The date is September 19, 1961.
Betty and Barney Hill a middle age New Hampshire couple
drive home from
Their short vacation in Canada.
They drove along U.S. route 3 in Central
New Hampshire. It is a dark night and the Moon and Stars
illuminate the wooded landscape. The Hills' witness a star
moving in an irregular pattern. Filled with curiosity
the Hills' stop their car for a closer look. As they watch
the object, it begins to move closer and closer to them.
They now can make out its disk like shape. Barney Hill turns
back to his car to retrieve a pair of binoculars and then
steps into a field for a closer look. When he looks at
the object, he can see that there are windows on it, and
through the windows he can see "humanoid" creatures that are
looking directly at him. In horror Barney and Betty dash to
their car, set it in first gear, and roar off.
For an unapparent reason he drives down a side road where
five of the humanoids are standing. Oddly unable to resist,
the humanoids easily take Betty and Barney aboard their ship.
Aboard it they are physically examined and a humanoid
communicates with Betty. After the examination Betty asks the
humanoid where he is from and he shows her a three dimensional map.
He then asks Betty where she is from; lacking in astronomical
knowledge Betty cannot answer. The subject is dropped. The Hills'
are then returned safely to their car and told they will forget the
abduction portion of the confrontation. The Hills' continue their
drive home oblivious to the previous encounter. Betty and Barney
are filled with anxiety and dreams about the missing two hours of
their trip that they cannot recall. Distressed they consult a
psychiatrist friend and He tells them that their memory would
return within a few months, but it never is. Two years later they
are still bothered by the missing two hours so Benjamin Simon, a
Boston psychiatrist is recommended. After months of weekly hypnosis
sessions, the events of September 19, 1961. are brought to the
surface.
Figure 2: Betty and Barney Hill
Is this bizarre story credible? How do we know that it is not just another hoax made up by some lunatic in the United States? Benjamin Simon believed that it could not have been a made up hoax, and that something had to have happened to the Hills' that would connect with their subconscious re-telling of the events of September 19, 1961. There are many alleged "I was abducted by extra-terrestrials" stories out there but what makes the Hill's story unique is the fact that they remembered nothing of the incident. Why would Betty who had a master's degree in social work and was a supervisor in New Hampshire Welfare Dept., and Barney who was on the governor of New Hampshire's Civil Rights Commission, make up such a hoax when other people that had been associated with similarly unusual publicity had been fired from their jobs? On top of it all Betty and Barney were a mixed couple who had had a lot of persecution for marrying each other. This UFO "non-sense" would have just added to their persecution. What did they have to gain?
Figure 3: The Betty Hill Star Map
|
In 1969 Ms. Marjorie Fish, an Ohio schoolteacher, amateur astronomer and member of Mensa, became involved in the Hill story. She wondered if the objects shown on the map that Betty Hill allegedly observed inside the vehicle might represent some actual pattern of celestial objects. She decided to meet with Betty in August to discuss the star map (Barney Hill died early 1969). On August 4 1969 they met. Betty told Marjorie that she had drawn the star map she was shown by the humanoids in 1964 under post-hypnotic suggestion. She was only to draw the map if she could remember it accurately, and she was not to pay attention to what she was drawing. Betty even made two erasures showing her conscious mind took control part of the time. This tends to be a very accurate way of getting repressed or forgotten material out of a patient under hypnosis. Fig. 3 above shows the Betty Hill star map she had drawn from what she had seen in the humanoid's ship. The names of the stars were not on the map Betty Hill observed. Even if they were, they would have had alien names instead of ours so even the most talented astronomer would have had trouble deciphering it. Marjorie Fish spent the next two years trying to figure out if the stars on Betty's map matched real stars in the night sky. She realized it would have started from the alien's home star and not the sun, which added another challenge to the search. She had to locate stars in the night sky that follow the same pattern as the drawn Hill map, and had to find the stars from a different perspective. When she finished she realized that the Hill map remarkably matched hers even though the Hill map was drawn. Now the stars on the Hill map could be labeled accordingly. Fig. 4 shows a comparison between the Hill, Fish and Computer generated map. |
Fig. 4: Comparison Between maps |
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