EzraS wrote:
I am not aware of Peter Straub having written a book about extraterrestrials. Are you perhaps thinking of Communion by Whitley Strieber?
The concept of the Greys started with the book The Interrupted Journey (1966?). Which was about a couple who under hypnosis recounted having been taken aboard a spacecraft. One of the abductees named Betty Hill drew a picture of what the abductors looked like which was very similar to what became known as Greys.
A very interesting thing is that under hypnosis Betty Hill drew a copy of a star map she saw on the spacecraft, which appearntly included some stars which had not by that time been charted yet.
Yeah. "Communion" is probably what I am thinking of.
Folks have been seeing aliens since 1947, at least, but they look different in different parts of the world. Europeans used
see "Nordics" (aliens who look like blonde blue eyed humans from Scandanavia), in other regions they see other types, like Reptiods.
But, as you said, starting with that Sixties' couple, American abductees have been reporting "Greys". So in America that meme has caught on in popular culture: that aliens look like Greys.
Since America sets many cultural trends: American style aliens are supplanting the local type aliens world over. Everyone is starting to see Greys now.
And the aliens in the Seventies film Close Encounters were Greys, as are the aliens in the Eighties' novel Communion. The ET guy maybe loosely based upon Greys, but if a zoologists encountered creatures that looked as different as the guy on Cybderdad's avatar, and the ET guy, the zoologist would classify the two as separate species. The ET guy's head is shaped different, and is pushed forward more. And the ET guy doesn't have almond shaped slanted eyes. Not the same species.