The True Story of the Worlds First Documented Alien Abduction: The Hills Begin Their Own Investigation
Three of the men obviously knew a lot about Air Force UFO reporting—more than I did—but I didn’t know them. Betty and Barney walked outside with me, and we talked for rather a long time. I was skeptical of their story, but responded as best I could. They said several people had suggested they try hypnosis, and since I had studied it and recommended it for recovering memories, they thought they would go ahead with it. I said that recovering those memories might reveal a lot of trauma, and cautioned them against going to an amateur hypnotist, such as myself, or a half-baked hypnotherapist. I said they needed to find a reputable psychologist or psychiatrist who used hypnotherapy.
As the ensuing months passed, the many changes in Barney’s life’s circumstances increasingly caused anxiety and exhaustion. The long daily commute to his job in Boston, the necessity of sleeping during daylight hours, his physical separation from his sons, his civil rights and church activities, and the UFO investigation all began to have a negative impact on his health. It is easy to understand why Barney’s 160-minute-a-day commute contributed to his diagnosis of high blood pressure, headaches, and insomnia, and eventually an ulcer that failed to respond to conventional medical treatment. The unanswered questions regarding the period of amnesia following his close encounter with a UFO placed additional stress upon Barney.
By June 1963, Barney’s physician suspected that his physical mala- dies were psychogenic when his symptoms had failed to respond to traditional medical treatment. He referred Barney to Dr. Duncan Stevens, a psychiatrist whose office was in the same building. Barney felt comfortable in the care of Dr. Stevens, and his conventional psychotherapy seemed to be progressing well. However, Barney’s ulcers had failed to retract, and this tenacious medical condition remained perplexing.
Dr. Stevens received his medical degree at Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan. He practiced medicine in Michigan before entering the Navy in 1942, where he served in the rank of commander in the Medical Corps in the Pacific Theater on Hospital Ship LST 464. Following his naval service he practiced psychiatry in Connecticut before moving his practice to Exeter, New Hampshire. He was the psychiatry advisor to Phillips Exeter Academy and a partner at the Exeter Clinic.
Then, on September 7, 1963, Captain Ben Swett presented a formal lecture on hypnosis to one of the adult study groups at the Unitarian church in Portsmouth. The Hills attended the lecture and approached him after his talk. They informed him that they had not yet been hypnotized but that Barney was seeing a psychiatrist he liked and trusted. Swett’s sworn testimony reveals, “He had mentioned the UFO incident, and the psychiatrist wasn’t astonished, but they were not working on that.” At this point, Captain Swett strongly encouraged Barney to ask his psychiatrist about the use of hypnosis to recover the gap in their memories.
Several weeks later, unannounced visitors rang Betty and Barney’s door- bell. They were two pleasant, middle-aged women from Massachusetts: Lauri D’Allessandro and Merlyn Sheehan. They had read about the Hills’ UFO encounter in NICAP’s bulletin and asked if they could talk with them about it. They also mentioned that they had previously witnessed a UFO, so Betty and Barney hoped that they might be able to gain some under- standing of the perplexing phenomenon through a discussion with them.
Lauri invited the Hills to attend a UFO meeting in Quincy, Massachusetts, on Sunday November 3, 1963, at 2 p.m. The agenda for the meeting included new eyewitness UFO sightings, slides, a report by the group’s president (NICAP’s “UFO Evidence Report”), and tape recordings of a talk by the Harvard astronomer and debunker, Donald Menzel. After they mulled over Lauri’s invitation, they did attend in an effort to learn more.4 But instead, the Hills found themselves giving their first public presentation to the group of 200 members and guests. Howard Roy chronicled their remarks to the group in “The Off Beat,” a two-and-one-quarter- page typed report written shortly after the meeting. (John Fuller’s 1962 date on page 284 of The Interrupted Journey is incorrect.) He wrote, “Barney Hill is a quiet, well-spoken fellow with a strange tale to tell and a couple of question marks where a memory ought to be. All he wants from any- one is a couple of answers and a line on a couple of hours he lost a while back in the New Hampshire hill country…and maybe someone to reassure him that he is not a fugitive from The Twilight Zone.” (This was a TV program that Barney had never seen.) The Quincy meeting of the Two State Unidentified Flying Object Study Group of Massachusetts and Rhode Island attracted more than 200 members from Mahomet, Hyannis, Sandwich, and New Bedford, Massachusetts.
Roy’s report chronicled the Hills’ journey through New Hampshire’s White Mountain region, emphasizing Barney’s former skepticism and firm disbelief in unidentified flying objects. Barney recalled the Air Force investigator’s particular interest in red, lighted tips on the bat-wing extensions that telescoped from the sides of the craft. Next, he recounted Barney’s close encounter in the field south of Indian Head and the bizarre events that followed, including Barney’s statement that the craft hovered over his vehicle and slowed to a speed that kept it directly over his car.
Through binoculars he could clearly observe the craft at a height of approximately a 10-story building above his car. He described the saucer- shaped UFO, it’s occupants, and the stubby, wing-like fins that moved outward from the body of the craft, adding that the Air Force investigators expressed a particular interest in them. Roy reported that Barney told the group that he returned to his car, laughing a little hysterically, and started to drive off, but the craft remained overhead. Suddenly the entire car vibrated, and there were about two dozen “beeping” sounds that felt as if something had hit the trunk of the car.
Then, Barney reportedly stated, 20 to 30 miles farther along Route 3, he and Betty reached a point near Ashland, New Hampshire, when they were confronted with a brilliant orange moon in the roadway. He then recalled taking a left turn off the highway while saying, “Oh God, not again.” That was the last Barney remembered until he reached his home in Portsmouth.
