In their own words: The Betty and Barney Hill Alien Abduction Story
Could the Betty and Barney Hill alien abduction story be the UFO smoking gun?
This article was originally published here.
Among the first highly publicized UFO abductions in modern times is that of Barney and Betty Hill. In September 1961, the newlyweds were driving down a deserted road in The White Mountains in New Hampshire when a UFO started following them. They saw the light disappear into the trees only to reappear still following closely.
The Hills pulled over with the engine still running to look at the object through their binoculars. Barney decided to take another look at this spacecraft and could see a flat-shaped object with gray uniformed aliens inside of it. Barney felt as if they were about to be abducted and ran screaming to the car where Betty was waiting for him. Hurriedly, they started to drive off when they both felt drowsy. When they awakened again, it was two hours later and they were 35 miles down the road.
When they arrived home, they were confused about what happened to them. They were dirty and missing time for 2 hours. Barney had scuffed shoes and Betty had a torn dress. They were having trouble understanding their abduction and sought the help of a psychiatrist. Under hypnosis, it was unveiled that aliens had abducted them and taken them aboard a flying saucer. They were subjected to invasive physical examinations and samples were collected.
Betty drew a star map of the aliens' origin in the Universe. The aliens told her they were from a star system called Zeta Reticuli. The aliens were what is known today as “The Greys”. This case became nationally known and a book was published by Betty’s niece, Kathleen Marden, called “Captured! The Betty and Barney Hill UFO Experience: The True Story of the World’s First Documented Alien Abduction”.
Here are the transcripts in their own words of this terrifying event.
Betty and Barney Hill Radio Interview with Alan Douglas
May 25th, 1966
The White Mountains, New Hampshire
Barney: When we were traveling South on Route 3, arrived in an area called Lancaster, New Hampshire. Betty called my attention to an object or a star that she had been watching.
Betty: As I was watching, this star seemed to be getting larger and brighter and as we went along I kept watching it and then all of a sudden I noticed that it had started to move. And we decided to stop, get out of the car and take a look at it.
Barney: I told her that it was probably a satellite, nothing to get alarmed about. She then passed the binoculars to me and said, you must really look at this satellite because it’s not behaving as we would expect a satellite to behave like. And surprisingly this…what I thought was a satellite began coming in my direction at a very rapid rate of speed. Well, this caused me to become quite alarmed. And I told my wife, well apparently it’s not a satellite. It must be a passenger plane. And they obviously are looking at us and I felt uncomfortable to see this, what I thought was a plane coming in our direction. So I returned to the car and so did she and we drove down the highway.
As they continued driving, the UFO flew in a zig-zag pattern and appeared to bounce back and forth in the sky like a ping-pong ball. Barney started to panic.
Barney: Well, from this point, I was getting quite frightened because I thought it must have been military pilots. They could obviously see us on the ground with the lights of the car on. I thought they were playing a game with us out there.
Betty: It followed us for approximately 30 miles. And then in an area called Indian Head, it left the top of the mountain, came out over the highway, and stopped, mid-air, on the highway right in front of us.
Barney: I continued to walk until I was, I would say approximately a hundred feet in this field, across this field and the object was just above me. It must have, at the time, been approximately a hundred feet up above my head. This would be about 10 stories up. And this when, while looking with the binoculars, I could see what I thought was approximately nine to eleven men looking down through a series of windows towards me. These figures that were looking seemingly down towards me, all the figures then, with the exception of one moved away from the plate glass and I could see with the binoculars what I thought were arms going up touching or pulling on levers. Well, this was too much for me. I pulled the binoculars away from my eyes dashing back to the car. I was screaming to Betty, “Oh My God”. I said, “Betty, this is going to capture us”.
The Greys were dressed in shiny black uniforms, they were grey in complexion and they were completely hairless and had eyes that wrapped around to the sides of their faces and the eyes were larger than human eyes. The windows were visible with the occupants looking at Barney who was staring at them through the binoculars. He felt a direct communication as if the aliens were telling him, “We came for you and we are not going to be satisfied until we get what we want”. Little red lights started to slide out from the craft on thin-like structures and something started to drop down from the bottom of the craft. Barney saw a ramp or a ladder and the craft transformed as if they were planning to come out.
Betty: He was so hysterical. He was very upset, and he immediately started driving the car trying to escape. However, it is too late. He was very upset. And he was also telling me to look out and see if I could see them. I pulled the car window down and I stuck my head out the window and looked out. And I couldn’t see anything. And so then I put the window back up and just when I had completed doing this-that we heard the beeping on the trunk of the car.
The beeps were unlike anything they had ever heard before.
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Barney: It was much like a tuning fork being struck and placed against you, a very subtle type vibration.
Suddenly, they both feel a tingling sensation and silence. It felt as though they were stuck in a dream and only a moment had passed. They heard another series of buzzing sounds, they did not see the craft and were returned to full consciousness. They realized they were 35 miles down the highway with very little memory of what had occurred between the time.
