Case subject:
*Betty and Barney Hill
Incident location:
*Route 3, to Portsmouth, New Hampshire
Incident date:
*September 19th and 20th, 1961
Case type:
*Alien Abduction
In September, 1961, the Hills were returning from a holiday in Canada, driving along a New Hampshire road. On Route 3, at approximately 11 pm, they saw what they described a "bright star" in the sky. They stopped the car and got out to have a closer look with binoculars. The light then reversed its direction and the couple got back into their car and drove on. The light then turned back and approached their car, so they stopped again to look at it.
Barney tried to dismiss it as a plane, but his wife Betty was adamant the object was flat. The craft was described as "pancake shaped" with a line of windows along the edge, through which they saw figures moving about inside.
Barney decided to walk up the road, hoping to get a closer look at the craft, when suddenly, what Barney described as a fin began protuding out of each side of the craft and he could see flashing red lights on their tips. He then became frightened and very agitated and ran quickly back to the car. Barney was a postal worker and very respected.
Once in the car, he opened the glove compartment and pulled out a small revolver which he kept for protection. He stepped out of the car again, and pointed the small weapon at the craft which was very close by that time. He claimed that the next thing he remembered was being back home. Betty also experienced confusion when she did not recall the rest of their two hour drive home. Once in the house, they discovered something very strange. They had arrived home over two hours later than they should have and could not explain why. They continued on with their lives and dismissed the incident due to the lack of any explanation for what had happened. In the months that followed, Betty continuously had terrifying nightmares and Barney's health took a turn for the worse. He did not, however, experience any nightmares like Betty.
It was 1964 before any explanation even began to surface about the missing two hours that night. The Hills finally concluded that they would seek medical help, so at some expense, the couple visited a Boston psychiatrist who was known for using hypnosis to fight memory blocks. Betty and Barney repeatedly underwent regressive hypnosis separately, and both of the stories they relived under hypnosis were almost identical, which was very difficult for anyone to explain. The psychiatrist was completely baffled at the similarities of each one's story under hypnosis, and even more confused by the unbelievable experiences that they relived many times under hypnosis. They both told of being taken aboard a large spacecraft by beings that in no way resembled humans. They recalled undergoing painful and terrifying medical procedures by hideous looking creatures with huge black eyes. The story made front page news all across the United States and became the focus of criticism and dis-belief by the general public as well as both the news media and the scientific community. The Hill's case was the first abduction case ever documented in 1961, But it certainly wouldn't be the last!
There is one very disturbing fact in the case that to this day has yet to be explained. during a hypnosis session, Betty recalled being shown a kind of three dimensional starmap, and although the alien beings never spoke vocally, she had no problem communicating with them by way of telepathy. One of the aliens showed her on the starmap where they came from. Of course, none of this was familiar to Betty. Under hypnosis, she was able to recall precicely the layout of the starmap, and had a sketch drawn of it. It was inspected by our country's top astronomers and was dismissed because there was no familiarity between it and our knowledge of the planets at the time. Years later, a head-strong amateur astronomer took the drawing of the star map and searched through the near stars to see if she could get a match for the star configuration drawn by Betty. She found no system that even remotely resembled the starmap. How could anyone have known that in the early 1970s new technology would allow our scientists to see further and deeper into Space than ever before. More than ten years after Betty had drawn the starmap, a new star system was discovered that matched her starmap perfectly. It was calculated that the aliens came from the Zeta Reticuli system. Many were amazed that Betty had reproduced under hypnosis, such a precisely accurate map of a star system that nobody on the planet Earth had the technology to see for another ten years.
This, in my opinion, is more than sufficient evidence to prove that what the Hills experienced was very real. This was the first alien abduction case ever documented and certainly not the last! Since about 1966 there have been an estimated 120,000 abduction cases reported on a global scale. This statistic accompanied by the staggering number of reports of UFO encounters and sightings reported every year is more than conclusive evidence in my opinion. What scares me the most is that the general population of Earth still dismisses it at imagination or fabrication.
The case of Betty and Barney Hill remains important to this day, because it paved the way for the use of hypnosis to recover blocked memories. There are still many psychiatrists who disagree with this practice, saying that the person being hypnotized is too susceptable to suggestion while under hypnosis, and therefore may incorrectly remember events. That still does not explain how an abduction case in a small village in Pakistan is so similar in it's description to an abduction case, half way around the world in Washington state.
There are many difficult things to believe in life. Sometimes even life itself is little more than a question mark.