He's had close encounters of the first kind, makes regular appearances on the Art Bell show, and is the best-selling author of the books Communion and The Hunger.

No, it's not Fox Mulder of the X-Files fame, but author and speaker Whitley Strieber. The king of the UFO world, Strieber's experiences with ETs have made him a world-famous, real-life authority on the subject. And when he's not checking out alien beings, Streiber is busy writing his collection of modern horror tales.

Strieber will be in the Boulder/Denver area this week to promote his new book, The Last Vampire a sequel to his novel The Hunger. The tale of a mysterious female vampire, the book became a 1983 film starring David Bowie, Susan Sarandon, and Catherine Deneuve and has since developed a devoted major cult following.

However, Strieber is best known for his autobiographical alien-abduction tale Communion: A True Story. The book describes in detail Strieber's 1985 encounter with other-worldly entities. To this day, Strieber isn't sure if his experiences were true close encounters with an extra-terrestrial, but the book, which described those experiences vividly, fostered a movie with Christopher Walken and several sequels, including The Communion Letters and The Secret School.

“I started writing about my encounters, because I wanted to find out what they really were,” explained Strieber. “I did find out that society treats this knowledge the same way they treat the insane, but this isn't a laughing matter.”

“There are lots of people who believe they've encountered aliens, and I have just tried to give this topic some serious scientific research. What's really interesting — two years ago all these close encounters abruptly ended — and we're not getting any more reports.”

Alien-abduction tales may have ended, but Strieber feels that there is a growing interest in the UFO topic around the world. Last week all the major news networks covered the strange sky sightings along the East Coast.

However, not even Strieber thinks that everything in the sky is a UFO, and last week is a good example. Strieber says that the glowing red ball that seen along the coast was a meteor, not a UFO. On the other hand, he was very interested in the v-shape lights that appeared to hundreds of witnesses in the New Jersey area.

"The Air Force doesn't even know what UFOs are, so they play games with all the research. What they don't realize is that our culture is hungry to find out this information. It was interesting that the lights appeared right before the meteor, and most UFO reports tend to follow meteor sightings,” said Strieber.

When he's not chasing actual X-files, Strieber is busy writing fiction; a genre that most people don't realize is Strieber's true passion. He enjoys developing characters and bringing stories of horror and suspense to life.

“No matter what else I do, writing fiction is my career,” said Strieber. “I enjoy taking the imagery of close encounter and horror experiences and reflecting those stories in this format. There's something very satisfying about writing fiction, and the characters have a lot of internal resonance.”

According to Strieber, The Last Vampire isn't a sequel in the traditional sense. The tale takes place 20 years after The Hunger, but it continues the evolution of his vampire heroine, Miriam Blaylock. This will be the last book in this series, but Strieber is working on a new novel.

Strieber also writes non-fiction books. He has co-authored The Coming Global Superstorm with late-night radio host Art Bell. Strieber is a regular guest on Bell's program, a call-in show focusing on UFOs, theoretical science and all manner of mysterious technology. The two authors have recently become fascinated with the topic of global warming.

“I get 8 to 9 million hits a month on my Web site about this subject. People are getting concerned about the sudden climate change. When we first wrote the book, we were ritually ridiculed — and it turns out we were right,” said Strieber.

“Now all these papers are getting published, and we're finding out that the ocean currents are affecting the climate. And we're going to be in trouble because Bush cut back all the climate research, and grants to study this subject have been killed. The irony is, if we would take care of this problem, it could be economically profitable to our society.”

And as if this weren't enough material to publish, Strieber has developed his own series of pocketbooks — a small series of paperbacks about UFOs, hidden agendas and the secrets of Our Lady of Fatima.

Strieber is a one-man website on mysterious phenomena as well as an accomplished novelist, perhaps even a Renaissance man for the New Age. While TV fanatics might mourn the loss of Fox Mulder from the X-Files, real-life UFO believers looking for the truth out there can stand in the glow of the always-shining flashlight of Whitley Strieber.~