By KEN KORCZAK
An Illinois man’s true story of decades of interaction with Grey aliens challenge our conceptions of who we are and our place in the Universe
He was just a toddler. That’s when it began.
Erik Nanstiel was standing up in his crib, gripping the railing with his tiny fingers. Suddenly, emerging from a closet, a glowing orb entered the quiet darkness of his bedroom. The ball of light seemed in no particular hurry. It floated around the room at a leisurely pace, like a person walking around for a casual look-see.
After a few minutes, the orb approached little Erik and merged itself right into his head.
Erik’s youthful mind was not accepting or rejecting this amazing event. His 18-month-old brain just didn’t have the perspective of life experience to judge the intruder as friendly, malevolent, or neutral.
In the years to come, however, he would learn the astonishing truth:
That glowing orb heralded the coming of the Greys.
A LIEFTIME OF ABDUCTION & CONTROL BEGINS
Erik became one of the (probably millions) of people to be “selected” by that specific classification of alien beings that today are well-known as the Greys.
Although it’s controversial and complicated, it might be said that the Greys entered public consciousness after the famous UFO crash near Roswell, New Mexico, in 1947. However, nobody called them Greys at the time. The term only gained widespread recognition in the aftermath of the first modern case of alien abduction — that of Barney and Betty Hill in 1961.
But wait — the defining identity of “Greys” would still remain unknown for several years after the 1961 Hill abduction. It was not until 1966, the year John G. Fuller published his groundbreaking and bestselling book, Interrupted Journey, that the identity, appearance and behaviors of the Greys became popularized and injected into the zeitgeist of the UFO community writ large.
Note that the Greys are often referred to as the Zeta Reticulons. That’s because many believe these extraterrestrials hail from a planet orbiting a binary star system in the southern constellation Reticulum. The star system is located 39.3 light-years from Earth.
The notion that the Greys originate from this planet began with Betty Hill, who, under hypnosis, drew a star map shown to her when she was onboard a UFO occupied by the Greys.
Then, an Ohio woman and astronomy enthusiast, Marjorie Fish, became obsessed with matching up Betty’s star map with real star charts. Poring over charts and astronomical databases, she created an elaborate 3D model of all the stars in that vicinity of the galaxy. She inserted Betty’s map into her model and identified a star that she believed was the alien home location — Zeta Reticuli.
Although skeptics heaped scorn and criticism on Fish’s 3D model — one of the most heated critics was the famous astronomer Carl Sagan —a smattering of various mainstream observers were at least intrigued.
A senior editor at Astronomy magazine was impressed enough to publish a major article about Betty’s hypnotic-memory-induced map and Fish’s remarkable 3D model in the December 1974 issue. The result was a firestorm of criticism from mainstream scientists. The Astronomy magazine editor who greenlighted the article was fired.
Nevertheless, the Astronomy story helped popularize the notion of Zeta Reticuli as the home of this specific category of alien beings.
It’s interesting to note, however, that support for the idea that the Greys’ home planet orbits Zeta Reticuli has come from other independent sources — one of them is none other than the Area 51 whistleblower Bob Lazar. He stated that he had seen a Zeta Reticuli reference in a classified government document.
But one of the most amazing corroborations comes from another spectacular case of UFO abduction — that of William Herrmann of Charleston, South Carolina. His story is detailed in a book he co-authored with UFO pioneer investigator, Wendelle Stevens, a Lt. Colonel retired from U.S. Air Force. The book is titled UFO Contact from Reticulum.
Herrmann began experiencing multiple sightings of a classic, silver disk-shaped flying saucer in 1977. He captured about a dozen good-quality photos of the UFO (see book cover). He was abducted aboard the craft twice.
The alien beings Herrmann confronted were only tangentially Grey-like, however. They also were not hostile toward Herrmann. In fact, these entities were businesslike but friendly. Furthermore, they expressed admiration for Herrmann’s “openness” and his suitability for “constructive contact” between aliens and humans. In dialogue with his hosts aboard their craft, the aliens informed Herrmann that they were from Zeta Reticuli.
