Communion A True Story

Fallacy	Definition	Example	Explanation
Wishful Thinking	Something is true because I want it to be.	“It is a true story, as true as I know hot to describe it”	While Strieber may have every detail he can possibly remember to include throughout the book there are still going to be many that remain skeptical. For this section of his audience all he can really do is give them his word and hope they believe it.
Appeal to Misleading Authority (w/ Appeal to Celebrity & Appeal to Tradition)	Using an authority to affirm a conclusion when the authority is not expert enough, in the context, to assure the conclusion	“Being the son of state trooper and pilot he did not claim that it was a ‘UFO,’ but simply told the truth”	Strieber expects us to believe that because this young man is the child of authority  figures of both the law and aviation that he has the composure to avoid from exaggerating his story and  because of this it must be true.
Post Hoc	A thing that happens before another thing caused that.	“When I finally went back to the apartment the cats came up to me and started to twist and turn around my ankles- and then went bounding away. My cats.”	Streiber is trying to state that because of the events that occurred surrounding this abduction his cats can sense this paranormal activity and are acting strange because of their feline instincts.
Quantifier Shift	A “some” statement in a premise becomes an “all” in the conclusion.	“Later, I thought to myself that they were taming me. Maybe this gradual increase in the intimacy of contact that has occurred over the years has to do with that: They are taming us all.”	Here Strieber is taking the events that happened to him and has reported to have happened to others and applying them to everyone  so that all of his audience is involved. This perhaps may be because he wants to give his audience a sense of concern by bringing the issue to them.
Appeal to Ignorance	Something is true because there is no evidence for it.	”Still I could not simply reject the notion. Why should I?”	Strieber is kind of giving up here in his argument by not providing reasons to support his claims but simply implying that there is not enough evidence to go against his claim.
Emotional Appeal	Something is true because it makes us feel good or untrue because it doesn’t.	“I have never before encountered such a group of seemingly ordinary people under so much pressure”	Strieber is trying to appeal to his audience by making them feel empathetic towards these people who give their testimonies. By including that they are “seemingly ordinary”makes them appeal more to the audience and makes them think that this could happen to anyone if they don’t already.
Accident	A sweeping generalization of a fact or a rule, presented as if it has no exception.	“Later I discovered that memories of animals in strange places are a common block to this experience.”	This notion of “Screen Memories” as Strieber refers to them as throughout the book reappear frequently as evidence of abductions by inferring that if you have such a memory then it is because your true memories are being blocked out.
Weak Analogy	The two terms in the analogy are weakly or unrelated.	"The odor was distinct, and gave me just what I needed, an anchor in reality"	Here Strieber is trying to give evidence of his abduction being real because the smell from that night was too real for the memories to be sprouting from his head.