The True Story of the Worlds First Documented Alien Abduction: Psychophysics Experiments
In a letter to Hohmann dated April 29, 1966, Betty indicated that her “psychophysics” experiments seemed to have reaped limited success.
She wrote:
As you will remember, I suggested that they go to my parents’ home in Kingston and knock on the door, but instead my cousin, who has the same last name, had the knock and saw a UFO. Since that time I have been saying that they had the wrong home and giving directions to my parents’ home. Last Saturday night, or should I say Sunday morning, at 1 a.m., my mother was awakened by a slow methodical knock on her front door (Just like the one mentioned above), but she panicked and did not dare to answer it. The next day a pilot who lives two houses from her said that he saw a UFO hovering in her back yard.
Betty’s memoirs provide a more detailed description of this event.
She wrote:
My mother was awakened by a knock-knock-knock on the front door, which is directly under her bedroom. These were measured knocks, in that there was one knock, followed by a waiting period; then a second knock and a wait, etc. This knocking continued for several minutes. My mother became terrified, so much so that she could not move to awaken my father. Then the knocking ceased, and she regained some of her courage and woke him up.
She did not turn on any lights. Then, they heard a roaring sound, followed by an explosion. The whole house shook. Thinking that the furnace had exploded, they ran downstairs to investigate. The furnace was fine. Needless to say, they were not able to sleep for the rest of the night.
The next day, a neighbor said that he was returning from his job at about 2 a.m. and he had seen a UFO landed or going down in the woods near their home. Family members started to search to find any evidence of a landing. They crossed the lawn, went over the stone wall, into a wooded area. They had gone only a short distance when they found the area. In the midst of the trees was a small clearing, ringed with pines and birches.
The family phoned Betty and she drove to Kingston to investigate. In her letter to Robert Hohmann, Betty described the physical trace evidence that her family discovered when they investigated the suspected landing site. This was investigated by Betty and a NICAP investigator.
She wrote, “In a clump of trees nearest the home, they found all trees in a circular pattern were broken, bent, or the bark badly scraped at a height 12 feet from the ground. In the center was a triangular mark of slight indentation, measuring 36 inches on each side. The ground, dried grasses, etc. were burned in this area, as well as some of the branches of the trees. In the midst of this triangle was a piece of burned birch bark, which I am sending to you.”
Betty elaborated further in her memoirs:
In a small clearing they found what appeared to be many markings of a landing, as though the craft had difficulty in getting down. From the evidence, we determined that the craft was approximately 15 to 18 feet in diameter. We determined this by measuring the distances between the trees where the bark had been scraped off on the facing sides. Also, three birch trees had been sheared off at the exact same height, which was the same point where the scrapings stopped—10 feet from the ground. A small tree had been bent over as though a weight had rested on it, and it never stood up again, but later died. There were three slight indentations in the ground of three triangle-shaped markings. In the middle of the triangle-shaped markings was a slightly burned area, or to be more precise, a dark soot-like substance. It covered the branches of the small tree which died.
Betty mailed the 14-by-5 1/2-inch bark sample to Robert Hohmann, who coordinated radiation testing on it. An engineer who was one of Hohmann’s colleagues completed the photographic, microscopic, chemical, ultraviolet, infrared, and curl examination on the sample, and wrote the technical report. The report revealed that the bark was from a tree of the Betulaceae family, and most probably a genus of Betula, species paprifera. These trees, which mature to 60 to 80 feet, are indigenous to Canada, the northern United States, and the Southern Appalachians. The sample was tightly rolled from both ends and had obviously been submit- ted to a short-duration blast of an extremely hot flame, which had heavily scorched one end of the rolled bark, but had not been sufficient to kindle it. Chemical analysis revealed that the fuel for the flame that scorched the sample was a petroleum product. It was determined that exposure of the sample to a five-minute blast of 275-degree heat would be sufficient to curl it. The engineer hypothesized that the blast of heat to which the sample was subjected was sufficient to curl it in a very short period of time. He concluded that there was insufficient data to draw significant conclusions.
Betty monitored the site and reported back to Hohmann in a letter dated May 18, 1966. She stated, “We went to my mother’s home last night and questioned her as the possibility of any fire in the area, which has definitely been ruled out. Also, no one has used a blow torch or fuel oil in any way, with the exception that about five years ago, my father dumped some crankcase oil on an ant hill about 200 yards away.” Betty did not know that a youthful neighbor visited the alleged UFO landing site prior to her arrival and perpetrated a hoax to elicit excitement from her. The burned bark evidence that she submitted for testing had been removed from a neighborhood tree, doused with lighter fluid, and set on fire briefly.
It is unfortunate that the one sample she submitted for testing was, in reality, a hoax.
Betty’s May 18 letter to Robert Hohmann continued:
We are still watching the spot and find the small trees that were bent over are slowly beginning to straighten themselves up—while the trees that were bent from the winter snows have not done this, because our weather has not been warm enough. From the markings on the trees, we would estimate the craft to be 15 to 18 feet in diameter, so it was much smaller than the one we had contact with in 1961. Incidentally, my mother did say that she remembered that sometime during that night she heard a noise— a loud boom that sounded as if someone had slammed shut a heavy door, which caused her house to vibrate. This noise awoke both of my parents and they checked the doors and windows to try to find the source of the noise, without success.