Roy’s report included the following interesting tidbit of information regarding the condition of Barney’s car when he inspected it after arriving home: Barney allegedly stated that the trunk was unlocked and covered with “shiny spots,” each about the size of a silver dollar, which caused a compass to gyrate erratically when placed near them. The statement that the car’s trunk was unlocked has brought much speculation from researchers. Could Barney have forgotten to close it?
Did the craft’s magnetic force unlock it? Could the Hills have driven for two hours with an open trunk and failed to notice it? At what time of day did Barney notice it was unlocked? Was Barney mistaken, or did Howard Roy misunderstand his statement? Betty insisted that it was not unlocked—only that it appeared to have been opened and its contents ransacked. This piece of the puzzle remains a mystery.
When Barney had completed his presentation to the Two State UFO Study Group, Betty faced the room of 200 spectators. Although she hadn’t planned to reveal the content of the nightmares she experienced in late September 1961, she wrote in her diary, “We spoke briefly about our experience. Then, I found myself telling the group about the nightmares that I had, hoping that someone, somewhere could give us information so that we could have some understanding of what had happened to us. No one could.”
Howard Roy reported the following excerpted material:
The car makes a sharp left turn and suddenly the motor dies. There are possibly eight to 11 men standing in the road. They approach the car as the couple sits motionless. The men open the doors and they direct the couple to get out.
They were taken to the space craft they observed earlier, taken to separate rooms and questioned at length. The men were “human in form,” Mrs. Hill recalled, but somewhat shorter than the average human, with larger chest cavities and somewhat larger noses. Their hair and eyes were black and their skin had a grayish hue.
She was told that she would not remember anything of the experience and, if somehow she did manage to, her husband’s recollections would be different—hence, nobody would believe their story.
In addition to a brief synopsis of her dream material, Betty mentioned the unexplained fact that Delsey, who had never been sick before, suddenly developed a severe fungus condition and internal disorder after returning home from the UFO encounter. For this, she was treated by a veterinarian.
On November 10, 1963, Jeanne Weller, the secretary/treasurer of the study group, formally thanked the Hills for “an excellent dissertation on their remarkable experience.” She added, “I have received many calls from members and guests complimenting you both on the tremendous recounting of your experiences and your charming personalities. I had hoped to see you after the meeting at the D’Allessandros’ but there was a last-minute change of plans.” Then she presented the Hills with an honorary membership to the Two State UFO Study Group.
If Betty and Barney were looking for answers, they didn’t find them at the UFO Study Group. Instead, they overrode their previous decision to maintain some semblance of confidentiality about their encounter and unwittingly created an information trail that would lead to writer John Luttrell. Two years later, Luttrell would use a tape recording of the Hills’ statements made at this meeting as a foundation for his sensational articles in the Boston Traveler newspaper. Although it was alleged that Steve Putnam, the president of the Two State UFO Study Group, supplied a tape recording of this meeting to Luttrell, in a recent conversation with Walter Webb, Kathy learned that this was not the case. The tape recording may have been made by Luttrell himself, or another individual who attended the meeting. It is clear, however, that Betty went to her grave believing that it was he. This was done without permission and with protests from the Hills.
Additionally, Barney, the skeptic, was forced to listen to Betty’s rendition of nightmares—nightmares that he irritably rejected as nothing more than dreams. Betty seemed to be seeking confirmation that her dreams reflected subconscious recall of a UFO abduction. In contrast, Barney, who wanted to concentrate primarily on community affairs and the civil rights movement, was being dragged into uncomfortable territory. The significance of their UFO encounter was beginning to take on a life of its own that would overshadow their civic involvement. Further, this impromptu admission before the UFO study group of 200 would not remain confidential. If confidentiality was what they desired, they had just made a huge error.
Shortly thereafter, Barney’s health declined and he developed a physically debilitating condition that forced him take a three-month leave of absence from his job at the U.S. Post Office. His traditional medical treatment continued to be augmented by psychotherapy, but his health did not improve.
It is important to note that in the late fall of 1963, Barney experienced a breakthrough memory of the roadblock that preceded the ab- duction. This significant flashback occurred prior to the Hills’ first appointment with Dr. Benjamin Simon. Barney was making a concerted effort to hyper-focus on the unexplained roadblock that has always been a part of his conscious, continuous memory. He reasoned that, by penetrating his amnesia, he would know the truth, and it would relieve his anxiety. He and Betty were already beginning to experience a spontaneous lifting of repressed memories pertaining to the event. Family members were attempting to support Barney by stimulating his memory during this period. Kathy and her parents were counseling Barney by mentally walking him through a moment-by-moment recollection of his journey immediately after he heard the beeping sounds to when he turned off from Route 3. Suddenly, in a great eruption of intense emotion, he shrieked to us the details of his retrieved memory in what seemed to be a classic abreaction. He described men in the road who signaled him to stop by swinging their arms in a pendulum motion. His motor died and the men began to approach his car with a strange, nonhuman, side-to-side, swaying gait.
The release of emotion seemed to have a cathartic effect upon him, but Kathy and her parents were so disturbed by this amazing revelation that they all remember it to this day.
At his next therapy session, Barney mentioned his continuing anxiety over his apparent amnesia and Betty’s nightmares, and requested a referral to a competent psychiatrist who used hypnosis. His psychotherapist, Dr. Stevens, agreed to set up an appointment.