The Betty and Barney Hill Abduction
The first widely publicised alien abduction. A New Hampshire couple driving home at night saw a light that followed their car, lost two hours of time, and under hypnosis in 1964 described being taken aboard a craft and examined by small grey beings.
- Date
- 19–20 September 1961
- Place
- US Route 3, White Mountains, New Hampshire, USA
- Witnesses
- Betty Hill, Barney Hill
- Status
- Disputed
What happened
Betty and Barney Hill were driving home from a holiday in Canada late on 19 September 1961 when they noticed a bright light that seemed to follow the car through the White Mountains. Barney stopped and looked at it through binoculars near Indian Head, and said he saw figures at the windows of a craft. He ran back to the car in a panic. The couple heard a series of beeping sounds, and then, they said, found themselves thirty-five miles farther along the road with no memory of the intervening time and a journey that had taken two hours longer than it should.
Betty reported the sighting to Pease Air Force Base the next day. Over the following months she had vivid dreams of being taken aboard the craft, and both Hills suffered anxiety. In 1964 they began hypnotic regression with the Boston psychiatrist Benjamin Simon, and separately described being stopped on the road, walked into the craft, and examined. Betty was shown a star map; Barney had a sample taken from his groin; both were told they would forget.
The beings
The Hills described beings about five feet tall with large heads, greyish skin, wide-set eyes that wrapped toward the sides, and small mouths, dressed in dark uniforms. Barney's initial description under hypnosis had a stronger 'wraparound' eye than Betty's. Their account is the template for the Grey, and the case is the reason the Grey dominates every abduction report after it.
Aftermath
The story became public in 1965 through a Boston newspaper series, and John G. Fuller's book The Interrupted Journey (1966) made it famous. A 1975 television film, The UFO Incident, fixed the imagery. Marjorie Fish's interpretation of Betty's star map as a view from Zeta Reticuli was published in 1974. Barney died in 1969; Betty remained a public figure in ufology until her death in 2004, and her later claims of frequent sightings were treated with scepticism even by supporters.
Explanations
Dr Simon, who conducted the hypnosis, concluded that the abduction memories were a shared fantasy built from Betty's dreams, which she had discussed with Barney before the sessions. Sceptics point to the timing: Barney's description of the beings' eyes came days after a television episode of The Outer Limits featured a similar creature. Supporters cite the couple's evident distress, their reluctance to publicise the story and the consistency of their separate accounts. The case remains the foundation of the abduction narrative and its most argued-over example.
Beings described
Sources
- Betty and Barney Hill incident
- John G. Fuller, The Interrupted Journey (1966)