Communion Book Cover

[Giddierone]

Anecdotes about people seeing the cover of Whitley Strieber's Communion (1987) for the first time and it triggering a reaction in them such as the shock of recognition or the sudden stirring of a memory are numerous.

Some time later I was in a bookstore in La Jolla. I noticed a book on display by Whitley Strieber called Communion On the cover was a drawing that captured my attention. An oval-shaped head with large inky eyes staring straight ahead.
I bought the book and immediately began reading it. It was Strieber's personal account of being abducted by aliens. He wrote of waking up in his cabin in the woods of New York State and seeing an owl staring at him. He spoke to the owl, then two beings, who looked like the figure on the cover of the book. appeared in his doorway and escorted him out of the house. He wrote that he had smelled burning cinnamon and smolder-ing cheese around them, so I burned some myself to see if that might excite a memory, but it didn't.
While I was reading this book my daughter. Louise, called from Portland. "Dad, there's a book I want you to read. It's called Communion.
"I'm reading it right now."

Dancing Naked in the Mind Field, (geneticist) Kary Mullis, 1998

I did not think much about any of these things again until 1987. I was walking through a bookstore when a strange picture caught my eye. It was the cover of a new book called Communion. Mesmerized by those huge black eyes of the creature on the jacket, I bought the book immediately, hurried home, and read it cover to cover.

The Abduction Enigma - Kevin D. Randle, 1999

Maureen explains that in 1988 she passed Communion in the book-
store: "After seeing the cover of Communion and being both drawn and
repulsed by it, 'cause it terrified me, I read the book and that's when I
realized that a lot of things Whitley Strieber had written about sounded
all too familiar to me."

They Know us Better Than we Know Ourselves - Bridget Brown, 2007

Rima Laibow was a psychiatrist who had a private practice outside of
New York City. After a patient of hers in 1988 happened to see an image of
a large-eyed alien on a book jacket, she confessed to Laibow she had
fragmentary memories of encounters with similar creatures.

Intimate Alien, David Halperin, 2020
(the same anecdote appears in After the Flying Saucers Came - Greg Eghigian, 2024)

Fast forward to 1987. I'm nearly forty years old, a tenured professor of religious
studies at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. I'm in a book-
store on Franklin Street, across from the campus. Prominently displayed
on one table are several stacks of a hardcover book called Communion,
by one Whitley Strieber. A face stares up at me from the book jacket.
It's a face I've never seen before, though all of us will see it many
times in the years to come. Shaped like a light bulb, as light bulbs used
to be. Dominated by two slanted, enormous, anatomically impossible
eyes: almond-shaped, black, without iris or pupil or any visible lids, each
with a gleam of white amid the blackness and just the hint of a split run-
ning from end to end. I've never seen anything like this—not in Close En-
counters of the Third Kind or E.T., not in the UFO literature of my youth.
I have no idea that this face and the being to which it's attached will
become an icon, a cultural staple, instantly recognizable when used in
cartoons and comic strips, taking its place in three-dimensional miniature
on the dollar-store racks at Halloween time, alongside the plastic witches
and ghosts and spiders that are the traditional, time-honored inhabitants
of the boo-I-scared-you gallery.

Intimate Alien, David Halperin, 2020

Others who describe similar encounters with the cover include immunologist and ufology commentator Garry Nolan. The list goes on, but it seems the book cover can't be mentioned without someone telling of a similar reaction upon first seeing it.

It was painted by Ted Seth Jacobs (1927-2019). He was an accomplished realist painter and draftsman.

The cover illustration he created with Whitley Strieber is a marked departure from his other art.

Alien Abduction researcher (and also an accomplished artist) Budd Hopkins hated the cover saying it was "Pinheaded" and the proportions were all wrong.

Folklorist Thomas Bullard did a comparative study of hundreds of alien abduction reports in UFO Abductions: The Measure of a Mystery. Volume 1: Comparative Study of Abduction Reports, 1987. He followed it up in 1999 with What's New in Ufo Abductions? Has the Story Changed in 30 Years?

