The True Story of the Worlds First Documented Alien Abduction: Betty’s Fall From Grace
In retrospect, it seems that Robert Hohmann’s recruitment of Betty to participate in psi experiments precipitated a feeling of confidence in her ability to contact UFOs. Her participation in continuing psi experiments under the observation of an experimental psychiatrist and a college professor cemented her faith in her ability to do so. To some observers, she seemed to have the ability to sense when a UFO would appear in the sky. One observer who accompanied her to the East Kingston UFO observation site hinted of a possible abduction. Betty had also reported this incident to Kathy during an interview session.
He wrote:
We were coming back from watching the saucer on the railroad tracks. I was driving on the road to Exeter, it was dark. We were going up a slight short rise in the road, and where the rise peaked and we should naturally have nosed down, we were suddenly air- borne, floating, drifting, sort of, a very eerie feeling, not like you see in a car chase in the movies, but a slow-motion drift in space.
It was such a sudden and drastic change, a dislocation really, that I lost my sense of balance and sense of time. The closest I can come to describing it is an earthquake. There is an instant, utter dislocation. That night on the Exeter Road, I don’t know how long it lasted, but quite a while. Long enough where Betty and I ex- changed a long, puzzled look. It felt as if time had slowed, or expanded. We did touch down, yes, after that long, weird drift. And we didn’t like, hit the road hard, with sparks flying, but gently, gradually, like a very light aircraft landing, not bumping as would be expected when a heavy car hits the road after being airborne.
Betty recalled that they became airborne in Kensington, approximately 2 miles from Exeter, and touched down at the outskirts of Exeter. This occurred within 3 miles of the Incident at Exeter sighting by Norman Muscarello and Police Officers Eugene Bertrand and David Hunt on September 3, 1965. The 18-year-old Muscarello was hitchhiking along route 150 in Kensington when he spotted a round or oval-shaped silent object approach an adjacent farmhouse and hover a few feet above it.
The anomalous object was lighted with four or five bright red lights and was approximately 80 to 90 feet in diameter. When the teenager was unable to gain entry into the farmhouse, he flagged down a passing car and was whisked to the Exeter Police Station. He was pale, shaken, and barely able to talk. The station notified Officer Bertrand, who had taken an earlier report from a woman who was paced by a UFO only a few feet above her car. He and Muscarello returned to the Kensington field, but the UFO was not in sight. However, as they entered the field to investigate the incident, the craft slowly rose from behind some nearby trees and approached the two, coming within 100 feet of them. They fled for the cruiser and Bertrand called for backup. Soon Hunt arrived on the scene and the three watched the silent craft drift away over the trees (see Incident at Exeter by John G. Fuller).
Betty’s fall from grace ultimately transpired because she surrounded herself with UFO enthusiasts who looked to her for guidance. Many were not trained observers or UFO investigators, but friends who supported her belief that they were observing extraterrestrial craft, even when they were misidentifying conventional aircraft. Some of their descriptions seem to support the conjecture that at least a few of their observations were anomalous. Additionally, some of these observations were made by trained military observers and UFO investigators who confirmed that they had observed unconventional craft. Betty publicized this information because she thought she was contributing valuable information to the scientific community. What we must remember though, is Betty was not a scientist or a trained observer. After Barney’s death, she turned away from careful, objective evaluation, and with subjective enthusiasm began to identify any lights in the sky as UFOs. In the end, it destroyed her credibility, not because she didn’t observe or photograph UFOs, but because she failed to heed John Fuller’s warnings.
By the mid-1970s, several alleged UFO abductions had been reported throughout the United States. Betty was instrumental in lending emotional support to several of the traumatized victims through phone calls, letters, and face-to-face visits. Nearly all of the abductions occurred at night, and several involved multiple witnesses. The director of investigations for the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization, Dr. James Harder, assisted Betty in the investigation of some of these cases, one of which took place near Manchester, New Hampshire, less than 60 miles from Betty’s home.
Lydia (pseudonym), the young wife and mother of a 3-year-old son, was returning to her Goffstown home from her job in Manchester, N.H., at 2:45 a.m. on November 2, 1973. She had just met a coworker for a cup of coffee, gassed up her car, and started the drive home, usually less than 30 minutes away. As she passed through Pinardville on the outskirts of Manchester, she spotted a large, bright, star-like object in the sky that flashed red-, green-, and blue-colored lights. In Goffstown, she drove through the center of town and took a left, continuing along Route 114.
At this point, the object, which had been traveling on her left, shifted to a position directly ahead of her over the highway. A brilliant light blinded her temporarily, forcing her to use her forearm to shield her eyes. When she lowered her arm she could see a humanoid figure through the craft’s window. She experienced a tingling sensation throughout her body and she soon realized that she was becoming unable to move. She heard a soft, reassuring voice tell her not to be afraid, that she would not be harmed. Approximately 1 1/4 miles beyond this point, she saw a cemetery and two houses on her right. The UFO swooped down in front of her car again and she felt dizzy, as though she was being pulled toward the craft.
Suddenly, her car began moving at a high rate of speed apparently under the control of the UFO, and she heard a high-pitched sound that hurt her ears. Through the window she could see the humanoid’s large, grayish, elephant-skinned head and two large, dark, slanted eyes peering down at her. She did not notice ear flaps or a nose but observed a slit-like mouth that turned down at the corners. Her description was remarkably similar to Betty’s and Barney’s, although she could not have known about the elephant-like texture of the occupant’s skin or its down-turned mouth.
In her attempt to escape from the craft, she made a sharp left turn into a driveway and ran from the car toward the house. When the residents opened the door, Lydia fell onto the floor, holding her hands over her ears, and screaming uncontrollably. When she had regained her composure, she asked the homeowners to phone the police. This call was logged at 4:31 a.m. Within minutes, Goffstown Police Patrolman Jubinville arrived and the four exited the house in an attempt to observe the UFO.
They saw a light behind the house above the treetops, but could not con- firm that it was the object that Lydia had observed. The residents photo- graphed it using a Polaroid camera, but the picture showed only a spot of light in the sky. They phoned a tracking station on the other side of the mountain, but they could not see it. Lydia believed that it was too low in the sky at this point to be visible.
Later, Lydia underwent hypnotic regression to reconstruct what had occurred during the apparent period of missing time. She recalled the face of the craft’s occupant peering through the driver’s side window of her vehicle. She was parked on a gravel road and recalled a pond, a bub- bling brook with a rocky bottom and grass along its edges. There was a pile of cord wood and a gravel pit. She was abducted and underwent a physical examination immediately after her first occupant sighting and had been released moments prior to her second sighting.
Coincidently, she was wearing a blue dress similar to the one that Betty wore on the night of her abduction. Immediately afterward, she laundered it and left it at her mother’s house, never to be worn again. Betty noted that Lydia’s dress was damaged by a pattern of seven small holes just above the waist. This pattern was repeated on the lower back portion of the dress, reminding Betty of the type of degradation that had ruined her own dress.