Furthermore, these Reticulans “awarded” Herrmann with a strange gift, a small, 2.6-inch-long bar of lead with the word “MAN” imprinted on it. Also carved into the bar were a series of alien symbols. A clear picture of this lead ingot is presented in the book. This object was examined in a professional lab by Dr. Walter W. Walker, a University of Arizona chemist and engineer who had later worked for Hughes Aircraft.
Dr. Walker found the alien artifact to be composed of about 95% lead and about 4% to 6% antimony. As far as I know, Herrmann retained this “alien gift” for the rest of his life.
It is interesting to note that Bill Herrmann was not subjected to typical intrusive, medical-type examinations, although the aliens did place him on a table and performed some experiments on him, mostly involving scanning his body and probing his mind.
I plan to write a more complete story about the amazing and spectacular UFO-alien contact experience of William Herrmann in a future article. However, the relevance here is that the aliens reported their origin to be Zeta Reticuli.
Thus, we can now add Erik Nanstiel to the list of contactees who learned that the origin of his alien abductors is the Reticulum star system. Nanstiel describes a bizarre contact incident that was “part lucid dream and part abduction.” During this incident, he asked one of the taller Greys, an entity who identified himself as “Syczilick,” if he was from Zeta 2 Reticuli, and the being answered simply: “Yes.”
(Side note: I will forego what the skeptics say (and they have a lot to say) about this notion of Zeta Reticuli because this is a huge, complex can of worms that will take me too far afield for the subject at hand. So, now back to my discussion of this book, Angst in the Shadows.)
INTRUSIONS AND ADUCTIONS BEGIN IN ERNEST
Nanstiel’s first sighting of the Greys would not occur until 1994, a full 20 years after his last encounter as a child with that glowing bedroom orb in 1974. In the 20 years since his childhood experience, the bizarre orb visitations had been relegated to a vivid memory as he lived a normal “uninterrupted” life. He also sometimes questioned the accuracy of what he remembered, as we all do of early childhood memories.
However, in 1994, now a twenty-something adult, Nanstiel suddenly became vividly aware within what felt like a bizarre lucid dream. He struggled against the strange imagery of the dream, but he eventually shook himself to wakefulness. His eyes popped open just in time to catch a fleeting glimpse of four classic Greys rushing out of his bedroom. They exited by passing straight through a solid closed door.
This would be the beginning of Erik Nanstiel’s “next level” of involuntary interactions and “relationship” with those intrusive beings we now recognize as “The Greys.”
What follows in the rest of the book is Nanstiel’s often nightmarish — sometimes even macabre — narrative detailing decades of intrusive harassment at the hands of the Greys. It involved an agonizing, helpless, and forced submission of his mind, body and will to non-human entities who could impose absolute power over the most intimate aspects of his life.
Nanstiel’s account includes all the classic elements of the abduction scenario as detailed by so many other “direct experiencers” — such as Whitley Strieber, Betty Andreasson, Jim Sparks, Sherry Wilde, Suzy Hansen, Debra Jordan, Nancy Tremaine, Erin Montgomery–to name just a few.
In addition to these direct experiencers, outside-observer researchers and academics have fleshed out the details of the particular kind of abduction scenario we are dealing with here. Some of the most well-known are Dr. John Mack, Dr. David M. Jacobs, Budd Hopkins, Dr. Roger Leir, Dr. Leo Sprinkle, Barbara Lamb, Mary Rodwell and others.
Note that I carefully selected names I’ve cited as examples because these people — experiencers and researchers — define a specific kind of abduction scenario. That scenario is a large-scale human egg and sperm harvesting program, with the objective of creating a hybrid race of half-alien/half-human beings.
Whitely Strieber might be somewhat of an exception among the names I listed. Although Strieber does report that he was subjected to sperm harvesting and that he did, on occasion, encounter hybrid-human beings, he does not describe meeting a hybrid derived from his own biology.
