The True Story of the Worlds First Documented Alien Abduction: The Abduction Experience
Weeks before Betty’s death, Kathy attempted to extract the true nature of the event from her. Using a cognitive interview technique, she facilitated Betty’s moment-by-moment recollection of the exam. Betty slowly and thoughtfully recalled the exam, adding that her head dropped down several times and they lifted it up into position. Then they opened her eyes and stared into them, giving her the impression that they were amazed. (Could this be a similar description to Barney’s statement that the eyes pushed into his?) This suggests that she also was somewhat immobilized, though not as completely as Barney. We know from their treatment of Barney that the occupants had a propensity for the immobilization of resisters. It is therefore reasonable to conjecture that Betty was subjected to a mind-altering force that rendered her helpless moments be- fore her physical examination commenced. Thus, her descriptive process was a visualization of what she thought was occurring, although her eyes were closed during much of this part of the exam.
Returning to 1964, Betty told Dr. Simon that at this point, the initial examination had ended, and the examiner informed her that he wanted to conduct a few simple tests. The first test would provide information about the differences between his and her nervous systems. In order to per- form this test, Betty was required to remove her dress. Before she had a chance to stand up, the examiner grasped the tab on her zipper and pulled it down to her waist. (This does not explain how Betty’s zipper became ripped.) Having slipped her dress off, now wearing only a slip, bra, and panties, she followed the examiner’s directive to lie down on the examining table, which she mentioned was about the height of a desk. She assumed a position on her back and the examiner approached her with what appeared to be a cluster of needles. She said each needle had a wire running from it. There was, in Betty’s words, “some kind of a gadget on the end of these needles” that reminded her of a large TV screen. The screen, Betty said, had “all kinds of lines or something like that.” When Dr. Simon inquired about whether or not the needles hurt Betty, she reported that they didn’t cause pain. The examiner simply touched the needles to her spinal column, behind her ears, and on several areas on her head, arms, and legs. Then they rolled her over onto her abdomen, pushed her slip up to her armpits, and touched her along her vertebrae.
This account was less detailed and somewhat different than Betty’s 1961 “Dreams or Reality?” rendition. She dreamed about a machine that resembled an EEG, but her dream lacked the tracing monitor she de- scribed to Dr. Simon. The examiner gently touched needle tips to her temples, face, behind her ears, along her neck and spine, under her arms, and around her hips, causing a slight twitch in some areas. She assumed that a recorder of some kind was being used, but she didn’t see one.
Using a cognitive interviewing technique, Kathy facilitated Betty’s recall of this abduction-related test. Betty told her, “He decides to remove my dress. Now he is confused because he doesn’t know how to remove my dress. So I sit up, and that’s when he sees the zipper, but he doesn’t know how to handle it. And so he starts tugging at it and I can almost hear the stitching rip. So I reach behind and start to pull the zipper down and then he seems to get the idea and he starts pulling the zipper down too. So, it did get torn in a few places, but not much.”
When Betty removed her dress from her closet in April or May of 1964, she discovered that the fabric on the left side of the zipper, next to the metal teeth, was ripped in a 1-inch vertical tear. On the right, in the area where the dress fabric attaches to the zipper cloth, 2 inches of stitching was torn out.
Betty continued, “So he unzips my dress and pulls it off my sleeves and just drops it in a pile on the floor. So it stays there while he…[long pause] so then he starts feeling all up and down my spine.” In this ac- count Betty failed to mention the nerve conduction-like test that she experienced in her dream account and during regressive hypnosis. Her cognitive interview account closely resembled Barney’s description of the examiner touching his spinal column as if to count his vertebrae. The now famous pregnancy test marks the final stage of Betty’s exam.
UFO researchers have compared the insertion of a needle into Betty’s navel to amniocentesis, a medical procedure now administered on a routine basis to determine the genetic makeup of a fetus. It can identify the presence of a chromosomal birth defect such as Down syndrome or identify the biological father when paternity is in question. The procedure involves the removal of amniotic fluid from a pregnant woman’s uterus.
In 1961, amniocentesis was still in experimental stages. It was not possible to grow human cells in the laboratory until the mid-1960s, and genetic testing on a fetus was not accomplished until 1968.4 Betty could not have acquired this information prior to her frightening dream in 1961.
Skeptics contend that this part of Betty’s exam came directly from the 1953 movie Invaders from Mars. Betty once mentioned that someone had invented this false information about her to promote a debunking argument. She was distressed by these false accusations, and told Kathy, “I might have seen part of some science fiction movie once when I was visiting your mother when you were a kid, but I don’t know what it was, or even if I saw it.” In April of 1964, Dr. Simon asked Betty, “Do they look like any of the pictures of people you’ve seen from outer space, like Martians?” Betty replied, “I don’t think I’ve ever seen any pictures.” The late UFO researcher/writer Karl Pflock conducted an extensive investigation of the Hill UFO encounter and concluded that the evidence pointed toward an alien abduction. He corresponded with Betty and Kathy for several years, and visited Betty in her home.
