The True Story of the Worlds First Documented Alien Abduction: An Evening’s Journey
On the evening of September 19, 1961, the skies over New Hampshire’s western slope did not foretell the rain and winds that tropical storm Esther would deliver on southern New Hampshire’s seacoast region only two days later. It was a warm, starry, moonlit night, and Betty and Barney were taking in the familiar scenic views that they had grown to love. The Hills were relaxed and enjoying the view during the last leg of their journey home. As Betty sat in the passenger seat of her 1957 Chevy, Barney maneuvered south along the state’s major north–south route, connecting New Hampshire’s wilderness region to U.S. Interstate Highway 93 in Ashland.
Betty’s interest was aroused by what she at first thought was a falling star, until it suddenly came to a stop in the southwestern sky. As it inched its way upward, she thought she was taking in her first observation of a satellite (her father was excited about the space program, frequently venturing outside at night to search the sky for satellites, but Betty had not joined him in that activity). When it left its even course, ascended toward the moon, and stopped, Betty’s curiosity piqued. This unique craft so sparked her curiosity that she insisted that Barney stop at the side of the road in order to look at it himself. She was dumbfounded as she observed it take on an unconventional, erratic flight pattern and travel across the face of the moon. By the time she handed the binoculars to Barney, the object had again changed course, and seemed to be rapidly descending in their direction.
Barney, a conservative, pragmatic thinker, planned to explain away Betty’s interest by assuring her that she had spied a conventional airliner en route to Canada. Yet when he viewed the craft through binoculars, he too observed its unconventional flight and lighting patterns. As he drove south on Route 3, Betty and Barney were awestruck by the perplexing object. It rapidly changed direction, ascended and descended vertically, and hovered motionless in the sky. This enigmatic phenomenon both piqued Barney’s interest and confounded his sensibility. His intelligent, no-nonsense attitude left no room for the nonsensical belief in flying saucers. However, although he remained cool for Betty’s sake, he was quietly ruminating about the remarkable sight. He entertained the idea of ending their dilemma by stopping at a cabin for the night. However, he continued to motor his way along Route 3, stopping briefly from time to time to take in the game of cat and mouse that the ever-descending, silent craft seemed to be playing with them.
Then, as they motored around a slight curve near Indian Head, a natural granite rock formation resembling a Native American profile just south of the narrow valley through Franconia Notch, they entered a wide expanse. Almost directly in their path, the couple encountered the flattened, circular disc, hovering silently an estimated 80 to 100 feet above their vehicle. Barney rapidly brought the car to a halt in the middle of the road and grabbed his binoculars for a closer look, opening the car door for a less encumbered view. Quickly, in an arcing movement, it shifted from its location directly ahead and rested above the treetops in an adjacent field. Barney pocketed Betty’s handgun and walked toward it.
The silent, enigmatic craft was huge—maybe 60 to 80 feet in diameter—with a double row of rectangular windows extending across its rim. As he approached it, two red lights at the end of fin-like structures parted from the sides of the craft, and it tilted toward Barney. Lifting his binoculars to his eyes, he spied a group of humanoid figures moving about with the precision of German officers. As the craft tilted downward and began to descend toward him, one of the strange creatures that remained at the window communicated a frightening message. Barney had the immediate impression that he was in danger of being plucked from the field. Overcome with fear, and with all of the courage that he could muster, he tore the binoculars from his face and raced back to the car. Breathless, trembling, and in near hysterics, he told Betty that they needed to get out of there or they were going to be captured.
As Barney rapidly accelerated down the highway in an attempt to escape from the craft, it shifted directly overhead. Suddenly, rhythmic “buzzing” tones seemed to bounce off the trunk of their vehicle, and they sensed a penetrating vibration. They drove on without speaking until, somewhere down the road, they heard a second series of buzzing sounds.
Vague memories of encountering a roadblock, of seeing a huge, fiery red-orange orb resting upon the ground, and feeling a desire for human contact preoccupied their thoughts. They looked for an open restaurant to no avail, so they drove on through Concord, picked up Route 4, and made a beeline to Portsmouth, expecting to arrive at approximately 3 a.m. The Hills were surprised to notice that, as they crossed into Portsmouth, the dawn was streaking the sky in the east.
Betty, a prolific writer, chronicled much of her adult life in daily diaries and typewritten accounts. After her death, more than 43 years later, Kathy found an excerpt in which she wrote, “We entered our home, turned on the lights, and went over to the window and looked skyward.
We stood there for several minutes. Then, Barney said, ‘This is the most amazing thing that has ever happened to me.’ We both wondered if ‘they’ would come back.” She recorded Barney’s comment that their arrival time (shortly after 5 a.m.) was later than expected. “We felt very calm, peaceful, relaxed. We sat at the kitchen table, looked at each other, shook our heads in puzzlement, and asked each other, ‘Do you believe what happened?’ We agreed that it was unbelievable, but it had really happened. We would return to the windows and look skyward.” Barney said that he felt “clammy,” so he took a shower. Then, while Betty showered, Barney retrieved their personal articles from the car. She called out to him to leave them on the porch, and he agreed that it was a good suggestion. Moments later, they retired in an attempt to get some restorative sleep.
When they awoke, Barney offered two suggestions: First, they would enter separate rooms and attempt to draw the object that they had observed. After they completed their drawings they noted the uncanny similarity between them. They were remarkably alike in detail. Second, he suggested that they should refrain from ever telling anyone, anticipating that because their experience was so fantastic, they would never be believed. Betty, a strong-willed, independent woman, promptly disagreed.