Barney: There is just a void you might say. And we saw what we thought was a bright moon. And I said, “Oh my God, not again.” And then we were beeped again. From that point, we started talking with one another about, well, what do you think of that? And my wife asked me, “Well do you believe in flying saucers now?” and I said, “Oh don’t be silly, of course not.” We then proceeded on to Portsmouth. There wasn’t much conversation between us from that point. When we arrived it was daybreak and the sun was coming up so it was not night any longer.
After they arrived home they were still puzzled, disturbed, and creeped out and trying to figure out what happened to them.
Betty: We just had a feeling of having been exposed to something, like we had been contaminated.
Betty was very curious to know what had happened to them while Barney did not want her to tell anyone. He thought no good could ever come of this. She disagreed and was very concerned about contamination. There was a neighbor who was a physicist who told her to take a compass to the car to see how the needle reacted. The purpose was to measure the magnetic field.
Barney: So, I went out reluctantly and took a look, and there on the trunk of the car were very large shiny spots about the size of silver dollars. They’re the same color of the car only as if it had been highly polished and there must have been around 15 to 20 of these spots in no particular pattern. Just spotted throughout the trunk. And when placing the compass over the spots, the compass would revolve very erratically. Anytime you take a compass and place it around any metal, particularly like a car with a battery, it will attract a magnet to it. But the fact that the compass would spin only in the area where the spots were located, I thought it was a bit unusual. And then this is when my wife decided, well, we should notify someone. After talking to these officers by phone I felt a great relief because they handled it with great dignity you might say. In a very official way and as if this was the responsible thing that she and I should have done is to report it to them.
They were then told of another sighting that was reported that night by the controller at the tower.
After the event, Barney started to experience an ulcer and went to the doctor. Betty started to have vivid nightmares.
Barney: I one day mentioned to him how Betty and I had seen a UFO. As a result of it, well it looked as if we both had amnesia at the same time, because, then I filled him in briefly with what we knew. So he recognized that this was possibly the cause of my ulcer. He recommended a psychiatrist in Boston, Dr. Benjamin Simon. A very qualified, prominent psychiatrist, well, you might say, qualified to regress one back with the use of hypnotherapy.
Interview in 1968, Betty describes what happened onboard the alien craft.
Betty: First, they took Barney into one room and I went into a second room. In this room, they did what I would call a fairly simple physical examination. They seemed to have mostly interest in my skin. I had the idea they were taking pictures of my skin and also interest in my hands and feet. They also did a test which they called “Checking my nervous system”, throughout the whole examination, it would be like picking up some kind of a strange animal and looking it over giving it a checkup, and putting it back down again without any intentions of harming it.
Under Hypnosis (1963)
Two years after their UFO encounter, they travel to Boston for a visit with Dr. Simon. Over the next 6 months, they underwent a series of treatments.
Dr. Simon: Barney’s symptoms has begun just after they had their sighting. Betty has responded by a series of dreams extending over a week or more of a nightmarish quality. So it seemed that this really involved both of them in their experiences and I undertook to take both into treatment and to use hypnosis to penetrate what appeared to be an amnesic period with very vague background. Under hypnosis which was quite deep, I took them one at a time of course so we begin with Barney and directed him to tell me everything that happened on that trip. All the feelings he had, all the experiences which he related, and so on.
Barney: I want to wake up.
Dr. Simon: You’re not going to wake up. You’re in a deep sleep. This is not going to trouble you. Go on. You can remember everything now.
Barney: It’s right over my right. God, what is it? And I try to maintain control so Betty cannot tell I am scared. God, I’m scared. (He starts panicking).
Dr. Simon pushes Barney to go beyond the mental block he developed. As Dr. Simon pushes Barney to continue, Barney says, “Please do not make me go there! Please don’t let me remember that!”
Dr. Simon: You will remember that, it won’t hurt you now.
Barney: I get out the binoculars and then it’s there, and I look, I look, and it is just overhead, I think I am not afraid. And I walk…I walk…out…and I walked across the road. There it is up there. Oh, God! OH!!! (He starts to go into a panic).
Dr. Simon: Calm down, it’s there, and you can see it but it is not going to hurt you. Go on. What did he tell you?
Barney: Stay there and keep looking. Just keep looking and stay there. And just keep looking. Just keep looking.
Dr. Simon: Could you hear him tell you?
Barney: Oh, I’ve got to pull these binoculars away from my eyes…’cause if I don’t I’ll just keep standing there.
Dr. Simon: Did you hear him tell you this?
Barney: Oh no. He didn’t say it.
Dr. Simon: You felt he said it.
Barney: I know.
Dr. Simon: You know he said it.
Barney: They’re there. Just stay there, he’s saying to me. He’s talking in my head!
