Abducted in New Hampshire: The Betty & Barney Hill Case That Launched a Thousand UFO's

They were just driving home on a dark deserted highway... until the lights followed them.
In this episode of Inherited Hauntings, we dive into one of the most chilling and iconic UFO encounters in history: the alien abduction of Betty and Barney Hill.

Join us as we explore the strange events of that September night in 1961—when a quiet drive through New Hampshire’s White Mountains turned into a terrifying close encounter of the fourth kind. Missing time. Star maps. Hypnosis. Gray aliens. The Hills’ story has it all—and it became the blueprint for countless alien abduction stories that followed.

We’ll unpack the case from all angles:
 Creepy details straight from their hypnosis sessions
 Psychological theories and skeptics’ takes
 Why this case still haunts UFO researchers today

Whether you're a true believer in extraterrestrials, a skeptic, or just love a good unsolved mystery, this episode will have you looking twice at the night sky.

Transcript

Unknown 0:02

Thank you.

Speaker 00 0:05

Tonight, we're diving into one of the OG paranormal tales, the 1961 alien abduction of Betty and Barney Hill. Newlyweds driving through rural New Hampshire when out of nowhere, a bright light appears in the sky. Then, lost time, nightmares, hypnosis, and yep, aliens. Their story changed everything. It's the blueprint for almost every alien encounter since. Prepared to be abducted, inherited hauntings starts now. I'm Lindsay, and I'm here with my mom, Nancy, as we explore the world of the paranormal. Ghosts, cryptids, hauntings, and all the things that go bump in the night. Whether you're a true believer or just love a good spooky story, you're in the right place. So grab a cup of whatever you like, turn on the lights, and let's get into it. So, mom, who do you think of when I say Betty and Barney?

Speaker 01 1:05

The Flintstones. Betty and Barney Rubble.

Speaker 00 1:09

No. This is a story about a different Betty and Barney. Let me set the scene for you. So it's September 19th, 1961. Betty and Barney Hill are driving back home to Portsmouth, New Hampshire after their honeymoon at Niagara Falls. Sounds lovely. And it's late. Like... 10.30 p.m. late, and the roads are completely dead. They're just outside of Lancaster cruising through the White Mountains, which are gorgeous this time of year. As New Englanders, we know that it's like prime foliage time. And Betty suddenly notices a weird light in the sky. At first, she's like, that's kind of suspicious. But then it starts moving and not just a little. It's zooming across the sky, getting bigger and closer. So naturally, they pull over to check it out. It's still far-ish, but like definitely coming towards them. So they're like, nope, and get back in the car. I mean, could you really blame them?

Speaker 01 2:13

That must have been some light if it was big enough for them to stop the car and get out. I mean, you're driving down the highway at night. And you see a plane in the sky and you watch it or you see a bright star and you watch it, but you don't pull over your car to look at it, right?

Speaker 00 2:27

Yeah. I mean, also, I don't know how much I would enjoy a light in the sky getting bigger and coming towards me.

Speaker 01 2:34

Right.

Speaker 00 2:36

That's probably the bottom of my list of things I'd like to experience. So they get back in the car, but then... Now the light's zigzagging, like actually zigzagging. So obviously it's not normal plane behavior. So Barney is trying to keep it chill. He's like, babe, it's probably just a satellite or something. But Betty is not buying it. And honestly, neither would I. So they pull over again and Betty's got binoculars because everyone had those in their car in the 60s, apparently.

Unknown 3:14

Did you?

Speaker 00 3:15

Did you have binoculars in the car?

Speaker 01 3:18

Well, you know...

Speaker 00 3:19

And a map? You had a map and binoculars? Y

Speaker 01 3:22

You had to have a map. Yeah, if you were going to Niagara Falls, you had to have a map. And maybe you would bring binoculars, you know, so you could see the falls.

Speaker 00 3:29

Could you still go over the falls in a barrel in 1961?

Speaker 01 3:33

People still do. You're not supposed to.

Speaker 00 3:36

Oh, my gosh. I love that. That's a problem.

Speaker 01 3:38

Everybody went to Niagara Falls for their honeymoons back in the 60s. My parents went to Niagara Falls for their honeymoon. Oh, that's so cute. Yeah, it is cute. It was like the little honeymoon capital of the world. And

Speaker 00 3:50

I think they were just... Feeling the love of the falls. Yeah.

Speaker 01 3:56

So they're driving down the road in their 1950 whatever. And what happened? They see the light zigzagging and then what?

