Betty and Barney Hill
From The Red Pill
Betty and Barney Hill were a mixed race couple who claimed they were abducted by aliens in 1961. Their story was one of the first, and is one of the most well-known, alien abduction reports.
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Account
The Hill incident occurred on the evening of September 19, 1961. While driving home from a vacation in Canada, they claim to have observed a bright point of light in the sky near Groveston, New Hampshire at about 10.15pm. As the object came closer over time, Barney stopped the car to retrieve a revolver from the trunk. Using binoculars, Barney is said to have seen about 10 humanoids peering out of the craft's windows.
Barney ran back to the car, shouting "They're going to capture us!", and drove off at speed. Shortly afterwards, the Hills heard a series of beeping sounds emanating from the rear end of their car. They reported that at this point they felt fatigued and also a tingling sensation throughout their bodies.
A series of strange incidents and feelings once home compelled the Hills to try and reconstruct what happened that night. However, they had the distinct feeling that their memories were incomplete.
Investigation
The next day (September 20), at the urging of her sister Janet, Betty telephoned Pease Air Force Base to report their UFO encounter. The couple were interviewed over the phone on September 21 by Major Paul W. Henderson, who determined that the Hills had probably just seen the planet Jupiter and forwarded his report to Project Blue Book.
However, within two weeks Betty reported vivid, recurrent nightmares. On September 26, she contacted Major Donald Keyhoe, a high-profile author on UFO matters and also the head of the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomenon (NICAP). Her letter was passed on to Walter N. Webb, a Boston astronomer and NICAP member, who conducted a six hour interview with the Hills on October 21, 1961.
Webb met the Hills on October 21, 1961. In a six-hour interview, the Hills related all they could remember of the UFO encounter. Barney asserted that he had a sort of "mental block" regarding the encounter, and that he suspected there were some portions of the event that he did not wish to remember. However, initially Webb was skeptical of their claims.
On November 25, 1961, the Hills were again interviewed at length by NICAP members, this time C.D. Jackson and Robert E. Hohman. These two investigators were the first to uncover the 'missing time' element of the encounter - the drive home had taken seven hours, despite it only being a four hour drive.
According to Jerome Clark...
(despite) all their efforts the Hills could recall almost nothing of the 35 miles between Indian Head and Ashland. The subject of hypnosis came up. Perhaps hypnosis could unlock the missing memories. Barney was apprehensive about hypnosis, but thought it might help Betty put to rest what Barney described as the "nonsense" of Betty's recurrent dreams.
Some have claimed that Pease Airforce Base tracked a UFO on the night of the Hill's abduction. Jacques Vallee, in his book Dimensions, quotes from Blue Book File #100-1-61:
During a casual conversation on 22 Sept 61 between Major Gardiner B. Reynolds, 100th B S DC01and Captain Robert O. Daughaday, Commander 1917-2 AACS DIT, Pease AFB, N.H., it was revealed that a strange incident occurred at 0214 local on 20 Sept. No importance was attached to the incident at the time.’
At the beginning of 1962 warts appeared in a circle around Barney's groin. In 1963, the Hills went to see Dr Benjamin Simon about hypnosis to recall their memories.
Hypnosis Account
Dr Simon began hypnotizing the Hills on January 4, 1964, the sessions lasting until June 6, 1964. Each were interviewed separately, to ensure against contamination. Barney was quite emotional in his testimony, and was able to recall that after he drove away from the UFO, he had suddently felt compelled to pull off the road and drive into the woods. There he saw six men standing in the woods, who commanded him to stop.
Barney said the humanoids had huge eyes which extended to the sides of their heads, through which they appeared to hypnotically control him. According to Barney, "only their eyes are talking to me...all I see are these eyes". Betty and he were separated, with Barney being led into a room and put on what appeared to be a medical examination table. Barney reported that a cup-like device was placed over his genitals, in which he had an orgasm. His skin was scraped, a tube or cylinder was inserted in his anus and he remembered someone feeling his spine, as if they were counting his vertebrae. Barney said that communication was by "thought transference."
Betty reported a similar story, except for a few notable events. She says she was shown a "star map" which displayed where the humanoids were from (which has since gained fame as the Zeta Reticuli map, a controversy debated by many believers, astronomers and skeptics), and also that she was given a book with strange writing in it to take home, which unfortunately was confiscated as she was leaving.
Dr. Simon concluded that Barney's recall of the encounter was a fantasy inspired by Betty's recurrent nightmares - a conclusion which Barney rejected.
Fame
On October 25, 1965, a front page story on the Boston Traveler examined the account of the Hill's, and the story soon raced around the globe. In 1966, John G. Fuller - in cooperation with the Hills and Dr Simon - wrote the seminal book The Interrupted Journey which described the Hill's abduction. The book was later made into a telemovie starring James Earl Jones as Barney.
Skepticism
Skeptic Martin Kottmeyer suggested that Barney's account under hypnosis may have been influenced by an episode of the science fiction television show The Outer Limits. The particular episode Kottmeyer refers to went to air a fortnight before Barney's first hypnotic session, and featured an extraterrestrial with large eyes who says, "In all the universes, in all the unities beyond the universes, all who have eyes have eyes that speak." The similarity to Barney's account, particularly regarding the eyes, is striking.
Other skeptical arguments are that the Hills shared a hallucination (folie a deux), or that the account was brought on by the stress of being an inter-racial marriage in the 1960s.
Aftermath
Barney Hill died of a cerebral hemorrhage on February 25, 1969 aged 46. Betty Hill became somewhat of a UFO celebrity for decades afterward. She died October 17, 2004 from lung cancer.
External Links
- The Betty and Barney Hill Incident Directory at NICAP's website
- Martin Kottmeyer's "The Eyes That Spoke"
- "Proof in the Stars", by Stanton Friedman
