Roswell incident: The Hill Abduction – 1961
In fact, over the years, these other interpretations have slipped from the UFO literature. Clark, in his UFO encyclopedia, made no mention of either Betty Hill’s interpretation or that by Atterberg. Instead, he focused solely on the Fish model.
What we really know is that Betty Hill’s star map was created during her dreams and reinforced by hypnotic regression. No evidence has been presented to suggest that the map is valid. It is, in essence, twelve dots connected by various lines. It is not a very good clue as to the home world of the aliens, it is not solid evidence that the event took place, and it has mislead millions who believe that here is evidence of alien visitation and alien abduction.
We can argue the statistical significance of the Fish interpretation of the Hill model, we can argue that Fish’s criterion for selection of the stars in the map is solid, and we can argue that hypnotically regressed testimony is important and valuable, but when all is said and done we are once again left with no solid evidence. What we have is an interesting aberration in the abduction phenomenon which does nothing to advance our understanding but certainly clouds the issue with seeming corroborative data. In the end we are left where we began, with nothing in the way of hard evidence. Instead we are left with the nightmares of a kind, sincere woman who believed she was abducted by aliens but the idea that some of the aliens come from Zeta 1 or Zeta 2 Reticuli is no longer corroboration of the tale.
There are other points that are often lost on those studying the Hill case. It has been suggested that neither Barney nor Betty Hill watched the various science fiction programs that were broadcast in the early 1960s. This becomes important because Dr. Simon had Barney draw a representation of the alien creature he saw during the abduction. To some it looked like the alien from The Bellaro Shield, an episode of The Outer Limits.
But asked about this later, Betty Hill said that she had never heard of the show and that she and Barney never watched anything like that on television. I believe that the statement might refer only to The Outer Limits. There is evidence that they did watch The Twilight Zone, or more precisely, were aware of the program and the nature of its stories.
On page 144 of The Interrupted Journey, Betty Hill is describing the events and the craft while under hypnotic regression. She said, “…It was long, and there weren’t any wings. And it was going sideways. You know, like a cigar. It was going from the left to the right. It was just like holding up a cigar in front of the moon, with all these lights flashing around it. So then Barney looked at it, and I too the binoculars and looked again and gave them back to him. And then I went over and put Delsey in the car and got in the car myself and shut the door. And then barney came over and got in the car, and he said, ‘They’ve seen us, and they’re coming this way.’ And I laughed and asked if he had watched Twilight Zone recently on TV. And he didn’t say anything.” Now to be fair, Simon asked her, “Had there been anything like that on Twilight Zone.” Betty responded, saying, “I don’t know. I never see Twilight Zone. But I had heard people talk about this program and I was always under the impression that
it was a way-out type thing.”
The problem is that The Twilight Zonedid have a story about alien abduction on it, first broadcast on April 13, 1962. The story is of a man, Andy Devine, who claimed to his friends, family, and all who would listen that he was a genus who has been at the top of various fields of research. Aliens, believing all that he has said, abducted him and wouldn’t listen when he attempted to tell the truth. When he played his harmonica, the aliens reacted in pain, Frisby (Devine’s character in the show) punched one of them and his plastic, human mask fell away.
Which means, of course there was a fictional precedence for a story of alien abduction that was widely broadcast. In fact, as we look at the science fiction movies from the 1950s, we find that as a reoccurring theme. Big eyed aliens grabbing people who do not remember what happened to them, who have scars on their bodies that they did not know how they were acquired, and who have periods of missing time.
None of this means that the inspiration for the Hill tale came either from those 1950s science fiction films or the alien descriptions came from either The Outer Limitsor The Twilight Zone. It is merely to suggest that the Hill abduction case did not spring from a vacuum as has been suggested by some researchers.
