Barney Hill holding up a drawing of the UFO he and his wife Betty witnessed in the sky.
This is a classic story in the field of UFOs and the alien abduction phenomenon. The Betty and Barney Hill case was the introduction of the commonly known grey alien into pop culture, and was the beginning of the alien abduction phenomenon itself.
Betty was a 41 year old social worker with a Master's degree from the University of New Hampshire. Barney was a 39 year old postal worker. The two were married and lived in Portsmouth, NH in the early 1960's. The Hills were respected people who were well-liked by the people who knew them.
On the night of September 19, 1961 the Hills were on their way back home from a short vacation to Montreal, Canada. They were driving on Route 3 close to Indian Head Resort in a heavily wooded area. The night was clear and a crescent moon shone in the sky. The Hills noticed a strange light in the sky that was moving erratically. Barney's first thought was that it was an airplane of some kind, but Betty thought it was a spacecraft.
Barney pulled the car to the side of the road in order to get a better look at the light through his binoculars. He was able to observe multi-colored lights and rows of windows on the object in the sky, which was coming closer to them. As the object came closer, Barney became able to see that there were beings inside of the flat-shaped object. The beings that were inside of the windows of the craft were bipedal and humanoid. The craft landed in a field, and a frightened Barney got back inside of his car and drove away.
The craft was no longer visable as the Hills continued their drive back home, but they heard a beeping sound in their car. The Hills then noticed that they were in Ashla, which was about 35 miles further down the road than they had been just a couple of minutes before. The Hills drove home and went to sleep. They slept until the following afternoon.
Betty called a friend at the nearby Pease Air Force Base named Major Paul Henderson. She told him about the sighting and he corroborated her story with two separate UFO reports from radar data.
Neither Betty nor Barney were able to recall the abduction experience, but Betty began to have nightmares of them being taken on a craft and having various medical experiments performed on them. Not long after the experience, two writers heard about the story and interviewed the Hills. The writers uncovered two hours of missing time for the Hills on the night of their UFO sighting.
The Hills did some research on psychiatrists, and decided on a well-known psychologist and neurologist by the name of Dr. Benjamin Simon. Dr. Simon diagnosed the Hills with "anxiety syndrome" due to the events on the night of their UFO encounter. In order to figure out the cause of the anxiety, Dr. Simon used regressive hypnosis on the Hills. The result of the hypnosis sessions was that the Hills had been taken aboard a UFO on the night of their sighting.
The hypnosis sessions, done separately on both Barney and Betty, uncovered new details about the incident. The Hills' car had stalled, and the craft had actually landed on the road they were on, in front of their car. The Hills were taken into the craft and did have medical experiments performed on them, as Betty had dreamt about. Betty and Barney were examined in separate rooms. There were hair, nail, and skin samples taken. Barney gave a semen sample, and Betty was given a pregnance test that consisted of a long needle being inserted into her navel. The beings on the craft spoke telepathically, and were described as "...bald-headed alien beings, about five foot tall, with greyish skin, pear shaped heads and slanting cat-like eyes." Here is a picture of an alien that Barney drew while under hypnosis, and sketches done by David Baker, who interviewed Barney about the incident:
While on the craft, Betty asked one of the beings where they were from. She was shown a star map which is believed to portray Zeta Reticuli as the planet where the beings came from.The beings asked Betty if she knew where she was on the map, but she did not know. They then told her that since she did not know where she was on the map, they would not be able to explain to her where they came from. But they showed her the map anyway. Betty was able to reproduce the star map under hypnosis, which is shown below followed by an interpretation of the map done by an amateur astronomer named Margorie Fish:
Betty said the map was 3-dimensional but on a flat and thin material. Betty had drawn the map in 1963, and it showed stars that would not be found until 1969. Betty had asked one of the beings if she could take a book back with her, worried that nobody would believe her. At first, the beings agreed to it, but later they would change their minds and not allow Betty to take anything back with her. The last thing the Hills remembered seeing was an orange light in the sky disappear.
After months of regressive hypnosis on the Hills, Dr. Simon reached a conclusion - the Hills were not making up a story. "The experience actually happened, or, some perceptive and illusory misinterpretations occurred in relationship to some real event."
There was some physical evidence to go along with the Hills' story. The purple dress that Betty was wearing that night was torn and stained. One of Barney's shoes was scraped, and the strap on his binoculars was broken. Add these things to the star map, and you have some compelling evidence. Something peculiar definitely happened to the Hills that night.
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Tags: UFO, Alien, Alien Abduction, Betty and Barney Hill, Grey Aliens
Books: There was a book written about the Betty and Barney Hill incident called "The Interrupted Journey" by John G. Fuller. Check it out if you want to read more about the story.
Links: ufocasebook.com has a great article on this story.