On September 19, 1961, Betty and Barney Hill claimed that they were abducted by aliens while driving through rural New Hampshire, then brought aboard their spaceship for a series of tests.
Charles Walker Collection/Alamy Stock PhotoBetty Hill was a social worker living with her husband Barney in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.
Both Betty and Barney worked hard and so, in September 1961, they decided to take a well-earned trip through Montreal and to Niagara Falls. After three days, they stopped at a diner in Vermont on Sept. 19, 1961, then headed south toward Portsmouth along Route 3 at around 10 p.m.
As they drove, they became aware of a bright light in the sky. Barney thought it was a plane or a satellite; Betty wasn’t so sure. The light seemed to zig and zag, it made no noise — like a plane would — and it seemed to be following them as they drove along the dark, empty road.
Finally, Betty and Barney Hill decided to pull over to see if they could get a closer look at the object in the sky.
“We stopped our car and got out to observe it more closely with our binoculars,” Betty Hill wrote to Major Donald E. Keyhoe, the director of the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP), a week later. “As it hovered in the air in front of us, it appeared to be pancake in shape, ringed with windows in the front through which we could see bright blue-white lights. Suddenly, two red lights appeared on each side. By this time my husband was standing in the road, watching closely. He saw wings protrude on each side and the red lights were on the wing tips.”
University of New HampshireThe UFO seen by Betty and Barney Hill, as drawn by Betty Hill.
Though Barney had his doubts, Betty contacted both the NICAP and the Air Force. Meanwhile, the couple began to develop a shared, inexplicable anxiety that seemed to manifest itself in vivid dreams, ulcers, and insomnia. Barney also developed a strange set of warts around his groin.
Finally, on Dec. 14, 1963, Betty and Barney Hill went to the office of Dr. Benjamin Simon, a Boston-based psychiatrist and neurologist renowned for his expertise in hypnotherapy. They hoped that he could help unlock what had happened to them during that September night back in 1961 — and he did. Slowly but surely, while under hypnosis, the Hills described the events of that fateful night in greater detail — and recalled a truly horrifying story.
Betty And Barney Hill Remember The Alien Abduction Under Hypnosis
Under hypnosis Betty and Barney Hill began to remember and more and more about their alleged alien encounter. As they later told author John Grant Fuller for his book, The Interrupted Journey, the aliens had walked them up a ramp and into their spacecraft, where they had begun to perform a number of examinations on the couple.
The Hills were told undress and lie on metal tables. The aliens purported took samples of their hair, nails, and skin, and poked them with needles. When Simon asked Barney if the examination had been similar to a tonsillectomy, Barney, under hypnosis, replied: “Like that, but my eyes are closed, and I only have mental pictures. And I am not in pain. And I can feel a slight feeling. My groin feels cold… I don’t want to be operated on.”
Charles Walker Collection/Alamy Stock PhotoAn artist’s impression of the extraterrestrial beings as described by Barney and Betty Hill.
But Betty’s recollection of the aliens was more pleasant. She remembered the aliens showing confusion over Barney’s dentures, jokingly telling her that there would be “no point” in telling her where the craft had gone before, since she knew nothing of the universe, and even showing her a star map.
The map displayed various stars connected by lines and was described as a three-dimensional projection. Betty Hill was told that the solid lines represented trade routes, while the dashed lines were expeditions that the aliens had undertaken. She later drew the map from memory, and many have since speculated that it corresponds to the Zeta Reticuli star system.
But though Betty and Barney Hill convinced plenty of people once their account of alien abduction was picked up by national media, skeptics don’t buy their story of UFOs, probes, and little gray men.
Skeptics Cast Doubt On The Story Of Alien Abduction
Chronicle/Alamy Stock PhotoBetty Hill revisiting the site of her abduction years later.
Critics have likewise pointed out inconsistencies in the Hills’ story, noting that certain details changed over time. For example, Betty’s descriptions of the beings and the sequence of events varied in different retellings, and Betty and Barney Hill described the aliens in different ways. Such inconsistencies may suggest that the narrative was influenced by external factors or evolved as a result of memory distortion.
But Barney and Betty Hill’s alien story is still widely considered one of the first of its kind, and alien abduction stories that followed largely mirrored theirs. Encounters like Linda Napolitano’s, for example, describe “gray men” and an examination, and even mere alien encouters like the the Varginha UFO Incident or the Ariel School Phenomenon seem to describe aliens like the ones the Hills allegedly saw.
Sourse: www.allthatsinteresting.com