Speaker 00 4:04

So now Betty's got her binoculars out, so she needs business. And... Barney's like, okay, fine, and gets out to look. And this is where it gets truly wild. So he sees this flying pancake-looking thing, which is, you know, straight-up classic UFO vibes, with flashing lights and windows. Okay. A pancake with windows in the sky. Is it a bird? Is it a plane? Is it a pancake? I

Speaker 01 4:35

would say that's a spaceship.

Speaker 00 4:37

Yeah. And it is just hovering there. Tilted towards them like it's scoping them out. Like it's giving them the evil eye.

Speaker 01 4:45

Oh, God. That's like the stuff of nightmares.

Speaker 00 4:48

Legit. So Barney looks closer and he sees figures on this object. Like humanoid figures.

Speaker 01 4:58

In the window? Yeah. Real ones. Are they waving at

Speaker 00 5:03

us? Wish you were here. Hey. So Barney finally freaks out and he's like, they're watching us. I can feel it. And a direct quote from him from hypnosis, which we'll talk about a little later, is I could see them looking down at me and I felt like a rabbit being stared at by a pack of wolves.

Speaker 01 5:27

Oh, boy. That's right out of a horror movie. Oh, boy. And this was in 1961. So no cell phones, no internet, no Close Encounters movie to fuel their imagination.

Speaker 00 5:39

No cell phones and no internet sounds terrifying to me. But Close Encounters is not in my repertoire. So I'll just have to trust you on that one.

Speaker 01 5:48

Yeah, we have. Well, you have

Speaker 00 5:49

to check that out. That's Steven Spielberg, right? Yep. Okay, so I do have to watch that.

Speaker 01 5:53

So they're freaked out. There's people waving, not waving, but...

Speaker 00 5:57

The aliens are waving at them. So Barney sees the aliens waving at him and he sprints back to the car yelling, they're going to capture us. Which, what happened to remaining calm, Barney? Oh my God. I would be in full panic mode if my husband was running at the car saying we're going to be captured.

Speaker 01 6:20

Yeah, I'd scream.

Speaker 00 6:22

Yeah. I'd be crying. So they peel out of there, speeding off into the night. You're not even going to believe this. It gets weirder. They hear this bizarre series of like buzzing, beeping noises coming from their trunk. Like the car just got Bluetooth connected to the Twilight Zone. And then, boom. Total silence. Next thing they know, they're suddenly 35 miles down the road with no idea how they got there. Is this a good time to mention that I am terrified by the phenomena of lost time? Like when I found that out, I felt frozen. Yeah,

Speaker 01 7:09

that must be so unsettling. Like you think you're going crazy or something.

Speaker 00 7:14

Yeah. I mean, the only time that I think, you know, the average Joe feels glimpses of it is do you ever like walk up the stairs and then all of a sudden you're at the top of the stairs and you're like, why the hell did I come up here? And, you know, that's just like two seconds that you lose because you're just on autopilot. But people will lose minutes, hours, days of their lives.

Unknown 7:41

Yeah.

Speaker 00 7:42

and have no explanation for it. I had

Speaker 01 7:44

this dream once. It really scared me. I was standing in my living room where I grew up, and it was daytime, and then I was still standing there, and all of a sudden it was nighttime, and I was like, have I been standing here this whole time? It was very scary, you know? Yeah. But it was just a dream, thank God.

Speaker 00 8:01

Okay. So anyways, Betty looks at Barney and is like, so do you believe in UFOs now? And this man... The audacity goes, of course not. Sir, be so for real.

Speaker 01 8:16

Typical guy.

Speaker 00 8:19

So they finally get home just after sunrise. Betty changes out of her clothes and realizes her brand new dress is torn and stained. Like it went through a whole like alien spin cycle. So she's weirded out, but apparently she just chucks it in the closet. Like, nope, not today, Satan. Like,

Speaker 01 8:39

don't know. Don't want to know.

Speaker 00 8:41

So a few days later, they start comparing notes and receipts and realize that their trip took two hours longer than it should have. Like full on, where did the time go energy? And just like that, they're dealing with missing time.

Speaker 01 8:58

If it was me, I might have originally said, whoa, that was such a weird experience. But I might have originally written off the lost time experience to, you know, like we talked about earlier, like if I'm driving to work, All of a sudden, I don't remember the whole drive. I'm just there. I was probably spaced out.

Speaker 00 9:17

It's a great example.

Speaker 01 9:18

So that would be one thing that maybe they chalked it up to. They were tired. They drove through the night.

