Also from an interview with Jacques Vallee:

The thing I really want to emphasize is that the investigator’s first responsibility is to the witness and not to the UFO phenomenon. The average witness is in shock because he’s had a very traumatic experience; what he’s seen is going to change his life. Your intervention, the very fact that you’re talking with him about it, is also going to have an effect on him. Now he may say to you, “I need help to understand what I saw,” but in fact he needs more immediate help as a human being who is deeply troubled by a very disturbing experience.

This is awesome, because the further I get into the field of “occult investigation” (whatever that even fucking means), the more I come to the conclusion outlined above: that the subject matter is all well and good, but what’s really important is the people. I regularly get lots of weird email from people recounting various crazy things that happened to them or that they believe happened to them. And who am I to judge what happened to them? I mean, its preposterous for me to sit here and try to do that, not knowing anything about them or their life or their experiences. So I just try to give back to people whatever I feel they are approaching me with. That’s in terms of language and symbolism, but also in terms of what I perceive to be their seriousness and level of sophistication. Does this mean that I tiptoe around replying to people about stuff that I don’t believe in? Absolutely. I’m interested in giving people connections they might be looking for, not in ramming my worldview down their throat. Sometimes I might falter in this regard, but it’s been my general approach for a while now, and Vallee’s quote above summarizes it really marvelously, and I’m happy to find it.