The True Story of the Worlds First Documented Alien Abduction: Life Without Barney
Soon, Betty’s phone began to ring incessantly. Television and radio programs had been interrupted to announce Barney’s untimely death, and the media wanted more information. Finally, at 4 a.m., Betty dropped into bed, confused and completely exhausted, for a three-hour nap.
Friends and the community joined together in an outpouring of support for Betty. The people of Portsmouth opened their hearts and their homes, providing rooms and meals for out-of-town guests and transportation to and from the airport. Betty found food and gifts left in her car and on the porches of her home, so much that they filled her freezer. On Saturday, March 1, family, friends, and large delegations from the Portsmouth Post Office and the NAACP filled the Unitarian-Universalist Church of Portsmouth. City, county, and state politicians and community leaders were in attendance. After the service, the local branch of the NAACP provided food for the guests on the church’s basement level.
Following Barney’s burial in nearby Kingston, Betty returned home alone with a severe case of the flu that left her bedridden for nearly a week.
On March 8, 1969, Betty ventured out for the first time since Barney’s funeral to her mother’s home in Kingston. As she drove north on Route 125 at 9 p.m., she noticed two red lights, one on each side of a pole at the power lines. At first she thought that tower lights had been installed within the previous two weeks, but quickly changed her mind when they started to travel in her direction. Betty slowed her car and the lighted object moved over the highway and stopped directly in front of her. As her curiosity piqued, she pulled to the side of the road and stopped her vehicle. Then, the object shifted back over the power lines and Betty was able to scrutinize its shape. It was a disk with a double row of windows the same as the one she had seen in New Hampshire’s White Mountains in September of 1961. Peering into the dimly lighted interior, she could see shadowy figures. She opened the car doors to light the interior, exited the vehicle, and stood almost under the craft, wondering what to do next.
Reasoning that the occupants were curious about Barney’s death, she told them that Barney was in a nearby cemetery and pointed in the general direction of his grave. The craft rocked back and forth three or four times, crossed over the highway, and headed in the general direction of the cemetery. Betty returned to her car and made a quick exit toward Portsmouth.
The tragic loss of Barney caused unspeakable grief for Betty, which was amplified by the fact that her father had died only 10 months earlier. Her own health was in jeopardy resulting from a pericardial infection and bouts of pneumonia. Additionally, several acquaintances were openly speculating about Betty’s impending death. They suspected that the sudden loss of Delsey, followed by Barney’s untimely death two months later, was a direct consequence of the UFO abduction. Many expected Betty to drop dead later that spring, and naturally this created some anxiety within Betty.
Then on May 3, 1969, Betty was suddenly stricken outside her veterinarian’s closed North Hampton office. She felt what resembled a sudden blow to the back of her head and saw a quick flash of light before she felt a paralyzing numbness that took her to the ground. She lay there for several minutes before the veterinarian’s wife, a registered nurse, and her child came and assisted Betty to the house. Unable to sit or stand, Betty was put to bed while the group waited for the doctor to return home. When he arrived, they transported Betty to her home and waited while she phoned family members. Her sister Janet rushed Betty to the Exeter Hospital where she was treated and released, but spent the next two days under her mother’s care.
Betty’s health problems were compounded by continued harassment in her own home. Most notably, she had just finished preparing her tax documents and planned to deliver them to her accountant. To her cha- grin, the materials disappeared from her home, forcing her to apply to the Internal Revenue Service for an extension. Then, several weeks later, Betty returned home from her office to find her tax documents on the floor, scattered throughout her apartment.
On other occasions, Betty experienced the shock of finding her kitchen chairs grouped in a circle in her living room. Clothing from her closets was piled in the middle of her room and her clock radio was reset, causing it to sound an alarm in the middle of the night. Not knowing what to do, Betty enlisted the assistance of an elderly retired gentleman who lived in an adjacent apartment building. On several occasions he observed two men dressed in dark suits enter Betty’s apartment by unlocking her door with a key. Once again Betty had the locks changed, but the men continued to enter undeterred.
At the time of these incidents, Kathy was a college student at the University of New Hampshire, a short drive from Betty’s home in Portsmouth. To protect Betty and give her a sense of safety and security, she and her husband took up residence in an apartment in Betty’s building. They installed an intercom system between their apartments and listened for intruders during the daytime when Betty was at work. One day, as Kathy sat studying, she distinctly heard her apartment door open and the sound of footsteps in her residence. Thinking that Betty had decided to have her lunch at home, Kathy rushed upstairs to visit with her. To her astonishment, Betty wasn’t there, and she realized that someone had entered her apartment and might be hiding inside. She apprehensively opened a closet door and peered under Betty’s bed, before reason prevailed, and sensing impending danger, she quickly returned to her apartment. Then, moments later, a loud crash jolted her, followed by hurried footsteps and the slamming of the front door. Again she rushed to Betty’s apartment, threw open the front door, and raced down the hall. A short, stocky man was rapidly exiting Betty’s yard. He quickly sped away in his waiting vehicle. Returning to Betty’s apartment, she found a closet door standing open. A baseball bat that had been stored in the closet had fallen to the floor. Perhaps she would have been assaulted if she had opened the door moments earlier.
Betty suspected that someone was attempting to prod her into making a police report. Reasoning that a concerted effort was being made to cause her to “freak out,” she decided against creating a paper trail or risking publicity. She once again had her locks changed and checked regularly by a locksmith. She also enlisted the assistance of NICAP members who pledged to assist her in identifying the source behind the harassment. But when her home continued to be entered, she had an alarm system installed. Thereafter, the alarm sounded once, the police responded, the culprit escaped, and the harassment ceased.
Betty’s life returned to normal and she developed an interest in organic gardening. That summer she planted a large vegetable garden on her mother’s Kingston, N.H. farm. Nearly every weekend, she and her granddaughter, who had come to spend the summer with Betty, camped out on the farm and tended the vegetable crop. It was an enjoyable, relaxing summer spent by the pool with close family members. During the week, Betty performed her professional duties as a child welfare worker, while Tammy attended summer camp. The slower pace, interrupted only by an occasional interview, facilitated Betty’s healing process and her cardiac problems receded.
Just as life was taking on a more leisurely pace, Betty received a letter from Lakeside, Ohio. It was from Marjorie Fish, an unmarried elementary school teacher and member of Mensa, who received a B.S. degree in sociology with a minor in science from Juniata College in Huntingdon, Pennsylvania in 1954. She graduated with distinction. In 1962, she returned to college at Bowling Green State University in Bowling Green, Ohio, to pursue graduate studies in elementary education. Her intense interest in UFOs had developed in 1966 when she read Dr. Jacques Vallee’s Anatomy of a Phenomenon. Fish informed Betty that she had developed an interest in attempting to identify the astronomical location of the stars on the map that she was allegedly shown during her abduction. This gave Fish the chance to verify scientifically whether or not the star cluster Betty drew represented a real set of stars, suitable for planets, that could have developed life.
Excited by another scientific interest in her UFO encounter, Betty agreed to meet with Fish in her Portsmouth, N.H., home on August 4–5, 1969. It would be the beginning of a long, cordial relationship between the two women, culminating in Fish’s discovery of correlating data that seemed to substantiate the validity of Betty’s star map.