MYSTERY
Betty and Barney Hill: The First Alien Abduction
On the night of 19 September 1961, Betty and Barney Hill were driving home to Portsmouth, New Hampshire, from a vacation, taking the winding roads through the White Mountains late at night, when they noticed a bright light in the sky that seemed to be following their car. As it drew closer, Barney stopped and looked at it through binoculars, and reported seeing a structured craft with figures visible inside; frightened, the couple drove on. When they reached home, they found that the journey had taken about two hours longer than it should have — two hours they could not account for. In the days that followed, Betty was troubled by vivid nightmares of being taken aboard a craft and examined by strange beings, and Barney developed acute anxiety. Two years later, seeking relief, the Hills underwent hypnosis with a psychiatrist, and under hypnosis both recounted, separately, a detailed story of abduction: of being taken aboard the object by small humanoid beings, subjected to a medical examination, and, in Betty's case, shown a 'star map' of the visitors' travels among the stars. Their account, made public and then widely published, became the first famous case of alien abduction — and it established the entire template that countless later abduction stories would follow: the light on a lonely road, the missing time, the medical examination, the grey humanoid beings, and the memories recovered under hypnosis. The Hills were, by all accounts, sincere. What their sincere experience actually was — a genuine encounter, or something the mind constructs — is the real question. This is the story of Betty and Barney Hill.
