An Exclusive CNI News Interview
(May 1, 1998) -- Prudence Calabrese, like thousands of other people, read Professor Courtney Brown's book "Cosmic Voyage" (Dutton, 1996) and was enthralled by his claim that "scientific remote viewing" could reveal the secrets of extraterrestrial intelligence, here on earth as well as in remote parts of the galaxy. Unlike most other readers, however, Calabrese lives in Atlanta, Georgia -- Brown's home town -- and felt motivated enough to go to Brown for training. Thus began her own strange adventures in ET contact.
Calabrese was headed for a respectable scientific career, nearing completion of a Ph.D. in physics, when she became a student at Brown's Farsight Institute. "All I've ever done was math and science," she told CNI News. But she dropped out of her Ph.D. program soon after discovering that she has a gift for remote viewing. As her new fascination grew, so did her relationship with Brown and Farsight. Soon she became the institute's webmaster, then its vice president. Her husband, Daniel Jencka, also became heavily involved.
Then Prudence Calabrese met the Grey Dude. She says he (gender may be arbitrary) showed up in her bathroom one night. He kept showing up and soon began giving her mental messages she calls "thought balls."
It was never clear to Calabrese that the Grey Dude's visits had anything to do with the Farsight Institute, but Courtney Brown thought they did. Calabrese says that Brown interpreted many of the Grey Dude's messages so as to reinforce the presumed connection to Farsight, even though Calabrese often disagreed.
Toward the end of 1997, for this and other reasons, Calabrese broke away from Brown and resigned all involvement in Farsight. Now 32 years old and the mother of four children, she has formed her own company, TransDimensional Systems (TDS), with her husband Daniel.
Meanwhile, the Grey Dude keeps showing up, leaving messages that by now amount to many hundreds of pages of text.
Prudence Calabrese agreed to an in-depth interview on April 27, 1998, with CNI News editor Michael Lindemann. Excerpts are presented here.
Michael Lindemann: It was while you were involved with Farsight that you began having experiences with the entity you call the Grey Dude. How did your contact begin?
Prudence Calabrese: The first event was the middle of the night, about 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning. I was pregnant at the time. I woke up to go to the bathroom. When I went into the bathroom, there was a little Grey Dude in there. It sounds so ridiculous when I talk about it.
ML: Yes, it does. But that's OK. What was the exact date of this first contact?
PC: [Refers to her journal] It was October 10, 1996.
ML: Had you ever had any close encounters before that date?
PC: I saw a UFO when I was 13 years old. A group of us did.
ML: Say more about that sighting.
PC: I was at a slumber party in December of 1980. There were six of us sleeping over at a friend's house out in the country. We were running around outside, and we saw this orange light come over the trees. As it got closer, we could tell it was like two pyramids that were connected together, a big diamond shaped orange thing. It was huge and it flew right overhead. We watched it, and none of us remembered anything after that until the next morning.
ML: You didn't remember anything?
PC: We didn't even talk about it until a high school graduation party that I went to. Suddenly it just hit me. I said, "Hey, do you remember that UFO?" And that's when we remembered the whole thing and started talking about it. That was three years later.
ML: Looking back, do you think there was missing time that night?
PC: There might have been. I can't be sure.
ML: Have you ever thought of examining that situation, in light of recent events with the Grey Dude?
PC: Yes, I have thought about it. I'm not averse to doing hypnosis.
ML: OK, let's move forward to October 1996. What's it like to walk into your bathroom in the middle of the night and come face to face with an alien? How did you feel at that moment?
PC: It was like an animal reaction. I was completely terrified. I tried to scream, but nothing would come out. Then it disappeared.
ML: It disappeared?
PC: Yes. It didn't fade out. It was just gone.
ML: When you went into the bathroom, did you turn on the light?
PC: No. There's a night-light. It's pretty bright. You can see everything in there.
ML: What exactly does this Grey Dude look like?
PC: It's about 42 inches all. I've measured the wall where he stands. He kind of looks like a Grey alien body shape, but the eyes are different, not as big.
ML: Not the huge "wrap-around shades" type of eyes?
PC: Right. The head is kind of bulbous; there's a small pointed chin, a little mouth.
ML: Does it have ears?
PC: I don't think so.
ML: Does it wear a uniform or any kind of clothing?
PC: I have stared at its neck so much, trying to tell. If he's wearing a uniform, it's exactly the same color as his skin. I think he is, because you can't see any toes. Whatever it is, it goes all the way down and covers his feet.
ML: How many fingers does he have?
PC: Four. The bones are jointed differently so the fingers can face each other. If you took your fingers and did like Spock does -- "Live long and prosper" -- and then bisected your hand between the two sets of two fingers and then folded your hand in half so the two sets of fingers faced each other...
ML: I understand. Have you ever seen an illustration of that kind of hand?