Speaker 00 9:23

And you know, this wasn't, you know, in the time of Waze and GPS, they mapped it out. It doesn't have an ETA on the map of what time you're supposed to arrive or who knows, maybe it was speeding.

Speaker 01 9:34

We know this area, Lindsay. So let's figure this out. There was somewhere

Speaker 00 9:38

in the White Mountains. Yeah, they were in like Lancaster area in the White Mountains. So I'm thinking like Cankamangus.

Speaker 01 9:45

I think it's up by story time.

Speaker 00 9:48

Storyland.

Speaker 01 9:50

Or Jackson, somewhere around there. I

Speaker 00 9:52

can't wait to have a child simply to go to Storyland.

Speaker 01 9:57

It's obligatory.

Speaker 00 9:58

I have to look it up. Okay, I found it. Lancaster is north of Mount Washington and it's on the Vermont border.

Speaker 01 10:06

Really?

Speaker 00 10:07

So, you know, I'm just going to map it out. I'm going to map it out from Lancaster to

Speaker 01 10:12

Portsmouth.

Speaker 00 10:13

Yeah, to Portsmouth. They didn't have iPhones back then. Okay, so it says, and I don't know their exact location, but it says the drive should have taken two hours and 33 minutes from Lancaster to Portsmouth. So they're claiming that it took four hours and 33 minutes. I don't know how long they were out of the car. Long enough to get your binocs out. Let's talk a little bit about Benny and Barney. So Betty was a white woman. This is important. Well...

Speaker 01 10:45

It's not that important. Why did you even mention

Speaker 00 10:57

it? I swear. It's just because it's an interracial relationship in the 60s. She's not more important because she's white. Okay. Okay. You better cut that out. So, Betty... Betty was a white woman. She's smart. She's college educated. She's slaying. And she's working as a social worker for CPS in New Hampshire.

Speaker 01 11:23

Child Protective Services.

Speaker 00 11:25

Yeah.

Speaker 01 11:26

Okay.

Speaker 00 11:26

And Barney, his IQ was 140, right under a genius. Because a genius is 144. Oh, okay. Wow.

Speaker 01 11:35

So

Speaker 00 11:37

he's in the gifted category.

Speaker 01 11:39

Yeah,

Speaker 00 11:40

I wonder what my IQ is. It's probably not that high. It's probably lower than I'd say

Speaker 01 11:44

yours was very high because you you know a lot and you're smart. And you can read a book in a day. You graduated high school with a college degree.

Speaker 00 11:53

Okay, stop. I'm literally getting all red over here. So Barney's a genius, but because he was black, he was told college wasn't an option for him. Straight Up denied him the chance to go just because of his skin color. So instead, he joined the army right before World War II, where he was injured in service. After that, he worked for the US Postal Service. So basically, you can't get an education because you're black, but feel free to die for your country because that makes so much

Speaker 01 12:23

sense. Back then, yeah, there was a lot of just unfairness going on. Yeah, that sucks. Hopefully it won't be like that in the future. I

Speaker 00 12:31

mean, you know, we're definitely not where we were in the 60s, but it's continuous progress, right?

Speaker 01 12:38

Exactly. There's always going to be some bumholes around. Some

Speaker 00 12:42

bumholes. So they met at Hampton Beach, which, what a romantic destination to be.

Speaker 01 12:51

Hey, that is a hot spot for kids.

Speaker 00 12:55

Okay.

Speaker 01 12:55

Teens.

Speaker 00 12:57

What did you guys listen to in the 60s? Like, here comes the sun. All the best music

Speaker 01 13:03

was in the 60s.

Speaker 00 13:04

Okay, so they're at Hampton Beach. It's like they're falling in love. Summer loving. Okay, so moving on. So they fell in love and became very active in the civil rights movement, Slay. As a biracial couple in the early 60s, they faced a lot of discrimination, but they were deeply respected in their community in Portsmouth for their advocacy and integrity.

Speaker 01 13:28

And they were not the type to seek attention or make up wild stories.

Speaker 00 13:32

You're exactly right. And that matters. They weren't chasing fame or trying to stir things up. They actually kept quiet about what happened at first. It wasn't until Betty started having these intense, disturbing dreams. We're talking like five nights in a row that they even began trying to understand what happened during the time they couldn't account for. Which, you know, to each their own. I feel like if this happened to me, I would not shut up about it. I would be so distraught. I'd be really... If I got home two hours later... Okay, so I see all the things they see. I see the light in the sky zigzagging. I see a pancake and the aliens are waving at me, okay? I see that. I get home two hours late and my brand new dress is ruined. I'm not shutting up about that. It's not going to take some nightmares to make me talk about this again. We're talking about Betty's dreams here. She sees these humanoid beings, like four to five feet tall, bald, grayish skin.