One of the notable changes he tracked was the description of the eyes of the aliens people claimed to encounter. Between 1966 and 1996 there was what he called an "unmistakable trend" toward larger darker eyes.

In the early days these eyes often had irises of human or smaller size. A steady darkening has followed, with only 17% of the eyes described as wholly or almost entirely dark in the first period, while this description grew to 48% in the middle years and then to 71%. Here then is one abduction motif that has changed too dramatically to ignore or to excuse as an accident of faulty reporting.

But, something also occurred in that time period 1966-1996. Artist Margaret Keane (1927-2022) created and popularised a distinct style of big-eyed figure whose eyes included large dark irises. They were almost exclusively female.

Details from Keane's young women (from left to right) Daisy, 1963, Draw Double, 1963, Girl With Long Hair, 1964, Bouquet, 1968, Girl of the Island, 1965

Proportionally the Communion cover resembles Keane's art far more than it does existing depictions of aliens (as Budd Hopkins might have agreed — see above). They share very similar proportions, head shape, chin shape, long neck, and other grey alien-like characteristics: pallid skin tone, slight smile, small nose, faint eyebrows. They nearly always gaze directly at the viewer. They almost never had ears and often had long slender fingers without nails.

It seems obvious that Strieber and Jacobs were aware of Keane's art. I'd argue they used it as a template.

So, since Keane's art (which was very popular, her lithographs were mass-produced) already existed in the culture many years prior to Communion might those anecdotes of triggered memories and the sense that "I've seen that face before" have something to do with Keane's creations?

 

[NorCal Dave]

I always thought it also resembled the alien in CE3K:

Obviously, not exactly, but the general shape of the head, no ears, small mouth and nose with big dark elongated eyes.

This fella predates the book by 10 years and was likely a riff on the zeitgeist of the time, including the Keane art.

 

[MapperGuy]

As I recall my first impression was "not very plausible".
If those are eyeBALLS then the eyeballs and the sockets that enclose them take up 100% of the interior of that skull.
Give that picture to an anthropologist who does reconstructions of skulls from the partial skulls recovered by paleontologists and ask them "would this work"? How does that skull even work with eyeballs that large?

 

[Todd Feinman]

Keane's art looks like Twiggy. It was also popular to accent the eyes with eye shadow etc at the time. Google AI:
"In the late 1960s, the "Mod" makeup movement transformed eyes into the main focal point of the face. Black eyeshadow was used alongside graphic eyeliner to create a dramatic "cut crease" effect. This technique faked a deep, wide, doe-eyed socket to make the eyes appear as large and doll-like as possible."

Keane was influenced by Modigliani. Modigliani eyes.
African masks and Cycladic art influenced many artists:
https://www.pinterest.com/pin/picasso-and-african-masks--300474606377112871/


Source:

Source: https://www.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=1373835009423441&id=100064915741092

There was the "Yellow Peril" racism; slant-eyed racism. The inscrutable Asian eyes.

Wish I could find a short story written by girl in the '20s I ran across. Maybe I'll look for it again. She dreamed that "a moon" came to her window, little moon men came out with little wands and took her up a ramp where she was held prisoner inside, until the "Queen of the Moon" showed up. She had black eyes and silver hair, Apparently they thought she had a "moon baby" and when they found out they were wrong, they returned her to her room. Sounds familiar. Piece of creative writing from a little girl. So the ideas might be older.

Also Nosferatu:
https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/480xn/p0bsj4kt.jpg.webp

Egyptian Medjed: proto-alien:
YouTube video

The Communion head looks like the Cycladic sculpture. With big black inscrutable eyes. Like the sculpture, there isn't much room for a brain; it's all face / mask.

 

[John J.]

Some related discussion/ similar things people here might find interesting in thread
Origin of iconic alien face?
and to some extent thread Claim: Time-Travelling Humans are Causing Close Encounter Experiences

If those are eyeBALLS then the eyeballs and the sockets that enclose them take up 100% of the interior of that skull.

