The True Story of the Worlds First Documented Alien Abduction: An Unconventional Craft Approaches
As Barney drove south on Route 3, Betty rode silently, observing her surroundings. This Great North Woods area of northern New Hampshire was dotted with sprawling farm homes, acres of cornfields, and yards full of logs waiting to be milled. They passed through a valley edged with small, tree-covered mountains along a two-lane highway lined with rail- road tracks and skirted by the Connecticut River. After they had traveled approximately 27 miles south of Colebrook they passed Groveton, elevation 884 feet above sea level. Eight miles south of Groveton, at an elevation of 867 feet, lay the village of Lancaster and its well-known fairground.
On March 7, 1964, Dr. Simon probed Betty’s detailed memory of her trip through northern New Hampshire. She stated she was somewhat startled by a truck that passed, dragging part of its exhaust system and creating sparks on the surface of the road. Next, she stated, “The moon was bright and not quite full but very bright and alive.” (The waxing gibbous moon would be full in six days, and high, thin cirrus clouds, generally not noticeable to an untrained observer, covered about 50 per- cent of the night sky. We do not know if the eastern sky, western sky, or half of the entire sky had cloud cover.) North of Lancaster, near Groveton, Betty observed a star below the moon on the lower left-hand side. As the couple passed through Lancaster, they entered a wide valley with rolling hills. Smaller, tree-covered mountains lay to the west, and the craggy granite peaks of the Mount Washington range could be observed to the East. Moments south of Lancaster, she noticed there was a bigger star up above this one that had not previously been there. She pointed it out to Barney, and continued to watch it as it seemed to grow bigger and brighter.
In 1961, the Hills told NICAP’s Walter Webb that it first appeared to be a falling star—only it fell upward. Betty’s omission of this element is somewhat confusing, but if we examine her prior testimony to Dr. Simon, her failure to give a richly detailed account of her trip is apparent. This was a reflection of Betty’s communication style throughout most of the hypnosis sessions.
Hynek was the official astronomical consultant to the U.S. Air Force’s Project Sign, and later Project Blue Book from 1948 to 1969. He earned his doctorate in astronomy at the University of Chicago and was the director of the Lindheimer Astronomical Research Center at Northwestern University, and chairman of Northwestern’s astronomy department. He also served as associate director of the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Cam- bridge, Massachusetts, as well as heading its NASA-sponsored satellite tracking program. Later, realizing that the UFO hypothesis had not been dis- proved, Hynek founded the Center for UFO Studies. He spent the remainder of his life engaged in the scientific investigation of unidentified flying objects.
In 1966, the Air Force’s Blue Book consultant, J. Allen Hynek, interrogated Betty about this point at Dr. Benjamin Simon’s home in Arlington, Massachusetts. Simon had induced a deep hypnotic trance to initiate Betty’s recall. Hynek revealed that she observed the planet Jupiter on the lower left side of the moon and the bright moving object above it, directly left of the moon. Jupiter was the brightest planet in the sky and would have stood out among the other, less brilliant celestial bodies. In 1976, skeptic Robert Sheaffer suggested that Betty and Barney, in all probability, observed the planets Jupiter and Saturn—not a UFO. He had used a sketch Betty had drawn of the UFO in relation to the moon when she first sighted it, to claim that she had actually only observed two planets. He argued that Betty’s failure to mention three brilliant celestial objects and her poor observational skills proved that her UFO was, in reality, the planet Jupiter.3 However, he failed to take into account the fact that Betty described two bright objects to the left of the moon, whereas Saturn was positioned below and to the right of the moon. Nor did he offer an explanation for the object’s apparent movement and expanding size.
Following Sheaffer’s argument to its logical absurdity, Betty argued that if one were to accept the skeptical version of her observation, Jupiter would have left its orbit around the sun, decreased in size as it descended towards the White Mountains, and traveled across the moon’s face, while Saturn remained stationary in the sky.
At 10:30 p.m. on September 19, 1961, Saturn, a first-magnitude celestial body, could be seen almost directly below the moon. The planet Jupiter, two and one-half magnitudes more brilliant than Saturn, was positioned three degrees below the moon and above and to the left of Saturn. The U.S. Air Force initially came to Sheaffer’s conclusion, but later, with additional information, changed its assessment to “insufficient data.”
Returning to March 7, 1964: Betty told Dr. Simon that after she observed the expanding point of light for several minutes, she became puzzled and curious. She had passed by a mountain that obstructed her view, and when she saw the star again she thought it had moved, but she wasn’t sure. When she noticed that Delsey was somewhat restless she asked Barney to stop beside the road.
Barney’s February 22, 1964 account of this incident is as follows: “Delsey’s not squirming; she’s still under the seat. I don’t see a spot to stop, but I’ve passed several places where I could have pulled off safely from the main highway. But I say, ‘Well, I will stop at the next one.’ And I have not stopped and Betty said, ‘Look, there’s a star moving’ and I look and I see the star.” Barney located a roadside viewing area near Mt. Cleveland about 20 miles south of Lancaster, just south of Twin Mountain, and pulled to the side of the road. He retrieved Delsey’s leash and removed her from the vehicle, while Betty jumped out of the passenger side with her binoculars. As Barney glanced toward the moving star, he walked Delsey to the car’s trunk, as he told Betty to hurry up so he could use the binoculars.
On March 21, 1964, Dr. Simon pushed Barney for more information about the stop. Barney stated, “I went to the trunk of the car and opened it and took out a gun I had concealed there, and I put it in my pocket. And then, I said, ‘Give me the binoculars.’ And I looked and I could see that this thing that I thought was a plane had made a turn to the left toward Vermont and kept turning, and started coming right back.”
