Arrested Pulse

Although she was not the first to be abducted by aliens, Betty Hill, who passed away October 17, 2004, was one of the best known. Her and her husband Barney's 1961 close encounter of the first kind was told in the book The Interrupted Journey (by John Fuller) and later was made into the television movie The UFO Incident starring Estelle Parsons and James Earl Jones. I had the opportunity to interview Betty twice--the first for a science project when I was in junior high school, the second for a high school newspaper the year I graduated. Both interviews took place in the living room of her home in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. This is her story, in a nutshell.

The Experience

In 1961, she and her husband, the late Barney Hill, were traveling home to Portsmouth from Montreal late one night when they saw a bright light in the sky. This ended up getting bigger and bigger until it was clearly visible as an oval shaped spacecraft, which then followed their car as the terrified occupants attempted to flee down a series of back roads.

After the car engine stalled, the craft landed and a number of aliens took Betty and Barney from their car and led them onto the craft. The aliens were short, bald, and had light gray skin, big eyes, two small nostrils, and a thin slit for a mouth. On board, both were separated and subjected to experimentation.

Betty carried on a conversation with the only alien who spoke a "broken" form of English, whom she called "the leader." He was friendly. At one point, when a long needle was inserted into her navel ("a pregnancy test," he told her), she gasped in pain, and by putting his hand over her forehead the leader was able to dull that pain. When she asked him where they were from, he showed her a star map that she later drew under hypnosis.

They were returned to their car and drove home in a funk. Neither remembered what had happened until a few years later when Barney, who had been having nightmares, developed a circular pattern of warts on his belly. Thinking it was stress-related, a psychiatrist suggested that he, and later Betty, go under hypnosis. They did, and the whole story came out.

My View

When I met her, Betty Hill was in her sixties--a short, stout, very friendly woman with a face webbed by agreeable wrinkles. After she relayed (for the thousandth time) the story of her abduction to my sea-blue cassette player, she told me that aliens were visiting Earth on a regular basis. In fact, she claimed to have discovered a "landing spot" in the area around Kingston, NH, and had even photographed UFOs touching down and taking off from that spot. She showed me some of these pictures: bright, colorful lights against a night sky, most taken from far away. She told me that UFOs visited earth frequently, and believed that the aliens in them were preparing for some sort of Great Coming, at which time they would reveal themselves to us all. She did not believe these aliens were hostile toward us.

She did strike me as eccentric. She had a clay bust of an alien, named "Junior," at her side the whole time (pictured above) and seemed to regard it as a living entity, not unlike the cat that slouched about while we talked. She told me that UFOs pass overhead all the time, every night. "There aren't that many planes in existence," she said. "But at all hours of the night you can see the lights of crafts passing overhead. Some of those are UFOs." She autographed a copy of the book about her experience for me. Above her name she wrote: "Kevin, keep your eyes on the skies."

Her story does contain some interesting details. Barney had dentures and reported that the aliens examining him were much taken aback when they discovered that his teeth were removable. Betty saw the hand of one alien and at the time thought that the fingers had been half-amputated because they were so short. To me, these specific yet minor details of her remembered experience were the most fascinating. The most interesting--and persuasive--aspect of her story was the star map she drew under hypnosis. When compared in 1969 with an actual star map of an area in space containing the constellation Zeta Reticuli, Betty's proved not only to be incredibly accurate but included three stars that exist but had yet to be discovered.

Years later, in 1985, famed lawyer F. Lee Bailey hosted a short-lived show called "Lie Detector" on which he administered polygraph tests to individuals with incredible stories. In my apartment in Humboldt, California, I watched Betty Hill take one of these tests and pass it with complete confidence. "According to this polygraph, Betty, you certainly believe that what happened to you is true," Bailey told her. With a self-assured smile she replied, "I know it's true."

A few days after her death the DJ Nighthawk of KJOB, a 50,000 watt radio station in Winnipeg, Manitoba, found this article on my website and contacted me, asking if I'd be a guest on his show. I did, relating the event described above and responding to questions called in by listeners. At one point I was asked if I believed Betty Hill's story. I said then what I tell you now: I don't know. But I do believe that Betty Hill believed it with every fiber of her being.

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More on the Betty and Barney Hill story here.