Speaker 01 14:34

Four or five feet tall isn't tall.

Speaker 00 14:37

Like it's four to five feet tall, not like four to five feet. They're tall.

Speaker 01 14:44

Okay.

Speaker 00 14:45

Bald, grayish, grayish skin, huge eyes. Total classic alien look, except for this was before the gray alien stereotype even existed, which, you know, in the community we call the grays. So, yeah. Yeah,

Speaker 01 15:02

so popular now. Never heard of it back then, though, huh?

Speaker 00 15:06

Very creepy and weirdly ahead of its time, right? So Barney wasn't about it. He didn't want to talk about the whole thing publicly, but Betty couldn't let it go. I hear you, girl. I get it. I, like I said, I would not let it go either. So she called her sister and told her everything. Same. She was honestly scared that maybe they'd been exposed to something because the trunk of their car had these strange shiny spots that weren't there before. So remember that like buzzing humming noise?

Speaker 01 15:36

Yeah, I would be too. I'd be like, you know, was I hit with radiation or something?

Speaker 00 15:40

Oh, I wasn't even thinking of that, but that's a great point.

Speaker 01 15:44

Yeah, get the guy your counter.

Speaker 00 15:46

And if your hair starts falling out, your hair and your teeth start falling out, you're in trouble.

Speaker 01 15:51

Yeah.

Speaker 00 15:52

Speaking of which, I just watched a really good movie where somebody's teeth fell out. It had Julia Roberts in it. It's on Netflix. Is

Speaker 01 15:59

it a horror movie?

Speaker 00 16:00

Kinda. I think it was like a thriller sort of deal. Leave the World Behind on Netflix. Great movie. Really enjoyed it. Recommend. Somebody's teeth fall out. Spoiler.

Speaker 01 16:11

Okay.

Speaker 00 16:12

So they reported it to the Pease Air Force Base in Portsmouth, which is that the airport now?

Speaker 01 16:17

Yeah.

Speaker 00 16:18

Okay, which I've been at that airport and it looks like an elementary school. It's like an elementary school with a tarmac in the back.

Speaker 01 16:25

Yeah, I think it's just one airline. That comes in and out like commercially, but that's where the Air Force base is.

Speaker 00 16:32

Oh, gotcha. So they go to the Air Force base and the officer actually took their statement and filed it into this thing called Project Blue Book. Well, I guess it's not a thing. I think it's just called Project Blue Book. And this was the US Air Force's official investigation into UFO sightings. So this is where they kind of gathered their information and collected it.

Speaker 01 16:54

They put all their secrets in and just didn't tell anybody.

Speaker 00 16:57

Yeah. Area 51. Do you remember a few years back? I don't know if you remember, but it was a thing that my generation was like setting up an event to like storm Area 51. And they were like, if you storm Area 51, you're going to federal prison.

Speaker 01 17:15

Yeah, but the thing is, why do they still guard it?

Speaker 00 17:18

Yeah, what are you hiding in there?

Speaker 01 17:19

Exactly. If there's nothing to see, then just open it up.

Speaker 00 17:23

And for the record, the government has already admitted that aliens are real.

Speaker 01 17:28

They've shown us some footage that pilots have of these unknown aerial phenomenons.

Speaker 00 17:35

Are you thinking of the one I'm thinking of? It's like a pill. It looks like a Tic Tac. The Tic Tac. Yeah, the Tic Tac. So and it goes into the ocean, which I I'm going to go off on a tangent here. Sorry, not sorry. We have explored more of space or we know more about space than we do about our own ocean, which makes up what like over 75 percent of our planet. Why? What's in the ocean? Why are all these pill shaped UFOs going into the ocean? They have a secret base under the ocean. I wouldn't blame them. Nobody's looking there.

Speaker 01 18:09

You know, if, yeah, if you can be in space, you can be under the water

Speaker 00 18:13

too. I guess you're safer in the ocean than you are in space because we're looking around there. Katy Perry's flying by.

Speaker 01 18:20

It's a good place to hide in the ocean, I guess.

Speaker 00 18:22

Yeah. So even after reporting it, Betty couldn't move on. The whole thing haunted her and... Rightfully so. So in 1964, three years later. Oh, so this is this is even before the moon landing.