At the end of a meticulous investigation of Betty Hill, he concluded that there was no evidence to support the claim that she was a science fiction fan. Those who knew her well will unequivocally support Pflock’s conclusion.
Karl Pflock graduated from San Jose State University in 1964. He served in reserve components of the Marine Corps and Air Force from 1960 to 1966, and was employed by the CIA from 1966 to 1972. From 1981 to 1983, he was a senior staff member for Congressman Jack Kemp. From 1983 to 1985, he was special assistant for defense, space, science, and technology to Congressman Ken
Kramer. From 1985 to 1989, he served as the deputy assistant secretary of defense (deputy director) for Operational Test and Evaluation. He was awarded the Defense Out- standing Public Servant Award and the Defense Superior Achievement Award. In 1992, Pflock returned to full-time writing and independent research. Pflock died on June 5, 2006, from Lou Gehrig’s disease.
Now back to the insertion of a needle into Betty’s navel. One thing is clear: Betty exhibited such marked agitation during the needle insertion part of the medical examination that Dr. Simon decided to end the session. He noted, “She squirmed in her chair and wept profusely.” A week later, on March 14, 1964, Betty added details to her description of the needle by stating, “It was a long needle. I would say the needle was 4 inches long…6 inches maybe. There was a tube attached to it and they didn’t leave it in very [long]… just a second.” It didn’t cause the kind of pain that one would associate with the insertion of a needle; it was far more painful. Betty compared it to the sensation of being stabbed by a knife.
Betty’s dream material also included the insertion of a needle into her navel, but it was more detailed and in a slightly different sequential order. In her dream, the examiner told Betty that the test would be very helpful to them, but she did not mention this during her hypnotic regression. Also, he explained in advance that he planned to do a pregnancy test on Betty that would not cause her to experience pain. When he inserted the needle with a sudden thrust, Betty twisted and moaned in pain, causing both men to look startled. In response, the leader bent over and waved his hand in front of her eyes and the pain was completely gone.
This is in stark contrast to the hypnotic memory of continuing to experience pain at the point of entry after the needle had been removed. In her dream, she became relaxed and appreciative to the leader; however, un- der hypnosis she remained markedly traumatized. Tears were streaming down her face and she showed signs of being in considerable agony.
Dr. Simon was forced to end the session early due to the degree of agitation that had ensued. Her comment that the needle felt similar to a knife suggests that the examiner might have performed a laparoscopic procedure on Betty, which requires that an incision be made slightly below the navel. A thin, flexible tube with a tiny video camera on the end is inserted into the abdominal cavity to examine the internal organs. The physician observes images that appear on a computer screen. Laparoscopy has achieved great success as a means of accomplishing minimally invasive surgery since the first experimental use of laparoscopy was performed with a cytoscope in 1901 by German surgeon Georg Kelling. He insufflated air into the abdomen of a dog as an experimental means of stopping intra-abdominal bleeding. However, his studies did not draw support from the medical community and were not widely known. In 1934, American surgeon John C. Ruddock used a primitive form of today’s laparoscope for diagnostic purposes.
Then, in 1953, Professor Hopkins revolutionized this procedure by developing a rigid rod lens system that consisted of a rod-like instrument with an attached telescopic lens, earning him the credit for the invention of videoscopic surgery. By 1970, gynecologists had introduced laparoscopic surgery into their practice, but it was not until the early 1990s that general surgery was widely performed in the United States using this technology.5 One can only conjecture about the procedure that Betty relived in excruciating detail in Dr. Simon’s office during the winter of 1964. Al- though it seems somewhat similar to amniocentesis and laparoscopy, it is significantly different in two ways. First, the instrument that she described as the largest needle she had ever witnessed was introduced into her abdominal cavity through her navel. Earthly doctors perform this medical procedure somewhat differently: In modern amniocentesis, an ultrasound is employed to locate the position of the placenta and fetus before a long, thin, hollow needle passes through the lower abdomen into the uterus.
Second, the uterus and ovaries are not located behind the navel, leading one to question the validity of performing an examination of the reproductive organs through this entry point. We can be certain of one significant factor: The average American had no knowledge of either procedure in 1961 or 1964. This concludes the study of the Hills’ hypnotic regression pertaining to their medical examinations. We have been able to draw similarities between the experiences of both individuals that would have been impossible for each to glean from the other, which suggests the occurrence of a real experience that each lived separately from his or her own perspective, yet simultaneously.