t-shirt with an image of an alien on it: the big head, the big eyes, pointed chin. I said, "The government has released this image so it'll become popular. Then they'll spring the big surprise on us and bring out the real aliens."

His response was, "Stop it, man. You're scaring me."

Years ago I read some pundit say that the image of the small gray alien with the big eyes and big head could be traced to the 1975 TV movie, The UFO Incident, about the alleged abduction of couple Betty and Barney Hill in 1961. Actually, the small gray alien image goes back a ways further than that. I found this drawing in Flying Saucers Comics #2, dated July, 1967.This is the image that has been locked onto as the occupant of UFOs, though, in the past few years.

Author Whitley Streiber has made an industry out of this alien's image and public familiarity with tales of alien abductions. His book, Communion, about his own "abduction," was a bestseller, and he's followed up with other books along the same lines.
He's even written a fictional account of the alleged UFO crash near Roswell, New Mexico, in July, 1947.
I'm not exactly sure what the origin of "the alien" was. It goes back further than the references I have. It has the distinct look of a fetus with the huge head and huge eyes. It goes back to some primal image of ours.

I'm not a believer in little gray aliens, or alien abductions. I think people who come forward with such stories have either a need for attention or a psychosis. The media has jumped right on the idea of abductions, though. The public, in its most unimaginative state, has formed many of its ideas from TV programs like The X-Files or a movie like Fire In The Sky. The medical experiments part of the abduction sounds like something out of World War II Nazi prison camp experiments. Or my last prostate exam. Medical procedures are scary enough to people, but put those fears in a space ship with a bunch of little goggle-eyed gray guys doing anal probes and implanting devices in your nose, and the fear factor goes off the charts. And I'll bet the grays don't even have Medical School diplomas.

More later. Ciao for now.