Kind of agree (maybe not literally on the 100% )

The very large eyes of some "Grey" descriptions are difficult to understand in terms of mammalian anatomy.
Eyes are not spherical, but their dimensions in each axis are similar,

approximately 24.2 mm (transverse) × 23.7 mm (sagittal) × 22.0-24.8 mm (axial)

(axial=visual axis, front to back of eye), source as above. [https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25431659/#:~:text=The size of a human adult eye is,may vary from 21 mm to 27 mm.]
This means that a "Grey's" eye, if following the pattern of homo sapiens (and our ancestors, and most other mammals) would extend back into the head at least as far as its maximum visible "length" on the face, reducing volume available for other structures-such as the brain.

Edited pic from that post

This is just to illustrate my point in a simplified way (eyes and cranial vaults aren't really spherical).
The sagittal CT at right is a 41 year-old woman. A mid-section CT would show a larger brain, but wouldn't show the eye.
I have cherry-picked "Greys" with big eyes, not all illustrations show eyes this large-
-but strangely enough, I couldn't find a photo of a real one!

The front of the skull between the orbits of the Communion alien's eyes would be very narrow.
Maybe that's why their bodies are always being found inside crashed saucers- the airbags go off and it's Goodnight Vienna. (Or Corona, NM).

 

[Todd Feinman]

I think some have suggested the big black eyes are some form of biotechnological lenses or sensors or something. And that greys are not meant to be a viable species, but have been engineered as surrogates or helpers for bigger aliens. That's just one kind of occupant. Stories Lost on YouTube has illustrated stories from Europe and other places. Often a weird little guy hanging out by the road in a remote location near a craft of some type.

 

[John J.]

I think some have suggested the big black eyes are some form of biotechnological lenses or sensors or something.

It would be interesting if we could find a suggestion like this that pre-dates Ray Santilli's 1995 Alien Autopsy film hoax, Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien_Autopsy_(1995_film), in which a pathologist or whatever uses tweezers to lift a dark film or membrane from an underlying white-ish eye.

(don't worry, it's a dummy alien made by a guy called John Humphreys, filmed in a flat in Camden, London)

This might have been an homage to/ inspired by the British 1970 TV series UFO. In one episode, it is found that a captured aliens white eyes are due to large contact lenses , a scene shown in the show's montage-style opening sequence

This seems to have become a bit of a trope. In the claim discussed in the "Biologist claims to have studied alien bodies (EBOs - Exo-Biospheric-Organisms)" thread, the claimant wrote

Eye: Like the skin, the eyes are covered with a semi-transparent biosynthetic film that offers the same environmental protection, while providing protection against certain wavelengths and light intensity. When the film is removed, a more traditional eye is revealed.

And that greys are not meant to be a viable species, but have been engineered as surrogates or helpers for bigger aliens.

How would anyone know? If someone saw big and little aliens with a visible division of labour, did the aliens tell them why this was?
We have no testable evidence that ETI exists. Perhaps people should provide evidence for aliens, let alone aliens of different sizes with professions before speculating about why this should be.
Maybe smaller aliens are juveniles with less status. Or the alien species is more sexually dimorphic than we are. Or has undergone caste-based divergent evolution to some degree.
That's assuming there are tall chief aliens and smaller alien minions, a bit like in Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977).

 

[Todd Feinman]

It all seems kind of absurd. I don't keep track of abduction stories or UFO occupants, really. I'm quite surprised to hear these stories about craft and "biologics" etc. and that we have a number of these craft. I'd have to see some proof. I feel like the true nature of what is going on is more mysterious, and these tales represent some attempt at obfuscation. I don't know, but for reasons of national security and ethical reasons, it has to be nailed down.

 

[Giddierone]

Keane was influenced by Modigliani.

and Botticelli (she emulates the head tilt here: edited image) and many others.

If those are eyeBALLS then the eyeballs and the sockets that enclose them take up 100% of the interior of that skull.

What if their skulls go backwards like this? Plenty of space! (a frequent claim is that the alien faces are only seen from the front).

Men from the Stars, 1953 comic art.

