The True Story of the Worlds First Documented Alien Abduction: A Formal Investigation Begins
A profound sense of curiosity about the UFO encounter in New Hampshire’s White Mountains prompted Betty to visit the Portsmouth Public Library on September 23, 1961, where she checked out The Flying Saucer Conspiracy by Major Donald Keyhoe. Keyhoe, the director of the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena, a nonprofit corporation founded in 1956, argued that the government was conspiring to suppress information about unidentified flying objects. The book would be the Hills’ formal introduction to information about flying saucers. It also informed them that others had witnessed similar objects, and this knowledge gave the Hills some consolation. Betty wrote in her unpublished memoirs, “In this book was an address where one could write if one had a sighting. At the time, NICAP (National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena) was an organization unknown to us. I wrote a letter to them explaining the experience and the fact that Barney had seen figures in the windows.”
Within a few days, Betty began to experience a series of disturbing nightmares about the event. Immediately before waking in the morning, she seemed to experience flashbacks of horrifying memories of being captured and taken aboard the craft. To Betty, the most perplexing aspect of the nightmares was that they included real, consciously recalled events about the sighting and the two series of beeping sounds upon the rear of their car. These real events seemed to flow into a continuous memory of abduction. They were so distressing that she decided to jot them down on notepaper to “try to relieve some of the pressure.” Betty wrote, “At first, I didn’t tell anyone about them, they were so weird.” She said she hid them and tried to forget about them. But in November, she retrieved the notepaper, and although she had not dreamed the events in sequence, she pieced them together to develop a logical, sequential story line. Although she did not record the exact dates of her dreams, she decided that they had begun 10 days after her UFO sighting.
Four weeks after their UFO encounter, Betty and Barney informed their family that scientists were investigating their sighting.
In a letter dated October 17, 1961, NICAP Secretary Richard Hall responded to Betty’s letter:
Major [Donald] Keyhoe will be writing to you at greater length but he wanted me to send you this interim reply to your letter of September 26. We were greatly impressed by your report and we are making preparations for an investigation. Our Boston subcommittee [investigative unit] will probably contact you in the near future. The chairman is Walter Webb, but any of our subcommittee investigators will be carrying identification cards signed by Major Keyhoe. Mr. Webb is a close friend and an adviser to NICAP and you can trust him completely.
Four days later, on October 21, 1961, Walter Webb initiated his preliminary investigation at the Hills’ home, interviewing them individually and together for a six-hour period. He did not take a tape recorder, but wrote extensive notes during the interviews.
Webb was employed as chief lecturer at the Charles Hayden Planetarium in Boston, Massachusetts. He graduated from Mount Union College in 1956 with a Bachelor of Science degree in biology before pursuing a career in astronomy. Early in his career he had worked for Dr. J. Allen Hynek, Project Blue Book’s astronomical consultant, at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he served the Satellite Tracking Program as a general assistant. After Sputnik II was launched, Webb served as a satellite camera operator atop Mount Haleakala in Maui, Hawaii. Although Webb had been investigating UFO reports since 1952, it was through his association with Hynek that he developed an intense curiosity about the scientific analysis of the data that Hynek had access to.
This led to Webb’s association with NICAP and a close friendship with Assistant and Acting Director Richard Hall.1 Later, Webb served as assistant director at Boston’s Charles Hayden Planetarium and an astronomy consultant for NICAP, APRO, and later, the Mutual UFO Network. In 1994, the Center for UFO Studies appointed him as their senior research associate. He spent 32 years at the Charles Hayden Planetarium at Boston’s Museum of Science.
On October 26, 1961, Webb wrote the following excerpt in a confidential report to NICAP, titled, “A Dramatic UFO Encounter in the White Mountains of New Hampshire—September 19–20, 1961”:
The UFO came around in front of the car and stopped in midair to the right of the highway “8 to 10 stories” [80 to 100 feet] above the ground. The height given was a rough guess and the distance was even more difficult to estimate, but the object probably was not much more than 100 feet away, which meant that the Hills had to look up at a 45-degree angle to see the UFO. The lighted edge of the object, a row of windows through which a cold, bluish-white fluorescent glow shown, was visible, and a red light on each side of the object could be seen. The UFO was no longer spinning.
Mr. Hill braked the car to a halt, but left the headlights on and the engine running. His wife handed him the binoculars and he tried to look through the windshield with them. Then he opened the door on his side and stepped out onto the highway for a better look. At that moment the UFO shifted position from right to left in front of the car and hovered again in midair. Barney still believed that what he was seeing had a rational explanation—a military helicopter perhaps having some fun with them. What amazed him though was the ease with which this craft seemed to move and stop, and the absolute lack of any sound at this close range.
