Sam Willey

Barney and Betty Hill

December 7, 2006 |  8 comments
Image Credit: An Abduction incident took place in 1961 and is today considered to be one of the most important abduction cases it involved both Barney and Betty Hill. Barney Hill - 39 year old black man who worked for the US postal service. Betty Hill - 41 year old white woman who owned a Master's Degree, and was the supervisor for the child welfare department. The story of the couple begins in September of 1961 in the state of New Hampshire, United States. Barney had developed an ulcer, and he and his wife decided to take a short holiday to Canada. The pair had visited Niagara Falls and Montreal and on the 19th of September they began the journey back home to Portsmouth. It was a clear night and the moon shone down on the wooded landscape that surrounded US Route 3 in the centre of New Hampshire. At around 10pm, three miles south of the city of Lancaster, Barney Hill noticed what appeared to be a bright star or planet in the night sky which seemed to move erratically. Barney told Betty about the bright light and they both decided to watch the object. Betty later stated that Barney tried to convince himself that it was a plane but that she thought it was definitely an unidentified craft of some sort and certainly not just a plane. As the couple continued to Flume, located just north of North Woodstock, the object appeared to move in an odd way.

As their car reached Indian Head, Barney stopped the car and had a look at the object with his binoculars. He reported seeing multicoloured lights, and rows of windows on a flat-shaped object, which seemed to be coming closer to their location. As the strange object moved to within a hundred feet of him, he could see beings inside the craft. Barney got scared and got straight back in the car and sped away. At the time they would not aware but soon two hours would seemingly vanish.When they restarted their journey home, they did not see the strange craft at any point. But strangely enough they did hear a beeping sound of some sort. They then heard the same beeping sound again, and noticed that they were suddenly thirty-five miles further down the road than a minute ago. They were not somehow located in Ashla. Reportedly the mood inside the car was very quiet as the couple continued home and went to bed. The two slept well into the next afternoon and straight away when Betty got up she made a phone call to her sister Janet to let her know what had happened. Janet advised Betty to call the nearby Pease Air Force Base and report the strange event. Betty did just that and reported the incident by speaking to Major Paul W. Henderson, who told Betty that the sighting of the “UFO” was confirmed by radar. An important fact to know of is that Barney was very much against Betty calling the Air Force Base he had hoped to just keep the events personal.At this point Betty and Barney Hill had no idea that they had been abducted. Soon after that afternoon Betty began to have nightmares of her and her husband being taken aboard a craft of some kind against her will. A few weeks after the event two writers got hold of the story it should be noted that these two writers have never been named. Even though there are literally thousands of reports which involve these two “writers” however this does not mean the events never occurred because the interview was attended by Major James MacDonald a former Air Force Intelligence Officer. After the writers conducted an interview with the Hill's they made a log of the events of the night they saw the craft. It was revealed that the couple had experienced a two hour missing time period the Hill's could not explain the time they had missed. Shortly after Betty Hill began having nightmares she wrote a letter to Major Donald Kehoe who passed her information to Walter Webb, who was on the staff of the Hayden Planetarium. Walter Webb at the time was a scientific advisor for the National Investigations Committee on Arial Phenomena (NICAP) It is not know what he did with the report. Major MacDonald was responsible for suggesting to the Hills to undergo regressive hypnosis he told the Hills that this process could help them figure out what occurred on the night they saw the UFO. In the spring time of 1962, the Hills got in contact with a psychiatrist regarding the hypnosis sessions, but decided to wait a while before going ahead with it. All this time Betty was still experiencing nightmares and Barneys ulcer was getting worse and he was again suffering from hypertension (high blood pressure). After doing some research on psychiatrists the Hills made the decision to contact well-known Boston psychiatrist and neurologist, Dr. Benjamin Simon, who was one of the most respected doctors in his field. After a couple of interviews, Dr. Simons's preliminary diagnosis was anxiety syndrome, relating to the incidents of the night of September 19th 1961. His next step was to find out what exactly happened on that night.In order to do this the treatment that Dr. Simon chose was regressive hypnosis. He began the sessions on Barney, and then followed up with the exact same treatment for Betty. The process was very slow but after a six month period it was Dr. Simon's respected expert opinion that the Hills had been abducted and taken aboard a UFO on the night of September 19th 1961.After these sessions the details became clear. The Hills revealed that the car had stalled, and then the alien craft landed right on the road directly in front of them which formed a total block in the road. They were then taken into the UFO and given medical examinations by the extraterrestrials on board and after the event they were ordered under hypnosis not to speak of the events. The beings were described by Betty and Barney as being “bald headed alien beings” who were around five foot tall, with grey skin, pear shaped heads and slanting “cat like eyes” It should be noted at this point that this was the first ever mention of the “greys” in the UFO world. During the tests conducted by the aliens the Hills were taken into separate rooms. These exams involved both physical and also mental or physiological procedures.

