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Yelling hysterically, he ran back to the car and barreled down the road as Betty tracked the craft, craning her head outside the car window. He had a startling thought: We’re about to be captured. A voice told him not to put down his binoculars. He tried to lift his hand to his pistol but somehow couldn’t. “This can’t be real.”Īn illustration of Betty and Barney Hill's 1961 alien abductionīehind rows of windows, gray uniformed beings seemed to look right at him, Barney recalled. “My God, what is this thing?” he recalled thinking. What he saw was as big as a jet but as round and flat as a pancake. He shoved a handgun he’d hidden beneath the seat into his pocket and rushed into a dark field, leaving Betty in the car. Barney abruptly stopped the car, keeping the engine running. What was this light and why was it toying with them?Ībout 70 miles past the diner, the object hovered just above the treetops, approximately 100 feet above them. He didn’t want to spook Betty, but he was becoming concerned. The night was too quiet for a helicopter, a commercial plane or even military jet with a hotshot pilot. Barney was also a pragmatic man who wouldn’t give flying saucers a second thought, remembered his niece Kathleen Marden in her work, Captured: The Betty and Barney Hill Experience. Barney had an IQ of 140, noted Fuller in his book. “Barney,” she told her husband, “if you think that’s a satellite or a star, you’re being completely ridiculous.” Betty and Barney Hills' Close Encounter Through binoculars, Betty saw that the white light was really an object spinning in the air. The couple pulled over at road stops and picnic turnouts to get a closer look. Maybe the car’s movement made it seem like the light, too, was moving.Ĭuriosity overcame them. Sometimes it seemed to move toward them in a game of cat-and-mouse. The light zigged and zagged, ducking past the moon and behind trees and mountain ridges, only to reappear moments later. The light seemed to move with the car as Barney steered down the curving mountain road. Barney, an avid plane watcher and World War II vet, was sure they had nothing to worry about. At first it looked like a falling star, but grew larger and brighter with each mile. at the latest.Īs they drove, strange light in the sky gave another reason to hurry. They left the diner around 10 p.m., estimating they could reach their red-framed house in Portsmouth, New Hampshire between 2 a.m. Barney figured if they pushed through, they could beat the wind and rains from an approaching hurricane. On the last night of their three-day trip, the tired couple sipped coffee in a Vermont diner to recharge before driving back.
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They got in their car with less than $70 in their pockets. They left so impulsively they had no time to go to the bank before it closed for the weekend.
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After 16 months of marriage, Betty and Barney saw this trip through Montreal and Niagara Falls as their delayed honeymoon.
BETTY AND BARNEY HILL 1961 ALIEN ABDUCTION FREE
The little free time this biracial couple had was devoted to their church and activities related to the civil-rights movement. Betty’s job handling state child-welfare cases was no easier. Barney worked a grueling night shift at the post office, driving 60 miles each way. The Hills’ road trip was spontaneous, a well-earned break Barney decided the couple needed, as explained in The Interrupted Journey, a 1966 book they collaborated on with author John G. The Hills Saw Strange Lights Pursuing Their Car Debate continues as to whether the husband and wife were liars, fantasists, crackpots or simply sleep-deprived people who later recovered seriously scrambled memories. The incident would also become the first-ever widely publicized alien-abduction account and shape how stories like it were told-and understood-from then on. Their experience would kick off an Air Force inquiry, part of the secretive initiative Project Blue Book that investigated UFO sightings across the country. Once inside, the beings examined the couple and erased their memories. With the help of a psychiatrist, the quiet couple eventually revealed a startling story: Gray beings with large eyes had walked them into a metallic disc as wide, Betty said, as her house was long.
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