Looking through the binoculars, he watched in fascination as the object, tilted downward slightly, began descending slowly in his direction. He could see eight to 11 separate figures watching him at the windows. They seemed to be standing in a corridor that encircled a central section. Suddenly there was a “burst of activity”—the figures scurried about, turned their backs, and acted as if they were pulling levers on the wall. One figure remained at the window. At that instant the red lights began moving away from the object, and Mr. Hill could see that the lights were on the tips of two pointed, fin-like structures sliding outward from the sides of the “ship.” The figures, according to Barney Hill, were of human form dressed in shiny black uniforms and black caps with peaks or bills on them (which could be seen when the figures turned their heads).
The uniforms were like glossy leather. When they were standing at the windows he could see down to their waists. When they moved backward to the wall, their legs were partially visible. The figures reminded the observer of the cold precision of German officers; they moved smoothly and efficiently and showed no emotion except for one fellow operating a lever who, Mr. Hill claims, looked over his shoulder and smiled.
The approaching UFO finally filled up the entire field of the binoculars. The “leader” at the window held a special attraction for the witness and frightened him terribly. The witness said he could almost feel this figure’s intense concentration to do something, to carry out a plan. Mr. Hill believed he was going to be captured “like a bug in a net.” That is when he knew it was no conventional aircraft he was observing but something alien and unearthly containing beings of a superior type, beings that were somehow not human.
“I don’t believe it!” he said as he put down the binoculars. He could see the figures in the object with the naked eye (an inch long at arm’s length, but this is highly uncertain in my opinion). The UFO was now an estimated “5 to 8 stories” [50 to 80 feet] up and possibly between 50 and 100 feet away (hard to judge or to recall). The Hills remember that no light from the thing fell on the ground and there was no sound.
In recent years, skeptics have portrayed Barney as a highly suggestible individual who imagined a close encounter only after he had read Keyhoe’s book and absorbed the content of Betty’s frightening dreams. They suggest that he saw only a distant, star-like object that seemed to be following his vehicle. To further their argument, they imply that his vivid imagination caused him to become frightened and to leave the main highway, wandering off course on tiny secondary roads. He is characterized as having vague memories of lights in the sky, hazy visions, paranoia, and fatigue. To test this hypothesis, Kathy interrogated the family members who possessed knowledge of Barney’s memories immediately following his sighting. They all testified that Barney verbalized a clear, consistent memory of the events that occurred on September 19–20, 1961.
He observed an unconventional craft and its bizarre humanoid occupants at close range. The craft interacted with the Hills’ vehicle and left highly polished, magnetized spots on its surface as evidence. This was not a confabulation that developed days later, after he read The Flying Saucer Conspiracy. It did not come to light later when he overheard Betty discussing her dreams. It was a conscious, continuous memory of a real, awe-inspiring event. Within hours of his sighting, he told his tenants, his family, and later, NICAP Investigator Walter Webb, about it.
Webb’s investigation report, “A Dramatic UFO Encounter in the White Mountains, NH,” came to the attention of two IBM employees, Robert Hohmann and C.D. Jackson, when they joined Major Donald Keyhoe for lunch at the XII International Aeronautical Congress in Washington, D.C., on October 4–5, 1961. On November 3, 1961, Hohmann wrote a letter of introduction to the Hills on behalf of himself and Jack- son, requesting an interview. He stated that their principle interest was to attempt to verify the origin of “these vehicles” according to existing scientific theory proposed by Professor Hermann Oberth of Germany (the father of rocket science). Additionally, he wanted to gain insight into the meaning of the whole phenomenon.
Robert Hohmann, born December 24, 1918, was educated at Miami University where he studied English and history. Fluent in German, he left college to serve in the U.S. Army in Eu- rope during World War II as a driver of VIPs and an interrogator of prisoners of war. He served in Europe for three and a half years, according to his widow, and had a high security clearance, but never talked about specifics. After the war, he completed his education at Notre Dame University, where he earned a Master’s degree.
He then joined IBM and remained in their employ in the Hyde Park, New York, area for 25 years. He traveled extensively as part of his job, taught classes on technical writing, worked closely with scientists and engineers, and arranged presentations for IBM executives.2 C.D. Jackson was a senior electrical engineer for the same company. In the 1960s, he was employed in New York, Virginia, and Alabama. Extensive research efforts have failed to uncover additional information about C.D. Jackson.