On September 19, 1961, Betty and Barney Hill claimed that they were abducted by aliens while driving through rural New Hampshire, then brought aboard their spaceship for a series of tests.
Universal History Archive/UIG via Getty Images Barney and Betty Hill were an American couple allegedly abducted by extraterrestrials.
When Betty and Barney Hill arrived at the office of Boston psychiatrist Benjamin Simon on Dec 14, 1963, they appeared to have a number of perfectly normal problems. Betty was suffering from nightmares and anxiety; Barney had anxiety and insomnia. But the Hills had not reached out to Simon for treatment of those issues, exactly. Rather, they wanted Simon — a renowned hypnotist — to help them remember an alleged alien encounter they claimed had happened two years earlier in September 1961.
In Betty and Barney Hill’s telling, they had been driving through New Hampshire when they noticed a strange, bright star in the sky. The star seemed to follow them, leading Betty to believe that it was not a star at all. Then, when they pulled over to get a closer look, Barney thought he saw figures sitting inside a craft — staring down at them.
The couple then lost consciousness. Two hours later, they woke up 35 miles away with only a vague sense that they’d had an alien encounter. Dr. Simon, they hoped, could help fill in the blanks. And he seemingly did.
Under his guidance, Betty and Barney Hill began to remember details of what is now considered one of the most detailed alien abductions of all time. Ufologists would come to refer to this incident as the “Hill Abduction” and the “Zeta Reticuli Incident” because Betty Hill was purportedly shown a star map that matches the Zeta Reticuli system.
Now one of the most famous UFO cases ever, the abduction of Betty and Barney Hill is a landmark piece of UFO history — and a fascinating exploration of the validity of hypnotic suggestion.
The Alien Abduction Of Betty And Barney Hill
Betty and Barney Hill were a couple from Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Barney worked for the United States Postal Service, and Betty was a social worker. They were active in their community, participating in the local Unitarian congregation and the NAACP. Notably, they were also an interracial couple during a period when such relationships were uncommon in the United States: Barney was Black, and Betty was white.
Charles Walker Collection/Alamy Stock PhotoBetty Hill was a social worker living with her husband Barney in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.
Both Betty and Barney worked hard and so, in September 1961, they decided to take a well-earned trip through Montreal and to Niagara Falls. After three days, they stopped at a diner in Vermont on Sept. 19, 1961, then headed south toward Portsmouth along Route 3 at around 10 p.m.
As they drove, they became aware of a bright light in the sky. Barney thought it was a plane or a satellite; Betty wasn’t so sure. The light seemed to zig and zag, it made no noise — like a plane would — and it seemed to be following them as they drove along the dark, empty road.
Finally, Betty and Barney Hill decided to pull over to see if they could get a closer look at the object in the sky.
“We stopped our car and got out to observe it more closely with our binoculars,” Betty Hill wrote to Major Donald E. Keyhoe, the director of the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP), a week later. “As it hovered in the air in front of us, it appeared to be pancake in shape, ringed with windows in the front through which we could see bright blue-white lights. Suddenly, two red lights appeared on each side. By this time my husband was standing in the road, watching closely. He saw wings protrude on each side and the red lights were on the wing tips.”
Chronicle/Alamy Stock PhotoAn artist’s interpretation of the craft witnessed by Barney and Betty Hill the night of their abduction.
As Betty told Keyhoe, Barney was purportedly able to see beings sitting inside the craft. She wrote that he ran back to the car in shock and told her hysterically that the beings “were going to capture us.”
Then, Betty and Barney Hill lost consciousness. They woke up two hours later, 35 miles away, with little recollection of what had happened.
They arrived home several hours later than they had expected, with the vague sense that something had happened to them — they just weren’t sure what. According to the University of New Hampshire, Betty’s dress was torn and stained and Barney’s binocular strap was broken. Their watches had also stopped working, and there were strange circles on their car.
University of New HampshireThe UFO seen by Betty and Barney Hill, as drawn by Betty Hill.
Though Barney had his doubts, Betty contacted both the NICAP and the Air Force. Meanwhile, the couple began to develop a shared, inexplicable anxiety that seemed to manifest itself in vivid dreams, ulcers, and insomnia. Barney also developed a strange set of warts around his groin.
Finally, on Dec. 14, 1963, Betty and Barney Hill went to the office of Dr. Benjamin Simon, a Boston-based psychiatrist and neurologist renowned for his expertise in hypnotherapy. They hoped that he could help unlock what had happened to them during that September night back in 1961 — and he did. Slowly but surely, while under hypnosis, the Hills described the events of that fateful night in greater detail — and recalled a truly horrifying story.
Betty And Barney Hill Remember The Alien Abduction Under Hypnosis
Under hypnosis Betty and Barney Hill began to remember and more and more about their alleged alien encounter. As they later told author John Grant Fuller for his book, The Interrupted Journey, the aliens had walked them up a ramp and into their spacecraft, where they had begun to perform a number of examinations on the couple.
