It is one of the most polarizing alien abduction stories and it introduces, as well as reinforces many corroborating elements of UFO stories that came after. If you havn´t heard about the famous Barney and Betty Hill abduction, this is a great place to start.
In September 1961, Betty and Barney Hill traveled from Montreal, Canada, to Portsmouth, New Hampshire, on their belated honeymoon. During their journey through the White Mountains of New Hampshire they experienced an extraterrestrial phenomenon that brought them into international spotlight and helped shape the dialogue about future supernatural encounters.
Betty and Barney Hill worked long hours in Portsmouth. Betty was a social worker who dealt with child welfare cases and Barney was a postal worker who drove 60 miles a day and worked night shifts.
In addition to their full-time jobs, the couple volunteered. They volunteered at their local church and were members of the NAACP. As an interracial couple, no union would accept them, but both were passionately interested in advancing the civil rights movement.
The Hills decided to take a well-deserved break and planned an impromptu road trip from Montreal to Niagara Falls. Although they had been married for 16 months, they had never been on honeymoon and viewed the trip as an opportune time. On the last night of the trip, the couple left a dinner in Vermont at 10am hoping to make it to Portsmouth by 2pm. They got into their car and left.
As they drove, they noticed a bright light in the sky that seemed to follow them. The more kilometres they travelled, the greater and brighter the light became.
Barney Hill, a World War II veteran and aviation enthusiast, didn't think much of the light. It was the middle of the night and he thought it could not come from a commercial plane or helicopter and assumed it was a satellite that was going somewhere.
The light continued to follow them as they drove down a winding road in the White Mountains. They became curious and decided to investigate. The light moved behind a tree and disappeared, only to reappear a moment later.
With binoculars Betty realized that the light was not a satellite, but a kind of object that rotated in the air, like a flying saucer. As a pragmatic and intellectual man, Betty was skeptical of extraterrestrial explanations, but she had no choice but to guess the object.
The couple continued driving, and when they reached Route 3 near Lincoln, an object hovered about 100 yards from the car. Barney stopped and got out of the car with a handgun to see what it was. Through the window of the vehicle, a creature in a grey uniform asked him to put his binoculars on. Realising he was going to be captured, Barney ran to the car and ran away. He tried to raise his gun, but he could not.
The next morning, Betty and Barney Hill woke up in their Portsmouth home with no recollection of what had happened the night before. Barney Hills shoes were worn out, Betty's dress torn and her watch had run out. At one point, they heard a strange beeping sound from their trunk, felt sleepy and lost consciousness.
Betty filed a complaint with the Air Force, which was concerned about the radiation. Over the next few years, the couple suffered from disturbing dreams and fears. Betty spent hours in the library to find out what had happened, reading about the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP), a civilian UFO group. They began to see a psychiatrist named Benjamin Simon, who helped them put together everything that had happened that night. After months of sessions with hypnosis, a technique popular at the time, they began to remember what had happened to them.
According to The Hills, the UFO landed on their car as they raced up a mountain and euthanized them. A grey creature, they saw, led them up a long ramp to the UFO. They were then separated and tested again.
They were asked to climb onto a metal table, take off their clothes, and the grey beings plucked their hair, cut out their nails, and peeled off parts of their skin. They were then examined with needles in their arms, legs and heads. Betty recalled having a needle inserted into her stomach for a pregnancy test. Samples were then placed on something resembling a glass slide.
After the UFO, the couple examined one of the humanoids to communicate with Betty. During the investigation, Betty asked the humanoid what they were up to. In response, the humanoid showed her a three-dimensional map with dots and lines of varying sizes. Years later after the incident, a woman called Marjorie Fish tried to interpret Betty´s reproduction of the map (while under hypnosis) and concluded that the drawn sketch of the alien map had very close resemblance with the Zeta Reticuli star system.
Betty described the map she was shown by the alien as "three-dimensional, like looking out the window." The stars are coloured with a glow. The map material is flat and thin, not dissimilar to a model, and in one of our three-dimensional processes there is no recognizable lenticular line.
Betty estimated that it was three feet wide and two feet high and that the pattern covered most of it. Betty was standing about three feet off the map. It has not changed its position when looking at the map, so we cannot say whether the map had the same three-dimensional view from each position or whether it was only three-dimensional.
She said there were many other stars on the map, but she could remember the most prominent one, which was connected to the line by a small, distinctive triangle on the left.
Barney recalled witnessing non-human characters who were emotional, punctuated by expressions of fear, emotional outbursts and incredulity. He said he feared he would have to keep his eyes closed during much of the kidnapping and physical examination.
The hypnosis was consistent with Barney's conscious recollection when he reported that the binoculars broke when he was run over by a UFO in his car. Based on this early reaction, Simon told Barney that although he could not remember the hypnosis session, he was sure that he remembered it well and was traumatized. Barney was so anxious that he reported that the guide had told him to close his eyes. They told him not to fear them. The men stared at Barney's eyes and said he had a "terrifying and mesmerizing effect."
Barney was escorted to a room with three men and told to lie down on a small rectangular examination table. A cup-like device was placed over his genitals. He didn't have an orgasm, but he thought a semen sample was taken. An alien scratched his skin and looked into his ears and mouth. Another felt his spine and seemed to count his vertebrae. A thin tube or cylinder was inserted into his anus and removed quickly.
Barney said he could feel his eyes pressing against his closed eyes and that he was able to communicate with his eyes while on board of the UFO.
He recalled being escorted back to the ship and taken to his car, and then back home, over and over again.
In the course of her life, Betty claimed to have been seen several times since the original abduction, and she became a well known figure in the UFO community. Barney died on February 25, 1969 at the age of 46 from cerebral hemorrhage and Betty died of cancer at the age of 85 on October 17th, 2004.
The story of Betty and Barney Hill shaped the way extraterrestrial encounters are discussed in today's media. Before this encounter, extraterrestrials were portrayed as friendly beings commuting from their home planet to Earth. After the encounter Betty Hill continued to research UFOs for the rest of her life, and her story became one of the most widespread alien encounters in history. Although it was not the first aliens abduction story, Betty and Barney's abduction was the best documented and is regarded as the most legitimate.
What do you think about the Betty & Barney Hill Story? Isn't it amazing how the Betty Hill Sketch matches with the Zeta Riticuli Star System?
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