PC: No, I haven't. I don't read that much of the literature.
[NOTE: This very unusual and specific anatomical feature has been reported in at least one other case. The four men involved in the "Allagash Abductions," all accomplished artists, made anatomical drawings of exactly this kind of hand, as shown in the book "The Allagash Abductions" by Raymond E. Fowler (Wild Flower Press, 1993).]
ML: After you saw him, you tried to scream and he disappeared. Then what did you do?
PC: I ran out of the bathroom, back to the bedroom. I was thinking I just imagined it. My husband Daniel told me it was probably a bad dream. So eventually I went back to sleep. In the morning I thought it probably didn't happen.
ML: What happened next?
PC: It happened again the next night. It went almost the same way. I went to the bathroom. I was a little afraid, thinking maybe I hadn't imagined it. And then it was there. The same thing happened. He disappeared, I went back to bed and Daniel told me it was probably a bad dream again. It was a replay.
ML: Were you as upset this time?
PC: Yes. But I thought about it. After the second time, I thought something must be happening. I didn't know what it was -- I still don't -- but I thought that it was some real experience. I don't like to be afraid of things. So I thought about it, and it seemed pretty harmless. It didn't shoot me, and it went away when I was afraid. So the next night, I told myself that I would go to the bathroom and not be afraid. He was there, and I was afraid just like the first and second time. But I didn't try to scream that time. I was just afraid, and it went away.
ML: How long did this go on?
PC: It just kept happening every night. On about the sixth night, I was still afraid but I was trying to get over it, and it was there a split-second longer. That was when I got the first message.
ML: It sounds to me like a conditioning process.
PC: Yes, it seemed like that to me, too. After that, I just wasn't afraid any more. I figured it was just an information thing.
ML: What was that first message?
PC: Let me check. [referring to her journal] A friend of mine is typing them all up to put on the internet.
ML: You're going to post them all on the internet?
PC: Yes, everything except messages of a personal nature. They will all be posted at www.greydude.com. The first message I didn't understand at all. It was something about a fire that was out of control. It was metaphorical. I'm not sure what that was about. The first month's worth were real sketchy and I didn't understand them. I described all of them to Courtney Brown, and he came up with all these interpretations. But I didn't quite agree with all of that.
ML: Did you keep a journal?
PC: Yes, I started one.
ML: Did these encounters continue every night?
PC: Yes, almost every night since then. Every once in a while there's a night that skips.
ML: Do you know why they skip?
PC: No. But for eleven nights in a row -- I think this was October or November of last year -- the grey guy didn't show up. Instead, in the bathroom there was this really tall, slimy, brown lumpy thing. This thing was giving me the message. But it was the Grey Dude, and part of the message was that there were technical difficulties.
ML: Technical difficulties? How do you interpret that?
PC: I don't know. I've never seen the Grey Dude appear. He's always already there. But when he disappears, he's just gone. So there's some kind of interface for him to get here from wherever he comes.
ML: Can you describe this other thing in more detail?
PC: It was brown and shiny and lumpy.
ML: Did it have arms and legs?
PC: It looked like a mountain or a little hill, wider at the bottom. Maybe three feet wide at the bottom up to six inches wide at the top. And touching the ceiling, but it didn't leave a mark.
ML: Did it give you messages the same way the Grey Dude gave you messages?
PC: Yes, you could tell it was the same "person." It may just be that whatever form he takes when he's in the bathroom is something he thinks I would expect to see. I don't know if [the Grey Dude body] his real body. Maybe the brown thing is his real body. Maybe he doesn't have a body.
ML: Are you sure he's actually physically in the room?
PC: He leaves footprints and he smells awful.
ML: How does he leave footprints?
PC: In the bathmat.
ML: He smells awful?
PC: Yes.
ML: Have you ever taken a photograph of him?
PC: No.
ML: Could you?
PC: I don't know. I think about it. But it doesn't make sense at 2:30 in the morning. The only thing that makes sense is to go get the information.
ML: Could you take photos of his footprints in the rug?
PC: I've already taken footprint photos. A whole bunch of people have seen them.
ML: Are you going to post those photos at greydude.com?
PC: Yes.
ML: Good. But would you be willing to ask the Grey Dude to pose for a photo?
PC: I don't know. This is hard to explain. I wouldn't mind asking him, but I never think of stuff like that in the middle of the night. I don't want to say that he puts me in an altered state, but maybe that's exactly what it is. I never ask him anything.
ML: Have other people met the Grey Dude?
PC: Not in my bathroom. But my friend Linda has been determined, ever since the Grey Dude stuff started, that she was going to see him. She has slept over here I don't know how many times. She lives in Texas, not here in Atlanta. Every time she visits, she'll sleep in the bathtub, or outside the bathroom door. We've come up with all kinds of combinations. And every time, she falls asleep exactly at 2:00 a.m. I'll go in the bathroom and see her there, and it doesn't make sense to me to wake her up. She's the person who first found the footprints. And she's smelled him.