I think the closest thing to her enormous big-iris / big-eyes are the Sumerian votive figures. But, i've never seen her mention them as an influence.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tell_Asmar_Hoard

I think some have suggested the big black eyes are some form of biotechnological lenses or sensors or something

There's loads of theories, like that they are masks worn by humans, they're robots, they're puppets, they're non-physical projections etc.

I was surprised that books like this by John F. Moffitt don't even mention Keane and her connection to the alien face.

 

[Eburacum]

One likely influence on the Grey alien myth is the concept of a highly evolved human race, which may exist far in our future. Here is an illustration of the 'Future Human' as imagined by H.G. Wells.

Of course aliens would have a completely different evolutionary history to our own, so they would probably share few human traits.

 

[Giddierone]

Wish I could find a short story written by girl in the '20s I ran across. Maybe I'll look for it again. She dreamed that "a moon" came to her window, little moon men came out with little wands and took her up a ramp where she was held prisoner inside, until the "Queen of the Moon" showed up. She had black eyes and silver hair, Apparently they thought she had a "moon baby" and when they found out they were wrong, they returned her to her room. Sounds familiar. Piece of creative writing from a little girl. So the ideas might be older.

Interesting, there are a bunch of stories with a "Queen of the moon". If it was actually later maybe it could be a child's retelling of The Moon Colony by William Dixon Bell, 1937

A girl is abducted:

They lifted the girl in their arms, and carried her aboard a large airship. While they were taking her up a steel-like ladder Joan had an opportunity to observe the machine carefully. It was the biggest thing she had ever seen in the way of an aircraft, being eight hundred yards long, three hundred feet wide. In shape it was an elongated cylinder, and she knew enough about modern metal to discover that it was made of beryllium—a wonderful new material impervious to heat or cold. The walls were hollow, and heavily armored so that it was proof against the strongest shells. The openings were sliding doors with an inner door of glass. Thus, when the outer door was closed, the entire ship seemed compactly built without an opening. It was propelled by rockets fired from long metal tubes located in the bow, in the stern, and on both sides.

It has a "Queen of the moon" and group of pygmies and an army of cricket-like insect minions who do her bidding.

https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/47576/pg47576-images.html

Or maybe it's Gertrude's Visit to the Moon (1903)
- the moon comes down to a girls window and she travels on a sled pulled by white moths up a shaft of light.
- There's a King and Queen of the moon. The prince gives her a present, a box with a ring inside.
- As she's trying it on she wakes up in her bed
https://archive.org/details/sixgiantsandgrif00edey/page/12/mode/2up?q="Queen+of+the+moon"

 

[Todd Feinman]

Yeah! There were all kinds of interesting serials in the papers back then. It sounds similar to Gertrude's visit; I'll bet she read it.
After my first UFO experience in 2010, I went through the LOC newspapers, Oregon newspapers, California newspapers, Trove, newspapers.com, and a couple of other places constantly for about a year sifting through search results. There is a lot in there, and unexpected things. And all the same stuff. I discarded articles about well known events, and even what seemed to be red atmospheric plasmas that would fly around.

 

[Z.W. Wolf]

These are authentic mid century cats

 

[Z.W. Wolf]

But let's get real...

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3260535/

Ethologist Konrad Lorenz proposed that baby schema ('Kindchenschema') is a set of infantile physical features such as the large head, round face and big eyes that is perceived as cute and motivates caretaking behavior in other individuals, with the evolutionary function of enhancing offspring survival.

The one common reason behind most of the works of art included in this thread is the baby schema. Includes the Communion face of course.

 

[Todd Feinman]

The Communion head doesn't look exactly like other depictions / descriptions of greys / mantids.
There might be deeper biological / psychological reasons why aliens would be visualized that way —so that they can indeed look "alien" and threatening.

