Betty and Barney Hill were an American couple who reportedly experienced an abduction by extraterrestrial beings. This case is one of the most famous in the history of ufology.
The UFO Sighting On the night of September 19, 1961, the Hills were driving back to Portsmouth, New Hampshire, from Canada. While passing through the White Mountains, they noticed a light in the sky. Soon, it became apparent that this light was following their car. Through binoculars, Barney observed a massive, disc-shaped, glowing object with something resembling aircraft wings on its sides, hovering about 80-100 feet above the ground. He even saw several humanoid figures inside the object.
The Hill Abduction The Hills hurried to drive away from the object, hearing “short beeps” similar to those from a microwave. Later, strange, indelible spots were found on the car they were driving, and Barney experienced severe neck pain. But the strangest thing was that neither spouse could remember what had happened to them during the two hours they spent on the road.
It was later revealed that the Pease Air Force Base had detected an unidentified flying object on radar in the area where the Hills were being pursued.
The Abduction Later, the couple began to experience stress, and Betty started having nightmares in which she was tormented by strange beings in a bizarre room.
Barney Hill Describes the UFO Encounter Betty and Barney sought help at a well-known psychiatric clinic. Dr. Simon decided to conduct a session of regressive hypnosis with them to find out what happened during those two hours that were missing from the Hills’ memories. Each spouse was examined in different rooms, and their stories largely coincided.
Under hypnosis, both spouses described how their car was stopped that September night by short humanoid beings with large, pear-shaped heads who blocked their path.
The humanoids took them aboard a strange glowing object. Barney, in a hypnotic state, recounted that they applied a strange device to his genital area. Betty, in turn, described how a long needle was inserted into her abdomen.
The Star Map Betty said that these beings had come from another planet; they showed her a chart without inscriptions, which she referred to as a “star map.” One of the beings, who communicated with her telepathically, asked if she knew where the Sun was located. Betty replied that she did not know, and the being did not tell her where they had come from. While under hypnosis, Betty drew this “map,” which depicted a group of dots and circles connected by various lines. The being told her that the solid lines represented trade routes, while the dashed ones were “places they visited occasionally.”
Some ufologists, such as Jacques Vallée and Donald Keyhoe, were skeptical of this case in general and of the “star map” in particular. However, for other ufologists who supported the idea of extraterrestrial origins of UFOs, this case became proof of their hypothesis.
One way or another, amateur astronomer Marjorie Fish from Ohio spent five years searching and eventually found stars whose positions could correspond to Betty’s drawing. Fish searched among stars located within 50 light-years of the Sun and among those believed by astronomers to have planets suitable for life. According to her calculations, the beings who abducted the Hills came from a planet near the binary star system Zeta-1 and Zeta-2 in the constellation Reticulum.
Comments The case of Betty and Barney Hill remains unexplained to this day. It is known that the method of recovering memories through regressive hypnosis is unreliable, especially since the similarities in the couple’s accounts can be explained by Betty having shared her nightmares with her husband before the hypnosis sessions.
Betty Hill passed away in October 2004 from lung cancer at the age of 84.
Interestingly, after Barney’s death, Betty continued to report sightings of UFOs.