But for Erik Nanstiel and others, a key component involves aliens not only robbing them of their reproductive material but a greater level of participation that forces them to interact with hybrid babies identified as their biological offspring. The aliens ask them to hold and cuddle both hybrid and normal-looking human babies. They also encourage abductees to express, give, or “show love” to the children.
It seems that the Greys have figured out something important — that human-alien hybrid babies cannot thrive if they don’t receive that added element of physical “loving contact.” It seems that the key biological components — gametes, genetics and DNA — are not enough.
Bizarrely, the Greys themselves appear to be utterly perplexed by what this “love” element is. Whatever this quality of human-to-human affection is, the Greys obviously don’t have it, nor do they have its equivalent. They appear not to understand or have any conception of what love is. Even though hybrids are “half-alien,” the Greys cannot contribute so much as what might be their analog of love to the “hybrid half” of their own offspring.
This latter aspect of “Grey behavior” has profound implications. It reveals something essential about the fundamental nature of this non-human species. Are they soul-free robots? Are they biological entities that somehow “lost” the very capacity of love itself by manipulating their own genes and DNA — for whatever motivation — resulting in the “breeding out” of the capacity for something as foundational as love itself?
For Erik Nanstiel, the occasions when he was shown a baby — and told by the aliens that “the child is yours” — was a psychological bombshell that penetrated deeply into his psyche. It became a lifelong source of apprehension, loss, helplessness, and even horror.
Consider that a touchstone of Nanstiel’s personal identity is the joy he derived from being a loving father. He spent the majority of his adult life giving it his all to care for a profoundly handicapped daughter. But now, here were the Greys, assaulting him with the knowledge that he had other children who were— just “out there” — “somewhere” — children he could never know, guide, care for, nurture and love.
The Greys simply took all that from him — because they could.
THE GREYS: LOVE THEM OR HATE THEM? GOOD OR EVIL?
A raging controversy among experiencer/abductees community is whether the alien intruders who imposed themselves upon their lives are a force for Evil or a bridge that leads their human subject to greater understanding and growth.
Many go further by suggesting that human-to-Grey-interaction may even be an artifact, or more accurately, a process/outcome of nothing less than the evolution of human consciousness itself.
As for Erik Nanstiel, let’s just say he’s not buying all this “consciousness evolution” stuff. Much the opposite, his experience with the Greys has led him to a dark conclusion. Consider this passage from his book:
“Many abductees I’ve seen interviewed take a positive stance on the abduction phenomenon. They believe the Greys are here to elevate us, to mold us into better stewards of the earth, preparing us to join some galactic community of enlightened, space-faring beings. It’s a beautiful sentiment, but it’s a fantasy. An illusion wrapped in comforting human projections.
The truth — when you wake up to it — is not kind. As Jung said, “There is no coming to consciousness without pain.” And the more I examined my own experiences, the more I came to understand that this awakening comes with a price — the destruction of naïve, human-centric assumptions. We need to exhaust all practical explanations before indulging in utopian fantasies.”
Certainly, his conclusion is understandable in light of his experiences.
That’s why it is amazing that many others who have experienced much the same as Nanstiel — including being forced to sire children and then robbed of any meaningful contact with them — have come to an opposite conclusion about the Greys.
Consider:
In 2018, a study was issued by the Dr. Edgar Mitchell Foundation for Research into Extraterrestrial and Extraordinary Experiences (FREE). It found that a significant majority of abductees developed positive feelings about their interactions with aliens.
Conducting this research were top-flight scientists and academics, including:
Robert Davis, Ph.D., a world-renowned neuroscientist, now retired from SUNY.
Reinaerio Hernandez, an attorney who also holds a Ph.D. in city planning.
Russ Scalpone, a Ph.D., a psychologist at Northwestern University.
Rudolph E. Schild, a Ph.D. astrophysicist with the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.
Their investigation looked at 3,256 people who reported “various forms of contact experience with a non-human intelligent being associated with or without unidentified aerial phenomenon (UAP).”