Speaker 01 18:36

Yeah.

Speaker 00 18:37

Because when was the moon landing?

Speaker 01 18:38

69.

Speaker 00 18:39

Summer of 69. It was the summer of 69. All right, pop quiz. Do you think the moon landing was real? Yeah. Okay, moving on.

Speaker 01 18:50

What you don't

Speaker 00 18:51

know? Mom, how are they live streaming from space?

Speaker 01 18:57

I don't know. That's a good question.

Speaker 00 19:01

Netflix can barely handle live streaming their own shows. They were live streaming from the moon in 1969. Anyways, also, why can't we see the flag on the moon?

Speaker 01 19:13

That movie, Fly Me to the Moon, made me wonder.

Speaker 00 19:16

Yeah, somebody actually recommended that to me. Also, so... I know that that movie kind of plays with that idea. And then one of the most recent American horror story seasons double feature, the second part kind of plays with the idea of aliens and if the moon landing was real. So in 1964, three years later, they both agreed to undergo hypnosis. But They're doing it

Speaker 01 19:41

separately.

Speaker 00 19:57

So they find a psychiatrist named Dr. Benjamin Simon. And what came out of those sessions was wild. Their memories lined up in these super specific, chilling ways. So here's what they both described. The craft landed directly in the road, completely blocking them. So this is allegedly... They're lost time that they're accounting.

Speaker 01 20:25

Okay.

Speaker 00 20:26

In the 35 miles that they moved, where they lost, quote unquote, two hours of time. This is what hypnosis is revealing as to what happened.

Speaker 01 20:34

I'm a hypnosis skeptic because I've never actually been hypnotized. Let's see what they what comes out of this.

Speaker 00 20:40

Okay. Like I said, the craft landed directly in the road, completely blocking them. These beings approached and took them on board. So these details are details that lined up between the two of them. Okay. Except for this one. Barney remembered being walked down a ramp and brought into a separate room. Betty recalled one of the beings as... the leader, like take me to your leader, who communicated with her telepathically. She even asked where he was from and he showed her a star map, which she later drew from memory under hypnosis. So she's directly quoted as saying, I asked where they were from and the being showed me a map, like a 3D hologram, which holograms were not even close to being a thing in the 60s.

Unknown 21:35

No.

Speaker 01 21:35

No.

Speaker 00 21:35

The average Joe wouldn't be like, oh yeah, a hologram. They

Speaker 01 21:40

had these pictures. They used to make postcards out of them sometimes or picture books for children and you could touch it and it would look 3D, but it was...

Speaker 00 21:48

Is it like when you kind of move left and right? Yes. Okay. I'm picking up what you're putting down now.

Speaker 01 21:54

Okay. They've had those back in the 60s.

Speaker 00 21:56

Okay. All right. I don't know. I wasn't there. So he shows her the 3D map and he said, if you don't know where you are, there's no point in showing you where we are. Damn. He dropped some knowledge on her. I

Speaker 01 22:14

can believe that they can communicate telepathically, like without words, because I've done it in like a dream, you know?

Speaker 00 22:22

Oh, the brain is a crazy thing.

Speaker 01 22:26

Yeah.

Speaker 00 22:27

Like if we don't use 100% of our brain, why do we have it?

Speaker 01 22:30

I don't know.

Speaker 00 22:31

Now I'm dropping facts.

Speaker 01 22:32

You're the smarty pants.

Speaker 00 22:35

Yeah. So he said, if you don't know where you are, there's no point in showing you where we are.

Speaker 01 22:39

And I love that she just casually asks him, oh, where are you from? Like she's at a cocktail party with the aliens.

Speaker 00 22:51

Instead of being like, where the hell are

Speaker 01 22:53

we? Where are you from, little guy? He

Speaker 00 22:59

just has grayish skin and huge eyes. Where are you from? You from Omaha? So at least she was cool under pressure. Like, I'll give her that.

Speaker 01 23:11

Yeah.

Speaker 00 23:12

Things got dark pretty fast. Betty said that they put her... Okay, this is a little graphic. All right. When I was doing my research, this was a little unsettling to me. So you've been warned.

Speaker 01 23:24

Trigger alert.

Speaker 00 23:25

Trigger warning. Alien, like, probing? I don't know what you'd call it. Like, a medical examination? It

Speaker 01 23:34

sounds like the quintessential alien examination. abduction story.

Speaker 00 23:37

Okay, yeah. Betty said they put her on some kind of exam table and inserted a long needle near her belly button.