Google AI:

Solid black eyes instinctively trigger fear and unease because they obscure the pupil and iris, erasing vital social cues. This triggers a biological threat response, often interpreted as a "dead" or predatory gaze. [1, 2, 3]
Why this happens:

• Lost Social Cues: Human eyes are highly expressive. The colored iris and white sclera allow us to read emotions and track where someone is looking. Solid black eyes remove this ability, making the person unpredictable and untrustworthy.
• The "Uncanny Valley": We are wired to recognize human faces. When a face has features that are just slightly "off," like pitch-black eyes instead of normal ones, it triggers discomfort and dread.
• Pupil Dilation: During extreme stress, anger, or fear, the body shifts into a "fight or flight" mode. This releases adrenaline, causing the pupils to dilate massively, which makes the eyes appear almost completely black. [1, 2, 3, 4]

Facial morphology / phenotypes that are threatening:
https://www.princeton.edu/news/2008...trust-faces-instantly-guide-us-scientists-say

And:
Google AI:
"In psychological and evolutionary terms, "threatening" or intimidating faces usually combine large eyes with dominant bone structures. Because large eyes are often perceived as youthful or "baby-like," a truly menacing look requires them to be paired with sharper, more angular facial features to create an assertive contrast. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]

Key Facial Structures for an Intimidating Look

• Inverted Triangle or Diamond Faces: These feature a wider, more dominant forehead that sharply tapers down to a sharp chin or strong, high cheekbones. This structure provides a piercing, commanding frame for large eyes.
• Square Faces: Paired with a strong, angular jawline, large eyes create an intense, striking juxtaposition between masculine bone structure and expressive upper-face features.
• Protruding Eyes: Also known as prominent or bulging eyes, these project slightly outward from the socket, immediately drawing focus and making the gaze appear wide, awake, and hyper-vigilant. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]"

So when they are visualized as frail and baby-like they are non-threatening. If they look like preying mantises, not so much.
This of course is why the black-eyed kid phenomenon scares the excrement out of folks.

Aleister Crowley's "Lam" would look scary if he had big black eyes.


Source: https://www.instagram.com/p/DRiLK-niF-o/

Google AI again:

The archetype of the Grey alien as we know it—short, smooth grey skin, a disproportionately large head, and huge almond-shaped black eyes—crystallized in the public consciousness during the Barney and Betty Hill abduction case in 1961. [1]
While the 1961 New Hampshire event is the most widely recognized starting point, earlier recorded accounts and sci-fi literature laid the groundwork for these entities: [1, 2]

• 1891 Fiction: The sci-fi novel Meda: A Tale of the Future by Kenneth Folingsby included descriptions of tiny, grey-skinned aliens with balloon-shaped heads.
• 1917 Occultism: Occultist Aleister Crowley made drawings of a "preternatural entity" named Lam that possessed the signature large head and narrow, pointed chin of a modern Grey.
• 1933 Fiction: Swedish novelist Gustav Sandgren (under the pseudonym Gabriel Linde) wrote The Unknown Danger, describing short extraterrestrials with soft grey suits, big bald heads, and large, dark, gleaming eyes.
• 1947 Roswell: Following the alleged Roswell UFO crash, several anecdotal witness reports circulated about child-sized, large-headed beings with slanted eyes found at the New Mexico site. [1, 2]

The Hill case cemented this concept into popular culture. Under hypnosis, the couple described abductors matching this exact profile, a narrative that was heavily sensationalized in books and eventually translated into mass media. [1, 2]

 

[Giddierone]

But let's get real...



View attachment 90774

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3260535/


The one common reason behind most of the works of art included in this thread is the baby schema. Includes the Communion face of course.

Yes, and it references an interesting article by Stephen Jay Gould: A Biological Homage to Mickey Mouse
https://web.archive.org/web/20260113191622/https://faculty.uca.edu/benw/biol4415/papers/Mickey.pdf

 

[Eburacum]

From that article by Stephen Jay Gould;

Progressive juvenilization as an evolutionary phenomenon is called neoteny.

Human evolutionary development has been affected by neoteny as a process, especially over the last three million years or so; this process (if extended into the distant future) could produce something like a Grey Alien, and this possibility was well-known by science fiction writers in the 20th century.

I suspect that the whole Grey Alien phenomenon is a natural consequence of speculative science fiction (by humans) in that era, and has nothing to do with any extraterrestrial contact.

