Zeta Reticulians

As I have previously noted, I am of an extremely obsessive mindset.  Typically, if I become interested in something, whether it is a music album, a show or a compelling topic of some sort, I will devote unparalleled time and resources to it until I have had my fill.  This personality feature is in itself probably worth hours of therapy, so I’ll not go further into it.

My recent obsession has been reading about aliens, UFOs and the debatable existence of human and alien interaction.  A lot of the material I have read is fascinating while other content is downright hilarious (check out www.stopabductions.com).  However, the concept of extraterrestrial contact strikes a particular nerve with me, bringing about some creepy nostalgia.

When I was a kid, probably eight or nine years old, I was not afraid of the Boogeyman.  What I was afraid of were aliens – specifically what ufologists refer to as “greys” or Zeta Reticulians.  They are the generic looking, big-headed, humanoid aliens that have become widespread in western pop culture.  I already realize how insane this post is beginning to sound, so let me just say this:

I am writing about a childhood fear, not anything paranormal.

I remember exactly how it started.  On a typical sunny day in Tucson, AZ, I was watching television.  During the commercial break for one of the shows, a popular Time-Life commercial for Time-Life’s Mysteries of the Unknown book series came on.  I was actually able to find a copy of this video on YouTube:

Those very first images of the sketchbook-drawn aliens are what started it all.  Combined with the creepy music in the commercial, little David found what totally creeped him out.  I think it took a while for those alien images to gestate in me. At that age, my crazy little mind had already begun to manifest some obsessive tendencies, and after I while, I developed a full-blown paranoia of aliens.  Eventually, I became convinced that aliens did exist, and my paranoia literally grew into the stuff that nightmares are made of.  Around this time, my mom or my dad was reading a book called Communion, a New York Times bestseller about an alien abduction.  The book’s cover featured the head of one of the greys on it, and I would occasionally torture myself by looking at it.

I am not sure if I told my parents about the horror I was experiencing.  I do remember I spent a lot of time thinking about aliens, and at night, those fears became even worse.  At that age, I still believed in God, and at night I would pray to God, asking that He make sure that aliens don’t come and get me.  One night, alien abductions were a featured theme on Unsolved Mysteries.  Much like I would torture myself looking at the eerie face of the alien on the cover of Communion, I forced myself to watch the episode.  I don’t remember anything about the episode, but I remember it scared the hell out of me.  Sometime after watching the show is when I expressed my dread of aliens to my parents.  My parents made sure I didn’t watch that show any more.  Even so, when the show came on, I would be able to hear the theme song from my room, and it would send my brain into a tailspin of dreadful thoughts of alien visitation.

It got so bad that I would go to bed every night worried that this was the night the aliens would come for me.  The waking horror story that I had slowly constructed became more and more complex and I can recall developing a routine that can only be described as OCD-like.  At night, I would crawl into bed.  I would make sure that the light was left on in my room.  Then I would ask God to keep the aliens away from me before turning on my radio and listening to the calming music on classical music AM channel.  I would turn my back to the window because for some reason, I felt like the aliens would be more prone to visit me if they saw me looking out at the sky.  And the cherry on the OCD sundae: I would tuck every part of my body under the covers.  My fear was that if I did not, aliens who came to visit me would somehow manipulate any exposed limbs and turn them into alien limbs.

Yeah, I think I had the makings of little crazy when I was a child.

Somehow my fear of aliens eventually cooled from a raging hell storm into a milder smoldering delusion.  Even when I was a teenager, I would occasionally freak myself out that aliens were coming to get me.  I saw Fire in the Sky when I was 15 or 16, and I had trouble sleeping that night.  To this day, if I am in bed at night, I will change channels if there is a special on Discovery or The Science Channel about aliens.

Now, I’m off to do some more research on those pesky humanoids.

- David C. Garcia