extraordinary%20encounters

238 Stellar Community of Enlightened Ecosystems
By the mid-1980s, the Steigers had divorced,
and only Francie maintained enthusiasm
for the Star People notion. Her death, a
few years later, effectively ended what remained
of the movement.
See Also: Channeling
Further Reading
Steiger, Brad, 1973. Revelation: The Divine Fire. Englewood
Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
———, 1976. Gods of Aquarius: UFOs and the
Transformation of Man. New York: Harcourt
Brace Jovanovich.
———, 1983. The Seed. New York: Berkley Books.
Steiger, Brad, and Francie Steiger, 1981. The Star
People. New York: Berkley Books.
Steiger, Francie, 1982. Reflections from an Angel’s Eye.
New York: Berkley Books.
Stellar Community of
Enlightened Ecosystems
Sometime in the 1980s, Je r ry Doran of Wi l mington,
California, claims to have had an out-ofbody
experience. He ascended into space where
he encountered “five blue skinned dolphins
floating inside [a] spaceship.” T h rough telepathy
the dolphins informed him that they we re associated
with the Stellar Community of En l i g h tened
Ecosystems. The community sought to
guide human evolution tow a rd attainment of a
“ Group Mind which includes the animals and
plants of Earth, the Earth itself, the Sun and
similar enlightened star systems throughout the
C o s m o s” (Melton, Clark, and Ke l l y, 1990).
Further Reading
Melton, J. Gordon, Jerome Clark, and Aidan A.
Kelly, 1990. New Age Encyclopedia. Detroit, MI:
Gale Research.
Strieber, Whitley (1945– )
Whitley Strieber began his career as a successful
writer of horror and science-fiction nove l s
but has since become better known as a chro nicler
of his own paranormal and otherw o r l d l y
experiences, including abductions by UFOs .
Born to a prominent San Antonio family, he
attended the Un i versity of Texas, then move d
to New Yo rk to begin a writing care e r. On the
e vening of December 26, 1985, he experienced
Whitley Strieber (Dennis Stacy/Fortean Picture Library)
a number of peculiar encounters of which he
did not have full conscious recall. A subsequent
hypnosis session led him to believe that he had
e n c o u n t e red aliens who inserted a needle into
his brain. Strieber sought out the we l l - k n ow n
abduction investigator Budd Hopkins, who
l i ved not far from him though the two had not
met till then. Hopkins introduced him to psychiatrist
Donald F. Klein, who subjected
Strieber to psychological tests and pro n o u n c e d
him normal. Strieber and Hopkins soon part e d
company on bad terms around the time
Strieber published a best-selling account of his
abduction experiences, C o m m u n i o n( 1 9 8 7 ) .
Communion sparked something of an uproar,
with some critics—most vocally Thomas
M. Disch in The Nation—accusing Strieber of
having written a science-fiction novel that he
was passing off as fact. Strieber also had his
defenders, who argued that he had too much
to lose to engage in that sort of literary fraud.
A follow-up book, Transformation (1988), recounted
further experiences, and it, in turn,
was followed by more books recounting ever