Trauma, Trick, and Transcendence in the Life of a Horror Writer: The Case of Whitley Strieber. This essay treats the theorization of horror in Whitley Strieber's Communion (1987). It also pushes us to consider more honestly and forthrightly the question of “real monsters,” that is, the phenomenology of encounters with fantastic presences routinely experienced in the environment. Historical contextualization of Strieber's abduction experiences in the Hudson Valley region and theories of other species from Charles Fort to William James are invoked to radicalize the question further.