Captured! The Betty and Barney Hill UFO Experience: Betty’s Fall From Grace (Part 1)

The True Story of the Worlds First Documented Alien Abduction: Betty’s Fall From Grace

Marjorie Fish’s star map investigation brought renewed scientific interest to the Hill abduction. For many people in the scientific community it represented tangible, measurable evidence that the abduction hypothesis was highly probable. This gave new life to Betty’s commitment to solving the UFO mystery. She began to conduct her own experiments and even found a possible UFO “window” in East Kingston, a small farming community that she passed through on her travel between Portsmouth and Kingston. It is topographically an area of rolling hills, swamps, three lakes, and a river. Two sets of power lines traverse from east to west through the north and south ends of town. About 10 miles south of town lays the Clinton-Newburg geological fault zone, and there is a small geo- logical fault line 2 miles south of her observation area. A large quartz deposit lies beneath the surface and extends northeast of the adjacent town of Exeter, N.H. In the 1970s it was a very rural area, spotted with dairy, horse, chicken, and turkey farms. The side roads were narrow and winding, and some had not yet been paved.

East Kingston had developed a reputation as a hot spot for UFO sightings. Many residents had observed anomalous craft hovering over the railroad tracks that cut through the center of town. Residents re- ported that disks had landed on the railroad tracks and in several fields throughout town. Two well-educated, conservative, highly reliable neigh- bors had observed landed UFOs in their pastures. One night in 1975 when Betty was passing through East Kingston on her way home from her mother’s farm, she was buzzed at close range. The UFO rose up from the ground and approached her vehicle, hitting it with beams of light that blistered the paint and punctured small holes through two lay- ers of metal. She observed a lit row of windows and figures looking out at her as the craft hovered above her vehicle. Quickly, she grabbed her camera and snapped a picture of the disk-shaped craft and its humanoid occupant. The photograph reveals a shadowy figure at the window and a possible stereotypical gray alien emerging from the right side of the disk Betty suffered a long history of failing health following her 1961 UFO encounter. By 1975 she was experiencing crippling episodes of chest, back, and head pain accompanied by tremors, profuse sweating, and loss of balance. Her physician referred her to an oncologist, suspecting that she had cancer, but the test results were negative. However, she was not able to return to her position as the supervisor of intake and referral for the New Hampshire Division of Welfare, and was forced to retire at age 56.

Betty’s retirement gave her the opportunity to focus primarily on UFO studies. She became easily accessible to the public, who were re- porting their own sightings to her. At times, she went out with them to areas where they were observing unconventional lights in the sky, and she began to document their reports. This resulted in an extensive data- base, but the sightings, often without directional data, estimated size, time reference, or detailed description, were never investigated. Betty was beginning to accept the mere description of lights in the sky as evidence that a UFO had been observed, without the careful, sometimes tedious investigation and documentation required as acceptable standards of evidence. Many of her witnesses were reporting multiple sightings, and she too had observed more than one UFO. She was growing frustrated with NICAP’s cautious stance regarding multiple sightings and its refusal to take these reports seriously. Out of her frustration, she formed a loosely structured group of sky watchers who reported directly to her, which she named her “silent network.” She lowered her standards of evidence from scientific investigation to the subjective reporting of observational data, and she began to publicize her findings that large numbers of UFOs were flying in squadrons through New Hampshire’s skies.

The UFO community that had previously given Betty support began to publish highly critical reports about her observations. The media, on the other hand, became fascinated by Betty’s fantastic, highly credulous reports, and this became the focus of their coverage. John Fuller wrote several cautionary letters to Betty in an attempt to dissuade her from disseminating subjective information to the public. In one message he wrote, “I just want to emphasize that, for your own credibility, that anything that cannot be documented or substantiated by others can do severe harm to your reputation, regardless of whether or not you believe it to be true. The Interrupted Journey would not have been widely read at all without the restraint placed in writing it. It is also important for you to realize that even if you believed something subjectively, that is not good enough—we all can deceive ourselves at times.”

In a lengthier letter Dated January 8, 1979 he wrote the following excerpts:

As you know, Betty, I am very cautious about the whole UFO situation, and always have been. Your story with Barney interested me and the editors of LOOK because of the cautious approach that you and Barney took to the subject, and your careful analysis of your own experience. You let the facts speak for themselves and were careful not to extrapolate beyond them.