In another session, Barney talks about hearing the beeps and what happens next. As he was driving, he finds himself on a dirt road with tall trees all around.
Barney: They’re there. Isn’t that funny. I’m in the woods. It’s them. It is the ones I saw when I was standing in the field looking through binoculars.
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Betty’s Hypnosis Session
Under hypnosis, Betty remembers Barney taking a sharp turn in the road and they were on a dirt road with tall trees all around.
Betty: I don’t know where we are. I don’t even know how we got here. At that time I didn’t feel afraid. (Betty starts to cry).
Dr. Simon: Why are you crying if you’re not afraid?
Betty: I was afraid when I saw the men in the road.
Dr. Simon: Men in the road?
(Betty is crying).
She puts her hand on the door and prepares to run into the woods to hide, but she is intercepted and loses consciousness. The next thing she remembers, the beings were escorting her through the woods and onto the spacecraft.
Betty: I’ve never been so afraid in my life. They’re taking me up to the object. I don’t want to go on it. I don’t know what’s going to happen if I go on it. I don’t want to go. I go up the ramp and I go inside.
The beings said to Betty, “There is nothing to be afraid of, we only need to do a few simple tests and you won’t be harmed and you will very quickly be on your way”. She doesn’t trust them and kicks one of them beside her and this is what tears her dress. They regain control of her and she is taken into an examination room on the craft.
Betty: I watched them take Barney in the next room and I go in this room.
She then meets the “Examiner”.
Betty: He tells me to take off my dress and then before I even had a chance hardly to stand up to do it the Examiner has the zipper down the back and the Examiner unzips my dress, it goes way down to my waist, the zipper does. And so I slip my dress off. And so I don’t have my dress or my shoes on. Then they roll me over on my back and the Examiner has a long needle in his hand and it is bigger than any needle I’ve ever seen. I asked him what was he going to do with it. And he said, “Just a simple test, it won’t hurt me”. And I asked him what, and he said, he just wants to put it in my navel and it’s just a simple test. I tell him no. It will hurt. Don’t do it. Don’t do it. And he said, “No it won’t hurt”. And he sticks the needle into my navel and it hurts. And I’m crying and I tell him, it’s hurting! It’s hurting and hurting!! Take it out!!! And then the Leader, he goes over and puts his hand, runs his hand in front of my eyes and he says, I’ll be alright. I won’t feel it. And all the pain goes away. But I still…I still…The pain goes away, but I’m still sore from where they put that needle…I don’t know why they put that long needle into my navel. I tried to tell them, it was…They shouldn’t do it.
Dr. Simon: Did they make any sexual advances to you?
Betty: No.
Simon: They didn’t?
Betty: No. I asked the Leader, I said, Why did he stick the needle…Why did they stick the needle in my navel? And he said it was a pregnancy test. And I said, well, I don’t know what they expected but that was no pregnancy test here. And he didn’t say any more.
Barney was also subjected to a physical examination. Barney is placed on a table and his clothes was removed. The Extraterrestrials were interested in his muscular structure and nervous system. As he was rolled over, he can feel something pushing along on the vertebrae in his spine.
Dr. Simon: What did you really believe?
Barney: I believed we had seen and been a part of something different than anything I had ever seen before.
It is the most extraordinary story Dr. Simon has ever heard.
During her dreams and under hypnosis, Betty described seeing a star map that one of the aliens had shown to her. It was a destination map of the routes that had been traveled. She said to the Leader, “I know you are not from around here, where is your home port?” And the Being produced a 3-Dimensional star map.
Betty: It was an oblong map. It wasn’t square. It was a lot wider than it was long. And there were all these dots on it. And they were scattered all over it. Some were little, just pinpoints and others were as big as a nickel. And there were lines. There were on some of the dots, there were curved lines going from one dot to another. And there was one big circle and it had a lot of lines coming out from it a lot of lines going to another circle quite close but not as big. And these were heavy lines and I asked him what they meant and he said that the broken lines were expeditions.
Under instructions from Dr. Simon, Betty later reproduced the map from memory.
Later in Betty’s life
Betty: For a long long time I had the feeling that I had sort of lived through a tragedy in some way and sometimes even now I still have this feeling. Because it’s something that’s haunting, it’s something that’s always on my mind. No matter where I go, or what I do, it is the last thing I think of when I go to bed at night, and it is the first thing I think of in the morning when I wake up. And I expect it will probably be that way for the rest of my life.
Betty: Of course after this happened, there’s no doubt in my mind, that these are real solid crafts and astronauts from another solar system because they told me so themselves.
Betty: The good question is, why are they coming here? I don’t think the government knows any more than we do, they are just as puzzled as we are. I mean, we know they’re here and they know they were beings onboard, we don’t know why they are here. I’m Betty Hill, and my husband Barney and I were the first people on this planet to be abducted by astronauts from another solar system.
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