Whitley Strieber is the author of a number of books about alien visitors.  He's been extremely successful as an author of these autobiographical stories of creatures from somewhere other than earth taking him into a ship and doing all sorts of things with him and to him.  For a long time, Strieber made great pains to separate himself from the UFOologists that he once called probably the cruellest [sic], nastiest and craziest people I have ever encountered.  This was 1991, in the cover letter of his journal, The Communion Letter.  The thrust of that particular cover letter was that he was going to stop the publication of the Letter, as he believed that it had run its course.  You can read the whole letter here, at the end of the page. 

But things didn't stay that way. 

Now, 8 years later, Strieber is Art Bell's permanent guest host.  He received an award as UFOlogist of the Year at the recent National UFO Conference. 

Compare this statement, at this Conference:

Somebody's having a close encounter right now. Somebody's seeing a UFO right now, in this very area. Somebody's getting abducted.

to this statement in the cover letter linked above:

[The UFOlogists'] interpretation of the visitor experience is rubbish from beginning to end. The "abduction reports" that they generate are not real. They are artifacts of hypnosis and cultural conditioning. 

He was actually one of us back in 1991.  What happened, Whit?  Please come back to us!