PARADE MAG FALSELY CALLS STRIEBER EPILEPTIC
CNI NEWS BULLETIN June 12, 1995

As this issue of CNI News [June 12, 1995] was in final preparation, we received from Whitley Strieber an urgent notice regarding an article that appeared in the nationally syndicated Parade Magazine, stating that Strieber is an epileptic. This allegation can seriously undermine Strieber's claims of contact with “the visitors,” as some skeptics have argued that “temporal lobe epilepsy” is a likely cause of hallucinatory or delusional experiences of “abduction.” As Strieber notes below, he has already been tested for this malady and found to be not epileptic. PARADE therefore stands accused of a potentially serious misrepresentation of fact which, whether intentional or not, attacks the validity of contact experiences such as those described by Strieber in his new book Breakthrough.

Strieber's letter reads as follows:

On June 11, Parade Magazine falsely stated that I am an epileptic, implying that they got this information from the Epilepsy Foundation of America. I am not an epileptic and have been extensively tested for this disease and diagnosed with a normal brain, a fact that I have stated in my books and many interviews. At no time has Parade or the Epilepsy Foundation or – in fact – anybody ever asked to see my medical records on this matter.

Parade made a false statement, whatever their source. It was calculated to spread doubt about the validity of my work at a time when Breakthrough is just coming out. Now it will no doubt be picked up by the rest of the media as “fact.”

Please distribute this as widely as possible, and, if you wish, take the time to write a letter of protest to Parade, demanding that they retract the statement. This letter is going to everybody online who has written me. I hope that you get it into as many places as possible.

– Whitley Strieber