 

[Todd Feinman]

There are the childlike greys, but also threatening mantids; the Communion cover illustration looks like a cross between the two. If they don't exist and not everyone reads sci fi, and they are sometimes experienced during sleep paralysis, I'd be looking for spooky features and attributes that scare folks to contribute to how they'd look. Mantises are native to the US, but there was a push in the '30s going forward to use them fri pest control, so perhaps a lot of people became more familiar with their "alien" look at that time. I've never seen one in person.

Large-headed alien history:

Google AI:
The Evolution from Science to Fiction
The concept of a large-headed extraterrestrial began as a speculative take on human evolution. [1, 2]

• The "Man of the Year Million": In 1893, H.G. Wells published an essay suggesting that as humans relied more on technology and intellect, our muscles would atrophy while our brains and heads would expand. He later used this hyper-intellectualized, large-headed physiology for his Martian invaders in the 1898 classic novel The War of the Worlds.
• The "Mekon" and Pulp Sci-Fi: By the 1950s, comic books and pulp magazines frequently utilized the giant head as a visual shorthand for advanced, often cold and sinister, extraterrestrial intelligence. [1, 2, 3]

The Mekon:
https://heykidscomics.fandom.com/wiki/The_Mekon

Iirc, the Roswell aliens were described as "Asian looking" with slanted eyes, by some.

 

[NorCal Dave]

Iirc, the Roswell aliens were described as "Asian looking" with slanted eyes, by some.

Even if so, they would have been recalling something from 30 years ago. There were no contemporaneous claims of alien bodies in 1947, with the whole idea only being added to the Roswell story in 1980. All other claims of bodies at Roswell, regardless of how they looked, are from the '80s or later.

So, they would have been heavily influenced by the pop-culture of the '50s-'00s depending on when the claims were made.

I've never seen one in person.

Really?! We get them around here on occasion. One of my "paranormal experiences" involved one of the biggest praying mantis I'd ever seen flying across the living room.

 

[John J.]

[Quoting Google AI] "The archetype of the Grey alien as we know it—short, smooth grey skin, a disproportionately large head, and huge almond-shaped black eyes—crystallized in the public consciousness during the Barney and Betty Hill abduction case in 1961. "
...The Hill case cemented this concept into popular culture. Under hypnosis, the couple described abductors matching this exact profile, a narrative that was heavily sensationalized in books and eventually translated into mass media.

(My emphasis)

Betty and Barney Hill did not describe anything that resembles a depiction/ description of a "Grey". The Google AI summary is inaccurate.
Retellings of the Hill's accounts in books and magazine articles about UFOs, and more recently online, often ignore what Betty and Barney actually said, and the circumstances in which they said it.

The Hill's UFO occupants have sometimes become Greys in other people's (often UFO enthusiasts') discussion/ retellings of the case.

I feel this might be deliberate; the Hill story is often presented as a famous example of alien abduction, but some major details- and the Hill's later identification of humans of particular ethnicity as very closely resembling the UFOnauts- are not convenient to the "this really happened" narrative.
Equally, some write-ups of the Hill case might be using earlier articles as sources, sources which are "sanitized" (omitting improbable/ dreamlike details) and "homogenized" (implying the aliens resembled Greys) without referring to what the Hills said. The Google AI result (first line, quote above) fits this pattern.

The process of "Greying" the Hill's aliens was probably aided by the 1975 TV movie about the Hills, The UFO Incident (Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_UFO_Incident):

The aliens in the movie looked very much like the typical "little grays" we all know today from movies, TV and novelty store items. There are differences, but the influence was imprinted on the memories of everyone watching and the cultural impact of the movie is still with us today.

"Yankee Skeptic" blog, 29 July 2013, "Who invented Little Greys? Hollywood or the Hills?" viewable via Wayback Machine https://web.archive.org/web/20201028195816/https://yankeeskeptic.com/ (it's an interesting and relevant article).

This is what Betty Hill said about the aliens in the movie (source as above, quoting a draft of Betty Hill's "The Interrupted Journey Continued or A Common Sense Approach to UFOs" , Hill archives, Milne Special Collections, Special Collections, University of New Hampshire Library, Durham, NH):

Sometimes I have been approached by those who tell me they have been abducted by the same ones I met, or the same type. They are smiling, until I ask if they looked like the ones in my movie. Oh yes. Then I tell them the ones in my movie was Hollywood's idea of their appearance, for they had no similarities to the real ones. Such disappointment!

