Carl%20Sagan%20-%20The%20Demon%20Haunted%20World

11
The City of Grief
. . . how alien, alas, are the streets of the city of grief.
Rainer Maria Rilke,
'The Tenth Elegy' (1923)
A
short summary of the argument in the preceding seven
chapters appeared in Parade magazine on 7 March 1993. I
was struck by how many letters it evoked, how passionate were
the responses, and how much agony is associated with this strange
experience whatever its true explanation might be. Alien abduction
accounts provide an unexpected window into the lives of
some of our fellow citizens. Some letter writers reasoned, some
asserted, some harangued, some were frankly perplexed, some
were deeply troubled.
The article was also widely misunderstood. A television talkshow
host, Geraldo Rivera, held up a copy of Parade and
announced I thought we were being visited. A Washington Post
video cassette reviewer quoted me as saying there's an abduction
every few seconds, missing the ironical tone and the following
sentence ('It's surprising more of the neighbours haven't
noticed'). My description (Chapter 6) of on rare occasions seeming
to hear the voices of my dead parents - what I described as 'a
lucid recollection' - were keynoted by Raymond Moody, in the
New Age Journal and in the Introduction of his book Reunions, as
evidence that we 'survive' death. Dr Moody has spent his life
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