The study found that 70% of the group (2,279 people) claimed their contact “changed their life in a positive way,” and 15–20% claimed that it “affected their lives in a negative way.” (Source)
Note that of the 3,256 subjects in this study, 542 of them report their interaction was with “small Greys.” Of those 542 subjects, just 11.72% report “negative experiences.” More than 88% say their interaction with small Greys was positive.
The numbers are similar for “tall Greys.” The study found 346 cases of interaction with tall Greys. Of those, only 10.5% reported “mostly negative” experiences with them.
Incidentally, the popular culture notion that the Greys are the most commonly described type of alien by experiencers is not true. Not even close. By far, the two most commonly reported aliens are “Energy Beings (55%) and/or “Human-Looking Beings” (54%).
An aggregate of all the studies I could find suggests that Greys represent just 10% to 12% of all alien-human interaction scenarios. Please keep in mind, however, that all of the studies I found (and there are not many) consisted of very small sample sizes. The largest was 3,256 subjects and the smallest was 255. Thus, these are not studies with robust quantities of data, nor are they long-term or longitudinal studies. This significantly limits the efficacy of the data, in my view.
With that caveat in mind, I’ll mention another study, conducted by sociologist Dr. Christopher D. Bader and published in the Journal of the Scientific Study of Religion, found that:
… that 88%of abductees report at least some positive aspects of the experience, such as a sense of importance or feeling as though they were chosen to bridge communication between extraterrestrials and humans. (Source)
In yet another study:
Data collected over 17 years from Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) scores of 225 persons who reported (alien abduction) reveal common personality traits, including:
- high levels of psychic energy
- self-sufficiency
- resourcefulness
- a tendency to question authority and to be exposed to situational conflicts.
In addition to these studies, I would suggest the following two books by authors who experienced alien-abduction-breeding interactions with Greys, but also other species of alien, including reptilians, sometimes called “Reptoids” or “Saurans.”
Click the links to see my reviews here:
DIRTY LITTLE SECRET by Erin Montgomery
SYMBIOSIS by Nancy Tremaine
A FAMILIAR STORY MADE COMPELLING
No doubt, many of my readers have probably also read Strieber’s Communion, the follow-up books to that bestseller, and perhaps maybe about a dozen more by other abductee authors. Thus, you might be hedging before reading yet another book that tells what has become a familiar story.
However, my strong recommendation is that you don’t skip Angst in the Shadows by Erik Nanstiel. That’s because:
- This book is exceptionally well written.
Nanstiel earned a degree in English with an emphasis in technical writing from Iowa State University, and it shows. His writing style is efficient, non-nonsense and compelling. People who train as technical writers are experts at taking a complex subject and presenting it in a way that helps readers gain a deep understanding without “dumbing down” essential information. Nanstiel not only provides the “basic story,” but he also entertains with his lucid command of the written word.
- A marvelous, inspirational story.
I found Nanstiel’s narrative about coping under fantastically difficult life circumstances to be profoundly inspirational. It’s the story of an honest, hardworking Midwestern man dealing not just with an alien invasion, but also the exhausting challenges of raising a profoundly handicapped daughter as a single father — who had to grapple with the additional pressure resulting from a wife who became seriously ill —and all the other daily problems of normal life.
- Grace and courage in the face of adversity
Erik Nanstiel’s narrative never devolves to bitterness nor falls into self-pity. Much the opposite, Erick Nanstiel demonstrates enormous strength and stellar character as he confronts what mainstream science and opinion would have us believe is impossible. His courage to go against the grain — and do so with grace — not to mention with flat-out great writing — earned my admiration.
JOIN ME ON BLUESKY: KEN-ON-BLUESKY
NOTE: For more in-depth analysis of UFO books, please see: KEN-ON-MEDIUM.
Thank you, Ken for your review. I enjoyed it very much!
I’m glad you thought the review was okay. You wrote a great book, Erik, and I’ll recommend it to everyone.