Betty wrote, “When we woke up in the afternoon, Barney asked me if I had the feeling they were still around. I agreed with him and we watched the skies, going to the windows and looking up; going out on the back porch. Looking, looking, and seeing nothing. It was beginning to rain so Barney brought our belongings into the back hall.” Later that day, from her Kingston, New Hampshire home, Kathy overheard Betty’s telephone conversation with her sister, Janet Miller.
She was beginning to lose her feeling of “peace and calm, and was starting to feel an uneasiness.” She felt that her sister, who observed an un- conventional craft in the mid-1950s, might be “the one person to whom she could tell [her story] without prejudice.” Janet listened carefully, asking Betty questions throughout the conversation. Then she announced that she would “check around” and return her call in a few minutes.
Excitement boiled through the Miller house as the word began to spread. Curious, Kathy prodded her mother for the details of the conversation. As she recounted it to those present in the room, she added that she had once witnessed an unconventional craft. She was returning home from a shopping trip when she observed a silent, blimp-shaped craft hovering over an adjacent field. In amazement, she and the residents of a neighboring house watched as several smaller, disk-shaped objects approached the craft from several directions, and entered it. Then, almost instantaneously, the mother ship ascended vertically and disappeared from sight. This conversation was Kathy’s introduction to the topic of flying saucers.
Janet phoned a neighbor whose husband was a physicist, seeking professional advice to convey to Betty. Coincidentally, a family friend, the former chief of police in neighboring Newton, New Hampshire, arrived on the scene. He advised Janet that all UFO sightings should be reported to Pease Air Force Base. Moments later, Janet repeated to Betty the directions that she had received both from the family friend and from the physicist via his wife. He suggested that she conduct a simple experiment with the aid of a compass. She was to place the instrument near the car’s metallic surface in several locations as she circled around it and report her findings back to Janet.
In her diary, Betty described what happened next:
I took the compass and went out to the car. Barney refused to go, saying that he was trying to forget what happened. It was still raining but I could see my car clearly under the street light in front of my home. I walked around it, holding the compass and not knowing what I was looking for. When I came to the trunk area, I saw many highly polished spots, about the size of a half- dollar or silver dollar. The car was wet from the rain but these spots were clearly showing. I wondered what they were. I placed the compass over them, and it began spinning and spinning. I thought it must be the way I was balancing the compass, so I placed it on the car and took my hand away. The compass was really spinning and continued to do this. As I was watching this I was filled with an unexplained feeling of absolute terror. I was standing there in the rain, under the street light, and telling myself, “Don’t scream, keep calm, and don’t be afraid, everything is all right.”
Moments later, a reluctant Barney and his upstairs neighbors all experimented with the compass and observed the strange markings on the trunk of the car while Betty phoned the Miller household, 19 miles away in Kingston, to report what she had found. She agreed to phone Pease Air Force Base, and the Miller family made plans to visit her.
By Thursday, September 21, 1961, tropical storm Esther boiled off Maine’s rocky coast, lashing New Hampshire’s seacoast with gusty, gale- force winds that downed tree limbs and caused power disruptions. The Miller family was preparing to join the Hills in their Portsmouth home as soon as the storm subsided. Kathy and her two younger brothers always looked forward to their visits with Betty and Barney with excited anticipation. They respected Betty for her intelligence, achievements, and leadership skills, and enjoyed listening to her pearls of wisdom and sage advice. But Barney made them laugh. He always had a good-natured joke or a magic trick that elicited a multitude of cheerful giggles and kept them coming back for more. He played games of chess or checkers with his nephews and listened contentedly as the group talked with him about school, friends, activities, and interests. But, on the day in question, Barney’s mood had changed. He was quiet and contemplative.
Don Miller joined his brother-in-law in the living room while Betty, compass in hand, led Janet, with children in tow, in the direction of her blue and white Chevy Bel Air. Kathy and her brother Glenn peered curiously at the several highly polished, half-dollar-sized circles while they took turns lifting their youngest brother, Tom, high enough to see them.
Betty held the compass against the side of the car, along the wheels, and finally up to the trunk. The group watched in amazement as the needle spun wildly over the spots. Janet spied her older children futilely attempting to rub the spots away and cautioned them not to touch them. Suddenly she became apprehensive about the spots, thinking that they might be radioactive, and quickly shuffled her charges back into the house.
Once inside, Betty passed her watch around the living room urging each family member to attempt to fix it. When she and Barney checked the time on their wind-up watches on the morning of September 20, they discovered that both had stopped ticking. However, they placed no particular significance upon the apparent coincidence, because wind-up watches frequently stopped if they were not wound on a daily basis. They simply reset and wound their watches, expecting them to function normally. Both were amazed to discover that their watches were broken. We will never know if they were destroyed at exactly the same time, because both thought that their watches merely needed to be rewound. But one fact is irrefutable: Both watches sustained irreparable damage on the night of September 19–20, 1961.
Curiously, on the morning of September 20, Barney’s pant legs were speckled with “pickers” and plant matter, and the tops of his good dress shoes were badly scraped. The plant debris could have deposited upon his pant legs when he entered the field to view the UFO at close range.
However, there was no reasonable explanation for the ruined shoes. Some- how he had broken the leather strap that fastened his binoculars around his neck, and his upper back was sore. Additionally, Betty’s new blue dress was torn….