Part of these tests involved samples of skin, hair and nails being taken from the couple. Betty stated that she had a long needle inserted into her navel and was told it was a pregnancy test. Barney related that he had given a semen specimen. Betty then said she was given a sort of book as token of her visit, but this item was later taken back. At one point the aliens seemed surprised to find that Barney's teeth could be removed (Barney had dentures). Betty then stated she asked one of the beings where they were from, and the extraterrestrials replied by showing her a star map of some sort the alien being asked Betty to locate were she lived on the star map but in response she simply shrugged and said “I don't know.” The star maps that Betty referred to could not be found by scientists at the time could not find any matching constellations. But eight years after details of the Hill case emerged more powerful telescopes came into use and a number of scientists claim they have found a match for this map. In 1969 Marjorie Fish a Ohio Schoolteacher and amateur astronomer became involved with the Hills case and got an interview with Betty Hill in the summer it should be stated that Barney Hill passed away earlier in the same year from a cerebral haemorrhage. Fish had a lengthy discussion with Betty and after Fish released the following statement -"On Aug. 4, 1969, Betty Hill discussed the star map with me. Betty explained that she drew the map in 1964 under posthypnotic suggestion. It was to be drawn only if she could remember it accurately, and she was not to pay attention to what she was drawing - which puts it in the realm of automatic drawing. This is a way of getting at repressed or forgotten material and can result in unusual accuracy. She made two erasures showing her conscious mind took control part of the time." "Betty described the map as three-dimensional, like looking through a window. The stars were tinted and glowed. The map material was flat and thin (not a model), and there were no noticeable Lenticular lines like one of our three-dimensional processes. (It sounds very much like a reflective hologram.)" Betty did not shift her position while viewing it, so we cannot tell if it would give the same three-dimensional view from all positions or if it would be completely three-dimensional. Betty estimated the map was approximately three feet wide and two feet high with the pattern covering most of the map. She was standing about three feet away from it. She said there were many other stars on the map but she only (apparently) was able to specifically recall the prominent ones connected by lines and a small distinctive triangle off to the left. There was no concentration of stars to indicate the Milky Way (galactic plane) suggesting that if it represented reality, it probably only contained local stars. There were no grid lines.”Three stars in the above cluster were unknown until 1969 and no astronomer on earth knew their location in 1963 yet Betty Hill managed to draw a map of these in 1963 or so it has been reported. Astronomers at the Ohio University had a computer put them in their exact position out beyond the double star system of Zeta Reticuli 1 and Zeta Reticuli 2 which is located 220 trillion miles or 37 light years away from earth. The computer duplicated with virtually no variation that map that Betty Hill did.After the examinations done by the greys the Hills were returned to their car and the last thing the Hills remembered was an orange glow that disappeared into the night sky. Both Betty and Barney tried to keep these reports out of the press and unfortunately an inaccurate version of the events was leaked to the press after this the Hills decided to come forward with the true version.

Dr. Simon concluded that there could only be two conclusion and he was positive that the Hills were being truthful about the event here are the two conclusions he stated could be the answer 1- "The experience actually happened, or, 2 - some perceptive and illusory misinterpretations occurred in relationship to some real event." What the "real event" may be, I do not know.” When facts of the Hill case were released many respectable investigators into UFO's shared interest and made their own personal conclusions. Dr. J. Allen Hynek who at the time was Professor of Astronomy at the Northwestern University and later was an Air Force Consultant on Aerial Phenomena. As a consultant for Project Bluebook Hynek later released a book on the Hill case entitled “The UFO Experience.” Here is the conclusion made by Hynek - "Under repeated hypnosis they independently revealed what had supposedly happened. The two stories agreed in considerable detail, although neither Betty nor Barney was privy to what the other had said under hypnosis until much later. Under hypnosis they stated that they had been taken separately aboard the craft, treated well by the occupants - rather as humans might treat experimental animals - and then released after having been given the hypnotic suggestion that they would remember nothing of that particular experience. The method of their release supposedly accounted for the amnesia, which was apparently broken only by counter hypnosis. Dr. Stanton Friedman spent a long time analysing and discussing this case with the Hills and he released the following statement - Dr. Stanton Friedman spent many long hours with the Hills, discussing the case, and being a nut and bolts man, issued this statement; "By no stretch of the imagination could anyone who knows them conclude that they were nuts," he emphasizes. The Hills had been interviewed and questioned by others scientists and investigators; some under hypnosis, and all are in agreement on one important fact. The Hills did NOT make their story up, and the events put forward are based upon some REAL event. Although Barney and Betty were in an interracial marriage, which unfortunately cast an unfavorable shadow on them, we must remember that Betty had a Master's Degree in social work, and Barney served on the governor of New Hampshire's Civil Rights Commission. Both of them were well-respected by those who knew them or worked with them. What benefit they could have gained from such an elaborate hoax I cannot imagine. Although many so-called abductees have lost their livelihoods because of their stories, the Hills did not, and remained involved in previous activities to the extent that the interruptions of what happened allowed them. In conclusion the case of Betty and Barney Hill is certainly very spectacular indeed that has been well documented over the years. In my opinion I do believe that the Hills were abducted by extraterrestrials I do not believe that this was some “illusion” nor do I believe the hills were fabricating their story in any way. I don't think we will ever definitively know for fact that they were abducted but there is a lot of evidence that suggests it. Comments (8)

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