ML: Has any other person ever seen the Grey Dude with you?
PC: No.
ML: Have you ever seen any other beings with the Grey Dude?
PC: Every once in a while, maybe five or six times, there's been this really tall, shiny Grey Dude-looking thing, with bigger eyes. He's very insectoid looking, and he's brown, not grey.
ML: How much taller?
PC: Taller than me, so maybe 6'2". I'm 5'8".
ML: Does he have the big huge black eyes?
PC: They're real bulgy, shiny and smooth.
ML: What about other features of his body?
PC: He's very skinny with long arms and long legs. I didn't get a good look at his hands.
ML: Is he wearing a uniform?
PC: No. He just looks shiny and hard. Same color everywhere. Amber brown.
ML: Does he communicate to you?
PC: No. Only the Grey Dude does, except when the Grey Dude was the brown blob.
ML: Have you ever discerned a reason why this other being shows up?
PC: I have no idea.
ML: Do any other kinds of beings ever show up?
PC: Yes. On two different occasions, last November and once over the Christmas Holiday, there was the Grey Dude, the shiny dude, and then another Grey Dude that looked exactly like my Grey Dude -- but I knew which one was mine -- and then a little blob dude, like the size of a bullfrog. Very small. On the ground. Looked oozy and lumpy and green, like a frog blob dude.
ML: Did it have legs?
PC: It was just a blob, and it looked like it had warts all over it, and it kind of pulsated a little bit. But you could tell it was... like a person...
ML: Sentient?
PC: Yes, sentient.
ML: How can you tell that? Did it communicate?
PC: No, it just seemed that way. And part of the message that day was that he was the most important one. The blob dude. It was unusual for him to come out on a field trip.
ML: Was that something the Grey Dude told you?
PC: Yes.
ML: Were the four beings you're describing the same on both occasions last winter?
PC: Yes.
ML: Did you notice if all these guys left footprints on those occasions?
PC: I didn't notice. I don't know.
ML: Have you ever had the impression that you were abducted or taken out of your own situation during any of these encounters?
PC: One time I did, but you can't call it abducted. We were just someplace different all of a sudden. This might have been last summer, I think. I was there in the bathroom, and then all of a sudden, we were someplace else. It was really foggy out. There was this big building in the distance. I don't know where this place was, or what it was supposed to represent. It had all these spires all over it, hundreds of them, and little windows and doors everywhere. And there was some kind of telepathic beacon coming out of it. The message was about this beacon -- that no one was paying attention to it -- but I don't know what that had to do with. It was bizarre. Courtney Brown said it was the Galactic Federation [laughs].
ML: How would you characterize the overall purpose of these contacts?
PC: I have no idea. The messages involve all kinds of things, all kinds of people, and I can't see the connections.
ML: Has the Grey Dude told you why he picked you?
PC: No. In fact, hardly any of the messages ever have to do with me.
ML: You refer to these messages as "thought balls." Can you explain what a thought ball is?
PC: It's a complete idea in its entirety, with all the related ideas completely interconnected, so that it's very non-linear. It's a pile of information, and you have to pick things out little by little.
ML: When you go into the bathroom and visit the Grey Dude, how long does it take you to receive a thought ball?
PC: Getting a thought ball just takes a millisecond. But he's there anywhere from a few seconds to... the longest was an hour and a half.
ML: You stood in the bathroom an hour and a half?
PC: Yes, and I really wanted him to go, because I really had to go to the bathroom.
ML: Once he transfers this thought ball, does he then help you understand it?
PC: No.
ML: Why was he there for an hour and a half?
PC: I have no idea. He just was. The average length of time is about five minutes.
ML: If you get the thought ball when you arrive, what happens for the rest of the time he's there?
PC: Nothing. He just stands there. And I just stand there looking at him.
ML: Is there a purpose to your standing there looking at him?
PC: I don't know.
ML: Have you ever walked out on him?
PC: No. I always wait until he's gone.
ML: Why?
PC: I don't know. It just makes sense.
ML: Do you feel under his control?
PC: No. That's why I can't figure it out. I don't feel like I'm in an altered state. I just feel normal, but I don't have the normal reactions.
ML: When you get the thought ball, are you immediately aware of what's in it, or do you have to wait until morning to think about it?
PC: I can think about it right away if I want to. But most of the time I try not to, because I'm always concerned about interpretation, about putting too much of my own ideas or expectations into it. So I try not to think about it until I get to the point of writing it down.
ML: Does it stay clear in your head, no matter how long you wait?
PC: Every single thought ball is still in my head. I can go back to some of the early ones, and they're exactly as they were in my head. It's like a library. You can pull out a volume any time.