There is one other disturbing aspect to this case. On page 298 of Fuller’s book, Betty Hill describes the aliens she saw. She reported, “I note their [the aliens] physical appearance. Most of the men are my height, although I can’t remember the height of the heels on my shoes. None is as tall as Barney, so I would judge them to be 5′ to 5’4″. Their chests are larger than ours; their noses were larger (longer) than average size although I have seen people with noses like theirs — like Jimmy Durante’s. [emphasis added]” The look of the alien creatures, then, has evolved over the years. They turn from big-nosed aliens into creatures that have nostrils, but no noses. Is this a significant variation? Has it been influence by other reports and by science
fiction? I don’t know. I just know that originally they had big noses and now they don’t. Some might believe this is of no real importance and they could be correct. It fits in with another aspect of the case which might be important, though I suspect it is not. In his book, Fuller quotes the letter that Betty Hill sent to Donald Keyhoe on September 26, 1961.
According to Fuller’s version, Betty wrote, “At this time we are searching for any clue that might be helpful to my husband, in recalling whatever it was he saw that caused him to panic. His mind has completely blacked out at this point.
Every attempt to recall leaves him very frightened. This flying object was at least as large as a four — motor plane, its flight noiseless and the lighting of the interior did not reflect on the ground…” However, in the letter, the original in the files at CUFOS, Betty actually wrote, “At this time we are searching for any clue that might be helpful to my husband, in recalling whatever it was he saw that caused him to panic. His mind has completely blacked out at this point. Every attempt to recall leaves him very frightened. We are considering the possibility of a compentent[sic] psychiatrist who uses hypnotism[emphasis added]. “This flying object was at least as large as a four — motor plane, its flight noiseless and the lighting of the interior did not reflect on the ground…” The real point here is that it was Betty Hill who introduced the idea of hypnosis long before any UFO researcher had thought of it. Mark Rodeghier, the scientific director of CUFOS, thought that Betty’s background as a social worker might have put the idea of hypnosis to recover memories into her thinking.
In the final analysis here, all we really learn is that the one piece of important corroborative evidence, that is the star map, isn’t as important was we thought. There are other interpretations for what the points mean, what stars they represent, and what the lines among the stars signify. Marjorie Fish’s work, while impressive, has been superceded by new star catalogs and new evidence about the importance of dwarf stars.
We can no longer say with the certainty that some have used, that some of the alien creatures come from the Zeti Reticuli star systems. Fish’s work has been trumped, not by the skeptics and debunkers, but by astronomers and physicists who have reworked the distances, who had found, literally, hundreds of planets outside the solar system, and who have shown that some dwarf stars could be of vast importance to a star trotting race.
We have also seen the evolution of the aliens described by Barney and Betty Hill and found the possible source of inspiration for them. We have learned that the case did not spring into existence without cultural elements in it. We have found the possible source material.
In the end, we are left where we began, with a tale told by a couple who sincerely believed that they had been abducted by alien creatures. We are left with a story that makes a kind of logical sense because the aliens acted as we would expect a scientific expedition to act or as we would act if the circumstances were reversed. We are left with one set of descriptions of the aliens, only to see it evolve into something that matches, more closely the alien abductors of today than it did forty years ago.
The problem is that there is no independent or forensic evidence to take us to the extraterrestrial. There is no evidence that alien creatures abducted the Hills, though there is no evidence that they invented the tale either in some deluded attempt for attention or because some bizarre psychological problems.
While I believe there is a terrestrial explanation for what happened to the Hills, there is always the possibility that the real answer lies in the stars. That is why we continue to search, to learn the truth, even if that search sometimes takes us where we do not wish to go.
At some point we might find the answers to our questions, but I suspect the answers are not going to come from this case. It is interesting, both Barney and Betty Hill were believable, but they had no independent corroboration for their experience. Until we can move abduction research from the case study to the next level, we will always have these questions. If nothing else, the Hill case gives us a thrilling ride.
https://scienceandspace.com/ufos/roswell-ufos-and-the-unusual-the-hill-abduction-1961-part-1/