Ian Martin scared the heck out of me as an impressionable 18 year old before the days of extensive cable channels, the "X files", etc. Four of the six scariest RMTs I heard originally ("The hand", "The vampire plant", "Time and again" and this play) were penned or adapted by him. (The other two scary ones for me were "Return of the Moresbys" and "The Teddy Bear"...honestly, the last one scared me the most because it was based on reality.)

This story, unlike the other three Martin stories, is only half as scary as it was on listen a quarter century later. It makes masterful use of the RMT music, and features Cort Benson as a police investigator, Lloyd Battista as a parapsychologist (always fun to have people in that profession on the episodes) and the beautiful Marian Seldes as "Lisa". I think the music, fine performances and episode "set up" for the first 2/3 of the story were what made this so memorable the first time I heard it.

Seldes as "Lisa X" claims that at a church dance she met a man who, like her, believed in UFOs. In fact, he says he's a "coordinator...in the field of human relationships" and talks like Lisa is destined to take a flying saucer ride somewhere out there in the stars. Ms. Seldes character, obviously scared, says he "freaked her out" with talk like that. She's had some scares...a mysterious figure appearing to her, her sister and brother as children while they were playing (she says they thought he was the devil, but she describes later climbing the trees as a child looking toward the stars waiting for something). As an adult, she has an experience with a man (terrifyingly described in the episode to me when I was younger) who mysteriously appears to her at her bedside after she's driven past a landed spacecraft in a field...he grabs her wrist and "marks" her with intense heat, scarring her and fusing her watch).

Back to the church social. (Like a fool) She goes on a drive with this fellow, and a lit craft of some kind skims the trees above them. Her suitor says "It's landed...they're waiting for us."

All three RMT players do well in the roles I described. However, the back 1/3 of this episode almost sounds kind of silly listening to this 25 years later. Still, this was a great trip down memory lane (no pun intended for this episode) and I'm extremely happy that I finally found it. Interesting note: it's amusing to me when Seldes' character asked about whether the police station she visits Benson and Battista at has a ladie's room, to which Benson says "Even in the days before Women's lib..." There's also other amusing dialogue, as Battista hypnotizes Lisa: "Feel it (the hypnotic trance) space you out...are you there? Are...you...there?" 