ML: That would suggest that you are becoming a repository of this particular information. As you look across the expanse of what you've been told, do you see any large pattern, any framework or meta-story that makes some sense?
PC: I can almost see it. I'm starting to see how everything fits together, but it's outside my own experience so much that it's very difficult to understand. For example -- this is my own opinion -- when people try to understand the abduction phenomenon, they tend to put very human limitations on what these behaviors are. I think that there's a much larger picture that they're not seeing, that would negate nearly everything they think they understand about it. I think we need to step one giant step backwards and look from a completely different frame of reference, and I think everything would make more sense.
ML: Has the Grey Dude ever addressed the question of abduction per se?
PC: Yes. He's never said his own opinion on it, but I've gotten information. Apparently about six months ago something changed as far as abduction goes -- some big component changed and entered a different phase. It's complicated. Part of it is some kind of government involvement with abductees.... I may be off on my interpretation. There is some government group that has been interacting with abductees and keeping track of them -- and actually reprogramming them in some way, so that when they would undergo abductions they would react in different ways. It was mostly a way of letting whatever this ET phenomenon is... letting the other beings know that the government knew what was occurring.... So this got the aliens upset -- but that's not the best way to describe it. It was interfering with their plan, so they changed it. And now what they're doing is not as detectable. So really, the government shot itself in the foot. They could have learned a lot more if they hadn't messed with it so much.
ML: Are we being invaded? Is the earth being penetrated or manipulated by off-world entities?
PC: I think it has been for eons. I don't thing there's anything new happening now that hasn't been happening for a long time. I don't think there's any War of the Worlds thing going on.
ML: Do you see any prospect of a military-style alien invasion?
PC: No.
ML: Courtney Brown and others often say we're moving toward a time when the earth will be ushered into a higher level of cosmic awareness and perhaps achieve membership in some cosmic organization like the "Galactic Federation." How do you view that?
PC: I don't think that's true. There may be some group out there that's an intergalactic U.N. of sorts. But I don't see any big raise in consciousness, or see us about to be ushered into anything. Life on earth is pretty much going on the way it's gone for a long time.
ML: Many people who claim to have ET encounters say they get messages about future planetary catastrophes. Have you?
PC: People ask me about that all the time. I certainly haven't seen any earth changes or things like that.
ML: Many people also wonder if "the government" is going to divulge UFO information. What do you think? Has the Grey Dude said anything?
PC: Yes. Their hand is going to be forced by some other outside group, some kind of a scientific group. I'm not familiar with them. But they are going to make some kind of a statement that's going to force the government to act, because whoever this is, they are fed up with the cover-up. This is fairly soon. I don't know when. It might be a month, or a couple of years from now.
ML: Is this a U.S. group?
PC: It is primarily American, but there are some international people in the group.
ML: As I understand it, you plan to publish all your Grey Dude material free of charge on the web. Is that right?
PC: That's right. Everything. And I'm starting a whole book about it, and I'll publish that on the internet too. I don't want to make anything on this, and I don't ever want to be seen as any kind of guru.
ML: Is the Grey Dude a guru?
PC: No. To me he seems like a regular person. Maybe it's just a field trip or type of science project for him.
ML: Do you ever ask the Grey Dude questions?
PC: No. Maybe I'm supposed to and I haven't figured that out yet. I don't know how to.
ML: You mean it's always strictly a one-way communication?
PC: Yes, always one way.
ML: Have you ever sat back and puzzled over your own reactions to all this?
PC: Yes. I'm sure there's much more to the messages than I'm able to pull out. But so much of the information is of an alien nature that I can't understand it. I know I'm supposed to, in some way; and I think I'm getting closer to it, but I'm still outside of it. So it may be that this is a long-term developmental process.
ML: In the short time we have left, let's talk about TransDimensional Systems, the new company you've founded with your husband. What exactly is the purpose of TDS?
PC: To get away from the question of whether remote viewing works and bring it to the "What you can do with it" stage. My goal is to bring it to the corporate world, to start using it out there in the real world. We have police departments calling us to look at cases for them. We solved a murder. We've just gotten our first corporate contract. It's fun to train people in remote viewing and to use it to make money. There's no cosmic scheme going on. It's real practical. I think remote viewing is a natural ability that all humans have. I think we do it all the time anyway, and I think that people, if they want to, should be able to work on their abilities and use them.
ML: We have to conclude. In closing, tell us when your new Grey Dude website will be open to the public.
PC: I will have something up [by the time this interview is published]. Within a month we'll have everything up, adding a little bit every day.
[Interested readers can visit the TransDimensional Systems website at http://www.largeruniverse.com, and the Grey Dude website at http://www.greydude.com.]
Original file name: CNI - Grey dude.Prudence
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