The True Story of the Worlds First Documented Alien Abduction: Release From Capture
Upon the completion of Barney’s medical examination, he was escorted back to his vehicle, while Betty exchanged words with the leader. She was furious because a member of the crew had overruled his decision to give Betty the strange 5 × 9 inch plastic-like book that would serve as proof of her abduction. Further, he informed her that the decision had been made to eradicate both individuals’ memories of the abduction. At this point Betty defiantly rebuked, “You can take the book, but you can never, never, never make me forget about it, because I’ll remember it if it’s the last thing I ever do.” According to Betty, the leader laughed and replied, “Maybe you will remember. I don’t know. I hope you don’t but maybe you will. But it won’t do you any good if you do, because Barney won’t. Barney won’t remember a single thing. And not only that, if he should remember anything at all, he’s going to remember it differently from you, and all you’re going to do is get each other so confused, you won’t know what’s going on. It would be better if you forget it anyway.”1 It is critical that we analyze Barney’s hypnotic regression of this segment to compare his individual recall with Betty’s, vis-à-vis her dream sequence. “Dreams or Reality?” indicates that she and Barney were escorted back to the car together and that the entire crew accompanied them. However, her hypnotic recall differs from this portion of her dream.
Betty reported in this regression that her conversation with the leader continued until she arrived at her car. While several crewmembers escorted Barney to his vehicle, only the leader walked with Betty. If Barney had absorbed Betty’s dream material, he would have reported that their return was simultaneous. However, this is not the case. He reported, “And I am walking and I am walking and I am being guided and my eyes are closed. And I open my eyes and there is the car and the lights are off and it is not running and Delsey is under the seat and I reach under and touch her, and she is in a tight ball. And I sit back and I see Betty is coming down the road and she gets into the car.”2 Later, Barney remembered sitting on his gun when he entered the car.
Barney has informed us that he had already taken his position in the driver’s seat when he observed Betty approaching the car. Again, the correlation is consistent with Betty’s hypnotic account of the event with one exception: Delsey’s position in the vehicle. Barney mentions only that she was under the seat when he arrived back at the car. Betty, how- ever, sees Delsey sitting on the passenger seat trembling all over.
In Betty’s dream sequence, she and Barney walk to the car together and lean against the right-hand side of it—Barney against the front fender and Betty against the passenger door. Betty opened the door and removed Delsey, holding her as the UFO became a bright, glowing object, which turned over three to four times and sailed into the sky. Here we see more correlating data: Their hypnotic recall is consistent, but differs from Betty’s dream account of the event.
In the same interview, Barney told Dr. Simon, “It was a bright huge ball…orange. It was a beautiful bright ball. And, it was going and it was gone and we were in darkness.” This huge, glowing orange ball was part of Betty’s and Barney’s conscious recall of the events of September 19, 1961, but they were uncertain of its origin. Betty’s hypnotic description of the departing craft is more detailed than Barney’s, but again, their accounts contain correlating data. Betty stated, “It’s a big orange ball and it’s glowing and glowing and it’s rolling just like a ball. It must be…I don’t know—water? Do they go under water? It goes down and then there’s a dip, and then, zoom.
Barney fills in the details of the next segment by describing his exit from the capture site. He maneuvers around a bend in the road, and later realizes he is back on Route 3 when the pavement changes to a cement road. He feels that he has been through a harrowing experience, but is greatly relieved to have been released unharmed. As he courses down Route 3 toward Ashland and the newly completed Interstate 93, he and Betty again hear a rapid series of beeping sounds and the car buzzes with vibration. Thinking that perhaps something had shifted in the car, Barney slowed the vehicle, but the buzzing continued. When it ceased, Barney attempted to create the sound and vibration. He told Dr. Simon, “I drove the car fast, and then would decelerate rapidly, and I would swerve over to the left of the highway and back to the right, and I came to a complete stop and accelerated rapidly, but I could not seem to get that sound. And we drove down the highway and we saw the route for the expressway…17 miles to Concord. And I drove to Concord and down Route 4.”
The second series of buzzing sounds were part of the Hills’ conscious, continuous memory of the events on September 19–20, 1961. Betty mentioned them briefly in her dream sequence and described them in her hypnotic regression. It also marks the period when Betty and Barney have returned to full conscious memory. This event occurred in Ashland, approximately 17 miles south of their unexpected turn onto the steel bridge that took them to the abduction site. It is now apparent that Barney continued to pursue a prosaic explanation for these events. He drove the car from side to side, accelerated and decelerated, and came to a complete stop in an attempt to reproduce this perplexing sound. The radio was off, the car was well greased, the trunk was closed….There is no mundane explanation that can hold up under scrutiny for the sounds emanating from the rear of the vehicle.
In 2001, the late Karl Pflock proposed a new possible explanation for the buzzing/beeping sounds. Pflock advanced the hypothesis that when Barney, in haste, removed the gun from the trunk of his vehicle south of Indian Head, he failed to close it completely. Then, as he sped down what was probably a very bumpy section of road, the trunk rattled, causing the beeping sounds and the vibration. Pflock did not have access to all of the Hills’ audiotaped hypnosis sessions, and therefore did not know that Barney had already taken the gun from the trunk south of Twin Mountain, approximately 14 miles north of the field. Before he reached the field south of Indian Head, Barney had driven over several road surfaces: the concrete on Route 3, his stops at the side of the road, and his turn-out onto a dirt road.
To further support his argument, Pflock claimed that in November of 1963, Betty told the Two State UFO Study Group in Quincy, Mass., that when she and Barney arrived home they discovered the car’s trunk lid was closed, but not latched. After an extensive search we failed to find evidence of Betty’s statement. It is not in any of the investigators records, on the audio tapes of the hypnosis, or in any of the Hills’ extensive correspondence. However, Howard Roy’s account of the Hills’ discussion states that Barney noticed, upon arriving home, that the trunk was unlocked.
There is no reference to the lid being ajar, and further inquiry with Betty revealed that the trunk was securely closed. Either Barney misspoke, or as is often the case, the written account of his talk was inaccurate. The misunderstanding probably stemmed from a comment Betty made regarding the condition of the trunk’s contents when they arrived home.
She thought that the trunk had been opened and their luggage had been ransacked. Perhaps this happened at Customs when they entered the United States. Our investigation has turned up some interesting facts regarding the characteristics of a 1957 Chevy trunk and latch. Unlike the car’s hood that had two latches, the trunk had only one. The second latch on the hood prevented it from flying open when the vehicle was moving. How- ever, the trunk had only one latch, which opened with the insertion of a key into a round lock.
Therefore, it was impossible for the trunk lid to be closed, but not latched: The 1957 trunk was counterbalanced with springs, making it slightly easier to open than to close. If the trunk was not securely closed, it in all probability would have opened when the vehicle hit a bump. It is unlikely that the Hills could have driven from near Twin Mountain to Portsmouth without noticing that their trunk was open, especially since Betty continued to watch for the UFO.