The Hills were told undress and lie on metal tables. The aliens purported took samples of their hair, nails, and skin, and poked them with needles. When Simon asked Barney if the examination had been similar to a tonsillectomy, Barney, under hypnosis, replied: “Like that, but my eyes are closed, and I only have mental pictures. And I am not in pain. And I can feel a slight feeling. My groin feels cold… I don’t want to be operated on.”
Charles Walker Collection/Alamy Stock PhotoDr. Benjamin Simon conducting hypnosis therapy on Betty and Barney Hill.
Betty recalled that the aliens also performed some kind of pregnancy test on her by injecting a long needle into her stomach.
“So then they roll me over on my back, and the examiner has a long needle in his hand. And I see the needle. And it’s bigger than any needle that I’ve ever seen,” Betty Hill recalled.
The test was painful, but one of the aliens seemed able to remove the pain with a wave of its hand.
Betty and Barney Hill also described the aliens as small and gray, with large foreheads and eyes. Barney thought they were aggressive — he described the leader as resembling Hitler, and said that the others reminded him of a “red-haired Irishman… Because Irish are usually hostile to Negroes.” Barney also said that they seemed to be telepathic, at one point crying under hypnosis: “Oh, those eyes. They’re there in my brain!”
Charles Walker Collection/Alamy Stock PhotoAn artist’s impression of the extraterrestrial beings as described by Barney and Betty Hill.
But Betty’s recollection of the aliens was more pleasant. She remembered the aliens showing confusion over Barney’s dentures, jokingly telling her that there would be “no point” in telling her where the craft had gone before, since she knew nothing of the universe, and even showing her a star map.
The map displayed various stars connected by lines and was described as a three-dimensional projection. Betty Hill was told that the solid lines represented trade routes, while the dashed lines were expeditions that the aliens had undertaken. She later drew the map from memory, and many have since speculated that it corresponds to the Zeta Reticuli star system.
But though Betty and Barney Hill convinced plenty of people once their account of alien abduction was picked up by national media, skeptics don’t buy their story of UFOs, probes, and little gray men.
Skeptics Cast Doubt On The Story Of Alien Abduction
Chronicle / Alamy Stock PhotoBetty and Barney Hill with a copy of Interrupted Journey.
Not everyone bought Betty and Barney Hill’s story — including their psychiatrist, Benjamin Simon. According to Slate, he came to suspect that their abduction story was born out of “unaddressed psychological incapacities,” Barney’s possible “latent homosexuality,” and the stress of being an interracial couple in the 1960s United States. Simon also believed that Barney’s recollections were likely influenced by Betty’s dreams.
What’s more, research indicates that hypnosis can lead to the creation of false memories, particularly when individuals are highly suggestible. Under hypnosis, people may unintentionally fabricate detailed narratives, believing them to be genuine recollections. This phenomenon raises questions about the authenticity of the Hills’ abduction story, as their detailed accounts emerged primarily through hypnotic regression.
The fact that an alien character on an episode of the TV show Outer Limits that aired only a few weeks before the Hills’ encounter closely resembled the slant-eyed creatures they described did not help their case. It seems far more likely, skeptics argue, that the couple was sleep-deprived and that the two bright lights they saw in the night sky were in fact, Jupiter and Saturn (whose positions matched those of the objects described by the couple).
Chronicle/Alamy Stock PhotoBetty Hill revisiting the site of her abduction years later.
Critics have likewise pointed out inconsistencies in the Hills’ story, noting that certain details changed over time. For example, Betty’s descriptions of the beings and the sequence of events varied in different retellings, and Betty and Barney Hill described the aliens in different ways. Such inconsistencies may suggest that the narrative was influenced by external factors or evolved as a result of memory distortion.
But Barney and Betty Hill’s alien story is still widely considered one of the first of its kind, and alien abduction stories that followed largely mirrored theirs. Encounters like Linda Napolitano’s, for example, describe “gray men” and an examination, and even mere alien encouters like the the Varginha UFO Incident or the Ariel School Phenomenon seem to describe aliens like the ones the Hills allegedly saw.
Wikimedia CommonsBetty and Barney Hill marker along Daniel Webster Highway (Route 3), Lincoln, New Hampshire.
Indeed, in the two years after a TV movie of the Hills’ abduction aired, reports of alien abductions increased by 2,500 percent. Clearly — regardless of the skeptics — there are plenty of people who believed Betty and Barney Hills’ story, setting the stage for an entirely new kind of American myth.
After reading about Betty and Barney Hill and their alleged alien abduction, go inside the surprising explanation behind crop circles. Or, learn about the Kelly-Hopkinsville alien encounter which introduced the term “little green men” to describe aliens from outer space.