Some of the Hill's recall of their supposed experience came from dreams, and later hypnosis. We can't be sure that their recall of what they (supposedly) consciously experienced (before Betty's troubling dreams) is uncontaminated by dream recall, as Betty was having the dreams before the Hills reported/ discussed their experiences with anyone else. It isn't credible that Betty and Barney didn't discuss her dreams.

From Betty's dreams,

The men stood about five feet to five feet four inches tall and wore matching blue uniforms, with caps similar to those worn by military cadets. They appeared nearly human, with black hair, dark eyes, prominent noses and bluish lips. Their skin was a greyish color.

Wikipedia, Barney and Betty Hill incident, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barney_and_Betty_Hill_incident

Dark eyes, not uniformly black, and no indication of anything unusual. Black hair. "Prominent" noses (later comments by Betty might indicate broad, not protruding noses- or possibly a changing description). Short for an average American man, but no indication of non-human build or proportions.
They had grey-ish skin, but realistically (perhaps excepting the short-ish stature) no other Grey features.
Betty describes them as "men", and they wear blue uniforms including peaked caps, perhaps like contemporaneous police or air force uniforms.

Under hypnosis, Barney Hill sketched this,

...the eyes are not black and have visible irises or pupils. Maybe the alien removed his biofilm eye sensors before taking his cap off
Maybe Barney wasn't a very good artist.

Barney's recall of the aliens under hypnosis, from a tape recording of the session:

From Internet Archive, https://archive.org/details/Barney_Hill_Hypnosis_Session_1, "Uploaded by Kameron D Kiggins, obtained from Wendy Connors."
The timings below are approximate, the emphases are mine:

At 15:00 minutes, Barney sees a man looking over his shoulder through the "window" of the UFO;
"...I think of a red-haired Irishman..."

At 17:15, "..and the evil face- he looks like a German Nazi" and Barney goes on to describe a black uniform, and a black scarf around his neck draped over one shoulder. Later, Hill says the figure is wearing a black shiny jacket.
18:12, apparently about the "German Nazi", "...his eyes were slanted but not like a Chinee.." (Old, now offensive term for person of "Chinese" appearance).

20:20 Hill becomes distressed, again at 21:10, "his eyes..."

26:00 "...they're men - all with black jackets...", 26:44 "the eyes are there..."

Re. the red-headed man, Barney describes the man as "friendly-looking", he finds this notable because (15:58) "Irish are usually hostile to negroes". The whole thing sounds a bit like free-form thought association, possibly reflecting (real-world) concerns that Barney may have had.
The Hills were a mixed-race couple when this was rare, and involved in the civil rights movement.

I think it is significant that retellings of the Hill accounts by UFO enthusiasts/ authors of books and articles about UFOs often omit the smiling red-haired Irishman, and the German Nazi with black coat, hat and scarf (to whom the scary eyes might belong).
In some cases- "investigators" who have actually read/ heard the Hill's accounts- it is hard to see these omissions as accidental.

Barney did not describe Greys. Betty made it clear, several times, "her" aliens did not resemble Greys. They looked like people, specifically people of specific ethnicity:

Back to the blog article "Who Invented Little Grays? Hollywood or the Hills?" from the Yankee Skeptic blog, we read

...in a letter to Marjorie Fish, dated July 12, 1969. (Milne Special Collections, University of New Hampshire Library, Durham, NH)

"Barney and I had a theory that the star that the humanoids were from probably was a colder planet than the Earth. We based this thought on similarities between the humanoids and a group of Indians who live in the Magellan Straights, south of South America. These Indians have adapted to the climate or severe cold by developing fat folds to protect themselves which give the impression of being much like the humanoids. IE, the Indians have very large slant eyes, surrounded by a fat fold which gives the impression of extremely large eyes; their noses are almost ehinct (sic); their lips are difficult to see because they are hidden by another fat fold: Their fingers and toes are very short, but their hands and feet are thick with layers of protective fat."

