Betty Hill peer through the railcar ’s windshield at a unknown , beaming Inner Light in the sky . It was acquit unusually — rather than falling down , as a shooting star might , it instead tramp upward .
Betty ’s husband Barney , behind the wheel on U.S. Route 3 in New Hampshire ’s White Mountains , peek up and saw the same phenomenon . The illumination uprise grown and brighter … and it seemed to be tracking their movement .
Delsey , the couple ’s dachshund , squirmed and tremble on the seat between them .
When the brightness was still there after a few stat mi , Barney stopped their ’ 57 Chevy to get a better look . They stepped out of the railroad car and , sharing a brace of opera glasses , saw a disk - shaped objective in the blackness , flashing multicolored lights as it traversed the lunar month .
What happened next shocked the world — and introduced mid - century Americans to the possible action ofalienabduction .
The Hills exact to have beenkidnapped by extraterrestrialsthat night , September 19 , 1961 . According to government reports , they did n’t just spot a flying disk . They say its alien occupants take them aboard and subjected them to aesculapian experimentation . The couple draw traumatic event — not at first , in their testimony to military and civilian authorities , but afterwards , after haunting nightmares and month of hypnosis . Their story was so bizarre that itdominatesour conception of alien abductions in movies , TV show , and Holy Writ even today .
“Somehow Not Human”
Except for their “ mixed spousal relationship , ” as it was then call ( Barney was Black , Betty was white ) , the Hills enjoyed whole ordinary , middle - category life history . They lived in coastal Portsmouth , New Hampshire , where Betty was a social worker and Barney convert to Boston to process nights for the U.S. Postal Service . They belong to the local chapter of the NAACP and attended a Unitarian Universalist church . Neither Betty nor Barneybelieved in aliens or unidentified flying object , their niece Kathleen Marden by and by told a British TV interviewer . They did n’t seem like alien abductee types . But that ’s exactly what they alleged they were .
After block up to suss out out the light , the Hills go forward on the highway toward Franconia Notch with their eye glued to the object in the sky . Suddenly , the UFO lowered itself in front of their car and hovered , silently , as though it was waiting for them . Barney stopped in the middle of the route and got out with the binoculars again . This time , he saw about 10 aliens with vast eyes and grey skin staring at him from inside the craft ’s window . They wore lustrous black or dour blue uniforms with matching caps . They were “ somehow not human , ” Barney later narrate investigators . He finger as if they were communicate with him telepathically .
“ We need to get out of here , ” heshoutedas he scramble back into the car . “ They ’re going to capture us ! ”
The couple sped out . Then , they find out beeping sound come from the proboscis ; both felt a tingle sensation . They recalled making a sharp round , run into some variety of roadblock , and seeing “ a fervent globe . ”
The next thing they know , it was two minute after and they were 35 miles south of Franconia Notch , with no estimation how they got there . Delsey was cringe under the seat .
Filed in Project Blue Book
At break of day , the Hills rolled into their driveway , exhausted — and although they were home safe , they could n’t shake the sense that something was very wrong .
The car ’s trunk now brook foreign shiny R-2 that had n’t been there earlier . When they held a magnetic range near the spot , the needle spun wildly . Each of their lookout man had stopped and their binoculars ’ strap was broken . Barney ’s shoes were drag up and Betty ’s dress was rip and dust with an unidentified pulverization . Barney had an odd smell that someone had collected his cum .
The next daytime , the Hills called the nearby U.S. Air Force base in Portsmouth to report the incident . Betty and Barney withheld most of the details of what they had witnessed because they feared being labeled unbalanced . The investigator concluded that the couplemistookthe planetJupiterfor a UFO and filed the report withProject Blue Book , the classified Department of Defense program for investigating UFOs [ PDF ] . From 1947 through 1969 , Project Blue Book reviewed 12,618 sightings ; 701 case remained “ unidentified . ” The Hills ’ case was filed under “ deficient data , ” a assortment indicating one or more all important piece of grounds was miss [ PDF ] .
The Hills still want solution about what had bump to them . From her local depository library , Betty checked out a book about flying saucers by Donald Keyhoe , a retire Marine Corps aviator and the co - founder of the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena ( NICAP ) , the run civilian UFO research group . The Hills reached out to Keyhoe , who react sky-high and tempt them to say their whole level . Another NICAP member , an uranologist refer Walter Webb , spoke with the Hills for six hours square . Betty and Barney finally felt that people were listening to — and conceive — them .
But with the sense of validation fare graphic nightmares . The interviews seemed to unearth unconscious retentiveness for Betty : In one dream , the aliens lead her and Barney up a ramp into a metallic - looking trade . Once inside , they were taken to disjoined rooms and subject to experiments by two aliens , the leader and the quizzer . When the examiner inserted a needle into her omphalos , Betty mat agonising painfulness , but only momentarily . The loss leader flourish his paw over her eye , and the infliction evaporate .
Sessions with a Boston psychiatrist bring up more unknown recollections . Betty and Barney seek assistant for their anxiety and insomnia — and insight into the two - hour stretch of time missing from their remembering — from Dr. Benjamin Simon , a well - knownexpert in hypnosis . At one degree during her five months of therapy , Betty get out a sensation map that the exotic leader had shown her in a dream . It depicted the sky as take care from the abductors ’ home satellite , orb the whiz Zeta Reticuli . Barney ’s recollection were generally standardized to Betty ’s , except with fewer item and more aroused outbursts .
“ Oh , those eyes , ” he yelled , recalling the aliens ’ cold-blooded stare . “ They ’re there in my brain ! ”
When the last session ended , Simon close that Barney ’s recollections were just fancy influenced by Betty ’s dream .
The Hills Go Public
The Hills did n’t go public with their taradiddle until 1963 — and even then , they kept it local . They shared their account with a pocket-sized church group and give a public lecture for the Two State UFO Study Group in Quincy , Massachusetts . But John Luttrell , a columnist fromThe Boston Herald - Traveler , have breaking wind of the sensational tale . With an audiotape from the Two State lecture and notes from UFO investigators as sources , Luttrell published a pillar on the Hills that got nationwide attention . When United Press International pick up Luttrell ’s column , it operate global .
Since then , the details of the Betty and Barney Hill abduction — a flying saucer , unknown with bragging , penetrating eyes , and mysterious physical examinations — haveinspiredcountless television receiver episodes , podcasts , Holy Writ , and films . Their psychiatrist teamed up author John G. Fuller to issue the 1966 bestsellerThe Interrupted Journey : Two Lost Hours Aboard a Flying Saucer . Estelle Parsons and James Earl Jones starred as Betty and Barney in the 1975 television set movieThe UFO Incident . Their descriptions of humanoid aliens crept into sci - fi classics likeClose encounter of the Third KindandThe X - Files .
The Hills never sought fame . They only want to empathise what had happened . Barney Hill died of a stroke in 1969 at age 46 , perhaps due to the stress of the situation and its wake . Betty Hilldiedof lung cancer in 2004 at age 85 . But their bequest lives on , especially in the rugged corner of New Hampshire where it all begin . Agas station on U.S. Route 3moonlights as an foreign abduction museum , displaying newspaper cutting and photos about the couple . And just up the road , the New Hampshire Division of Historical Resources put up a mark memorialise the site of their orphic encounter .
A edition of this report was print in 2021 ; it has been updated for 2023 .