Betty’s account of the first observation point is nearly identical to Barney’s, with only one minor exception: In her initial interview, she reported that it was she who walked Delsey before she retrieved binoculars from the car. This is inconsistent with Barney’s statement that it was he who walked the dog. But under further questioning by Dr. Simon, she later recalled that it was indeed Barney. It is important to note that Dr. Simon did not point out this discrepancy to Betty. He merely directed her to retell this event.
Dr. Simon failed to probe the rationale behind Barney’s decision to remove the gun from the car’s trunk. But on March 7, 1964, Betty filled in the missing piece of the puzzle. She told Dr. Simon, “There were a couple of trash barrels, and Barney said we should look out for bears. This was his idea.”
New Hampshire’s wilderness area is a natural habitat for a variety of forest animals, including black bears, moose, deer, and cats of prey. Barney, who had to relieve himself, walked Delsey into the wooded area. Bears would have been naturally attracted to the easy meal picnickers had left behind in the trash barrels, so Barney carried the gun as a cautionary measure.
Next, Betty told Dr. Simon that in Barney’s opinion they were observing a satellite, but she “knew” it wasn’t. Through the binoculars she had seen the odd-shaped object travel across the face of the moon, flashing multicolored points of light. Although she had never before observed a satellite, she thought it was too close and too large to fit his explanation.
By the time Barney returned from the wooded section, the enigmatic craft had already passed over the moon’s face. He took the binoculars again, while Betty and Delsey returned to the car, and he observed a row of windows in what he, at first glance, assumed was a small aircraft similar to a piper cub. Barney told Dr. Simon, “I had only seen this happen when I was in Philadelphia and I used to be a mail truck driver, and there was a box located near the international airport. And just where I would stop, I would see planes coming in to land with their lights on. And it was a very funny feeling seeing this large thing coming to land, and I thought of that when I was standing on the highway…that this thing is coming right toward us and I said, ‘Come on Betty, let’s go’”(March 21, 1964).
His skeptical attitude and pragmatic thinking style caused Barney to assume that his eyes were deceiving him. He reasoned that although the craft appeared to be unconventional, it had to be a piper cub in a landing pattern or possibly on a crash course. He even pondered the possibility that it might be a commercial airliner or a military jet. Wanting nothing more than to continue with his drive home to Portsmouth, he became angry and impatient with Betty. However, the craft’s unconventional nature sparked his curiosity and caused him to continue to watch it as he drove along Route 3.
As Barney continued on his journey down Route 3 through the narrow mountain pass that forms Franconia Notch, he observed Cannon Mountain, with its Aerial Tramway, only five miles south of the Mt. Cleveland lookout, near where they made their first observational stop. Betty observed the restaurant on top of Cannon Mountain. As the object passed above it, she noticed that the lights in the restaurant extinguished. Assuming that the restaurant was closing for the evening, in the darkened car she glanced at her watch. Her hypnotic testimony reveals, “It was, I think, 10 minutes past 11. I thought that if anybody were up there they would be able to get a good look at this object. It went right behind the restaurant, and there is a lookout tower in that area. When I was watching it to see what this object would do, I didn’t see it.” She thought that, perhaps, it had descended into the valley between the two mountains or turned its lights off. But as she rode past the Old Man of the Mountain, it was there. She described it as looking as though it were bouncing along the mountain’s ridge. Momentarily, she would lose sight of it, but then it would appear again.
It is apparent from the Hills’ testimony that both were cognizant of the unconventional behavior associated with the craft’s movement. As they continued along Route 3, Betty focused upon the object’s movement while Barney halted the car briefly several times to observe it from the driver’s seat. He described how it moved in a stair-step pattern, rising vertically, and then moving horizontally for a short distance before it dipped down. And as it did this, he noticed a row of lights on it that seemed to tilt and level off. It didn’t bank in a swooping motion as a plane would, but the cigar-shaped object seemed to shift from a horizontal position to a vertical one. As he drove on he had a peculiar feeling that it was spinning.
From her vantage point in the passenger seat, Betty had an unrestricted opportunity to view the unconventional object. Her March 7, 1964 description corroborated Barney’s testimony. She told Dr. Simon, “It was turning. It was rotating, and it would go along and fly in a straight line for a short distance, and then it would tip over on its side and go straight up.”
Next, he sighted the familiar landmark The Old Man of the Mountain, New Hampshire’s state emblem. Still convinced that he could find a conventional explanation, Barney pulled off onto a scenic turnout to the right of the highway just south of the Old Man of the Mountain profile, probably into a hiking trail parking area. Reasoning that it moved too rapidly to be a piper cub, Barney attempted to convince himself it must be a military jet. He stepped out of the car, angry with Betty and intent upon proving the conventional nature of the craft. However, although he estimated the object was only a thousand feet away, he could not hear the hum of a motor.
Barney thought of a frightening incident with a military jet while he was bathing with his sons at a state park in French Creek, Pennsylvania. The hotshot pilot had dive-bombed the area and pulled up close to the park, producing an explosive sound, possibly a sonic boom. Barney was angry that the military pilot had behaved so irresponsibly, endangering the people below.
On March 21, 1964, as Barney recalled the military’s reckless disregard for the citizens below, he reported, “I began to feel very alarmed and hoped for some traffic…some car…or to see the State Police come by and say, ‘Look at [that]… it’s following us.’ But no one came by and I felt very uncomfortable.” Betty questioned whether vibration of their vehicle on the road was causing a distortion in her visual observation, making it appear that the craft was unconventional, when actually it was not. After their stop she concluded that the road vibration could not account for the erratic movement of the craft.