Also,

This time from a October 20, 1964 letter to "Walter" about a talk given at Phillips Exeter Academy, a private preparatory school in the Concord NH area.

"Last night Barney and I went to Phillips Exeter Academy to hear Dr. Coon, anthropologist, of Harvard, lecture on the 'Races of Man'. He showed several slides, but one of them looked like the people on the space ship. Barney and I both recognized this at the same time! It was the slide of a woman that lives in a very cold climate and showed her physical adaptation to this very cold. I believe she is of Mongolian background, with very distinct slant eyes. Her adaptation is the formation or a fatty substance around her eyes, which causes the appearance of a large eye extending around to the side. Her nose is very small and flat to her face. Her mouth seems distorted by this fatty substance... ... It was surprising to actually see a picture which resembled the men so closely – much better than we could ever begin to do."

(Emphasis added).

The Hills did not report Greys.

What they report seeing (or experiencing in dreams, or describing under hypnosis) include:
(1) (Betty) Men, 5' to 5' 4", 1.52 to 1.63 m, in blue uniforms and hats. Black hair, dark eyes, noticeable noses. Greyish skin, blueish lips.
(Barney) The men had black shiny uniforms and hats.
(2) A smiling red-haired man who Barney thought looked like an Irishman (presumably an American of Irish descent). Presumably not in a hat.
(3) A "German Nazi" in a black coat and scarf, who has slanted eyes "but not like a [Chinese man]".
Barney's sketch under hypnosis shows unusually shaped, elongated eyes with visible irises or pupils; Barney becomes distressed discussing eyes. The sketch/ eye description might be connected to the German Nazi. It is unlikely real German Nazis had eyes like this- or even marked epicanthic folds- so the identification of the figure as a Nazi is perhaps based on the clothing, maybe resembling photos/ popular depictions of wartime Gestapo/ SS officers.

Betty later claimed that pictures of Mongolian people closely resembled the "aliens", also that pictures of indigenous people living on/ near Tierra del Fuego had similar features. (Her descriptions of the features of non-European people are not flattering and seem, to me, exaggerated). She claimed that Barney agreed with these identifications.

 

[Todd Feinman]

Yes, I remember that sketch, and the figures were diminutive, correct? I think hypnosis leads to confabulation in many cases. I personally don't believe in the abduction phenomenon, but must keep my mind pried open.
Looking at old UFO reports in the papers, I found no evidence of abductions being described, and no evidence of grey aliens being described. I spent a bit of time looking. Found ghost reports. I did find disturbing accounts of white objects hassling people, but that's it. Just glowing spheres, lights, cigar or spindle-shaped objects, Tic-Tac or capsule-shaped objects. The things Kocher describes in paper, iiirc. Things I've seen too. transmedium or near water in a number of cases, along with different kinds of descriptions of airships, many just lights seeming to move under control. There were sightings of large objects a bit later.

 

[John J.]

Post #20 wasn't really about the objective reality or accuracy of the Hill's accounts.

It was more to point out that the Hills did not describe "Greys" as some people (and now Google AI) claim.

 

[Giddierone]

The Hill's UFO occupants have sometimes become Greys in other people's (often UFO enthusiasts') discussion/ retellings of the case.

Exactly, and the same selective recollection occurs with Ariel School, where all contradictory non-grey alien descriptions go unreported as the story is retold and retold.

To get back to my original question though, is that eerie sense of familiarity that is so often reported by people seeing the Communion cover related to people's real encounter memories being jogged, or is it that the cover was the first time that face was given such mainstream coverage - attended by the claim that the author really saw that being — and that numerous approximations of that face already existed in culture? Were people remembering those images?

View attachment 90807

 

[FatPhil]

View attachment 90809View attachment 90808

I went to school with a kid who had exophthalmos, and, front on, his eyes were not hugely dissimilar from much of Keane's work, hers could be considered but a caricature of the condition. At the time, as secondary-school kids, I think he was blaming it on something to do with iron, but I think modern science would blame it on calcium regulation.