As you know, any conclusions drawn from observations of this type of phenomenon must be drawn only on data that can be confirmed by careful observation and supportive verification, and then only on a tentative basis because there is no hardware at hand. Even photographs have to be examined with a grain of salt. Regardless of the intensity of your belief, it must still be backed up by cautious and competent witnesses or it works against you very seriously. You may be right. But if you are, you’ve got to seek better confirmation than the type we encountered that evening.

Because your first encounter was so well documented, it served as very good evidence of the existence of UFOs. Unless you can back up any current happenings with equal caution, you can seriously harm your position, and that of those who found your original evidence so interesting because of your reserve and caution. Betty, it is very important to do so, if only for protecting your own reputation.

Seemingly undaunted by Fuller’s cautionary letters, Betty surged ahead, enlisting the help of friends, military observers, and UFO enthusiasts in her undying effort to prove the existence of UFOs. She carried a movie camera and shot footage of anything that appeared to be unconventional. Later the footage was analyzed, but the results were inconclusive. She had the movie film frames made into slides and did numerous presentations, which engendered additional criticism toward her within the UFO field. Betty’s slides showed discoids with unconventional, often blue lights, and spheroids of various colors. One slide showed an orange- white spheroid projecting a red beam upwards. Another appeared as a huge maraschino cherry with a white stem-like structure protruding from an area of gaseous discharge (see page 148). In other photos, balls of light seem to descend along a blue beam and part in various directions. Another photo, taken at dusk, shows a glowing landed disk on legs in a triangular arrangement silhouetted against adjacent trees. Another photo showed landing trace marks made by the alleged UFO.

In response to the lambasting that Betty was taking from observers who had witnessed her misidentification of conventional aircraft and lights as UFOs, witnesses were writing in support of her sightings.

One wrote as follows:

On October 23, 1979, [name deleted], who is producer of my television series, went up to Portsmouth, N.H. to do a preshow interview with Betty Hill and later accompanied her to a railroad track site in East Kingston. He reported seeing a large saucer- shaped “mother ship” on the tracks, saw it lift off to let a train pass underneath, heard it “beep,” and claims that it directed a red beam of light at the car, causing Betty to floor the accelerator and take off down the road.

On the evening of January 3, 1980, I and my son, while riding with Betty, saw a faint pink glow down between the tracks. We also observed a railroad signal at one of the nearby intersections change repeatedly, even though no train was approaching. On the same evening, we also watched strobe-lit flying objects that moved across the sky, hovered, converged on one another, and periodically vanished—yet did not exhibit the telltale characteristics of helicopters, weather balloons, or any other aerial objects with which I’m familiar.

On February 18, 1980, [name deleted] and I, while riding around the area with Betty Hill after dark, first saw two small “headlight- sized” objects down between the tracks. On the next pass across the tracks, we saw a large pyramid of lights (actually large circles of what looked like backlit, smoked Plexiglas) that appeared on the tracks minutes after a train had passed by, and which blinked on and off in random sequences for close to an hour.

On the night of April 5, 1980, while Betty stayed behind in her car with a couple visiting from Massachusetts, three of us walked down to the railroad crossing and observed flickering (strobe- like) white and red lights and a white glowing area, and a brightly lit red ball which rolled across the tracks, up along the trees on the right, and off into the sky.

Regards, Thomas Elliott

An opposing opinion was expressed by a prominent UFO investigator who is not mentioned in Betty’s memoirs as having accompanied her to her UFO observation area.

He expressed the following opinion:

My own feelings regarding your “UFO” sightings remains unchanged based upon my personal conversations with those who have accompanied you on UFO hunts. Aircraft lights, street lights, and lighted trailers, etc., but UFO to you only because you are not able to identify them as such. Perhaps they are wrong, but I have a very high regard for their judgment. The recent articles in the newspapers about the “UFOs” sighted at your secret site further support their reports to me. I personally think that you’re going out of your way to get publicity for such “sightings” gives the whole subject a bad look and I have asked those who have witnessed phenomena which you call UFOs to write a full report of just what is going on in order that your sightings are dealt with in a more objective way. The reputation that you have acquired from a possible initial experience may give undue weight to additional claims by you.