During the summer of 1966, the experimental team suggested a more scientific approach to Betty’s and Barney’s attempts to contact the UFO occupants. It suggested a specific methodology for a psychophysical con- tact experiment Betty agreed to carry out. As a precursor to the experiment, Betty attempted verbal and telepathic communication with the ETs from the back porch of her Portsmouth home each day. In the interest of advancing scientific knowledge, she asked the “UFO people” to appear at her parents’ farm on the night of August 20–21. The experiment produced less than the desired results, but she complied with the team’s request for a detailed description of anything that might seem out of the ordinary. In a letter dated August 23, 1966, she reported that she and Barney had observed a bright light that traveled north to south and then appeared to descend toward her parents’ back yard. Suddenly, it stopped, and its lights dimmed and extinguished as conventional aircraft entered the area. They waited for the light to reappear, but when it did not, she and Barney retired to her parents’ travel trailer to camp out for the night.
They were listening to a radio, which was to serve as a technical appliance for contact, when suddenly the music stopped and they heard a series of notes, followed by a 10-second pause. This pattern repeated approximately 15 times and then stopped. Betty wondered if this might be the signal she was looking for, so she watched from the window, but could not see anything unusual. A few moments later, Betty’s parents’ dog, which was tied in the yard, started to jump and howl. In response, Delsey, the Hills’ dog, walked to the door and gave several deep, threatening howls. Later, Barney observed a few flashes of light from their window, but could not identify its source. Betty wondered if any of these seemingly mundane events could have been signals that she and Barney failed to comprehend, and asked for Hohmann’s opinion.
In an August 29 letter, Robert Hohmann, on behalf of the team, suggested that perhaps the Hills had failed to comprehend details given to them by the ETs prior to the 20th that might have prepared them for the events. He informed the Hills that if indeed they had received radio signals from the UFO occupants, the next step would be to acknowledge the radio signals. This could be accomplished by answering with an exact repetition of the same signals or pattern of signals they had received. He suggested that the Hills could respond by flashing lights, electrical switches, or headlights off and on. As an alternative, they could reproduce the pattern of the signals through percussion, such as clapping metal objects together. Or, he suggested that the combined use of a portable radio and flashlight would be adequate, adding the comment that perhaps the UFO occupants expected a special response from the Hills. When this response was not forthcoming, the communication attempt failed to produce a response in kind, and all hopes of securing a workable piece of hardware failed. Hohmann added the comment that one cannot expect to reach a conclusion without a minimum of working data. Speculating that the Hills had not received an adequate preparation for the events of August 20, he reasoned that the disadvantages, which handicapped the Hills’ desire to cooperate, were sufficient to assume there was no basis to expect a meeting or quantitative proof.
When the Hills’ experiment failed to produce a clear signal, they concluded that they had entered the experiment at a disadvantage, and that additional time or effort could not be justified to produce the desired result. Likewise, Hohmann was not able to offer concrete suggestions to the Hills or further assistance in their effort to secure a workable piece of hardware. It seemed that there was no point in continuing the contact experiments.
In a letter dated April 3, 1967, Hohmann speculated that, following the publication of The Interrupted Journey and the widespread public interest in UFOs, the Hills might enter a new phase of their experience. His intuition told him that this new phase would run through a variety of “shades and tones of curious phenomena,” and offered his assistance if the Hills encountered circumstances that were seemingly without logical interpretation or explanation. In response, the Hills sought technical assistance from him and his scientific team to test the hypothesis that the human capability for extraordinary sensory communication is entirely possible with the science of psychophysics.
This led to a discussion of psychophysics with Dr. J. Allen Hynek, which stimulated interest in the scientific community. Dr. Hynek and John Fuller had discussed the extraordinary sensory communication hypothesis and expressed an interest in participating in a contact experiment. Fuller offered to inquire about the Hills’ interest in participating in the proposed test.
The team discussed the advisability of entering into a formal contract with the study group at the University of Colorado, headed by Dr. Condon. However, Dr. Hynek suggested that, in the interests of sound planning, it was advisable for the group to plan the project on a local or regional level, rather than wait for a formal contract. For this plan to be implemented, all expenses would be paid locally.
Hohmann advised the Hills, at the suggestion of Allen Hynek, that he would coordinate the procedural steps to convert the hypothesis into a specific program. Additionally, he would assemble an unbiased group of technical observers as soon as the funding for the project had been established. Additionally, he asked for the Hills’ thoughts pertaining to a date and a suitable location convenient to Betty and Barney for the contact experiment.
Once the prerequisite steps had been achieved, Hohmann planned to coordinate all information with the scientific team to set in motion a step-by-step procedural prospectus involving the hypothesis. The scientific team would manage the quantitative data required by the scientific community. During this process, Hohmann agreed to consult with the Hills at each step of the planning to update them on the team’s progress.
Thus, with the Hills’ full cooperation, the plan to conduct a psycho- physics experiment was set into motion. Through the next several weeks, Hohmann’s communication with the Hills was primarily through the telephone. However, as we will see in the next chapter, he also informed the Hills of the detailed instructions pertaining to the upcoming con- tact experiment.