Speaker 01 23:45

It

Speaker 00 23:46

was super painful and obviously terrifying. But at the time, she thought it might be like some sort of like pregnancy test.

Speaker 01 23:54

Oh, that doesn't sound like that.

Speaker 00 23:58

I hope I never have one of those.

Speaker 01 24:01

I'm beginning to wonder if with all these stories, if they were like extracting eggs and kind of breeding

Speaker 00 24:07

us. That's an interesting concept. With that in mind, I'm going to take a minute to plug on another podcast called Mile Higher. They talk about this guy, David Huggins, and he's an artist that paints the aliens that abducted him, and I would highly recommend listening to their podcast to get all the information on it, because it's really... So

Speaker 01 24:29

this guy says he's been...

Speaker 00 24:31

Oh, so he not only says, like, if we're going to be real, he not only says he's been abducted, he says that he lost his virginity to an alien named Crescent, and... Then Crescent went on to have like 200 of his children.

Speaker 01 24:49

What did they do with them all?

Speaker 00 24:50

I don't know.

Speaker 01 24:51

Wouldn't that be weird?

Speaker 00 24:52

And he paints them. He paints like he, like there's a painting. You can look them up. David Huggins. He's painting him and Crescent getting it on in the meadow. He's painting Crescent with all of his little alien baby children behind her. They're in love.

Speaker 01 25:06

Is he on drugs or, I mean, is he sane?

Speaker 00 25:09

I guess so.

Speaker 01 25:11

Gosh. It sounds, well.

Speaker 00 25:14

Love makes people crazy. I don't know.

Speaker 01 25:16

See, I don't know. It's weird. I can believe that. aliens exist and that they've you know tried to study us but sometimes the stories get so

Speaker 00 25:26

like they just take a turn involved

Speaker 01 25:29

yeah and i'm like oh i don't know if i can buy all that

Speaker 00 25:32

but

Speaker 01 25:32

i i met a man that was no at your school lindsey what he worked at your school

Speaker 00 25:38

no stop it hold on why do i vaguely think i know who

Speaker 01 25:42

you're i think i've told you this before because when you were in Well, I'm not going to say what his position was at the school. Okay. I'm going to say I was at the school. I was helping out with the school store, selling pencils and things in the cafeteria. And I struck up a conversation with one of the other employees. But somehow we got to the conversation that he said he had been abducted by aliens several times.

Speaker 00 26:07

Shut up.

Speaker 01 26:08

In our hometown.

Speaker 00 26:09

Shut up.

Speaker 01 26:10

Yeah. And that they keep coming for him and he...

Speaker 00 26:12

No.

Speaker 01 26:13

Yeah.

Unknown 26:14

Yeah.

Speaker 01 26:14

And he doesn't like it.

Speaker 00 26:15

Wait, what? I'm getting

Speaker 01 26:16

goosebumps.

Speaker 00 26:17

Okay, but also he doesn't like it. He did not consent to being abducted multiple times. Okay, but I know that this was a long time ago, but how the hell does that come up in conversation? Like, oh, God, I'm dealing with these freaking aliens. Maybe he was like, oh, you're like, how are you? He's like, oh, I'm tired. I got abducted again last night. I'm so sick of this shit.

Speaker 01 26:39

That's how

Speaker 00 26:40

it came up. Every day. And I hate it. They keep coming back. okay so he just offers up the information that he's been abducted in our town many times

Speaker 01 26:51

yes and I was like

Speaker 00 26:53

were you like what the hell

Speaker 01 26:55

yes I was

Speaker 00 26:57

you're in elementary school and you're like what

Speaker 01 27:04

the

Speaker 00 27:05

hell is going on

Speaker 01 27:05

yeah I just I didn't really believe him but I just kind of went along because I just didn't want to upset him or anything

Speaker 00 27:12

that's almost scarier You don't want to piss off the guy that's getting abducted every night. Yeah. Oh my God. That's crazy. So like, were you just like, yeah, okay.

Speaker 01 27:23

Yeah. Exactly.

Speaker 00 27:26

It's so funny how all of these different things have brushed our lives. It is. Or like on the outskirts of our, and you know what? I think one of the like cute, nice things about this being a mother-daughter podcast is I get to like document, I get to like hear and document all of these stories and I can show them to my children. Yeah. Say this was your meme, she was crazy.

Speaker 01 27:55

It's funny because you think people that are into the paranormal, sometimes they have a certain charisma or a certain look, but I'm not like that at all.

Speaker 00 28:06

No.

Speaker 01 28:07

And if I see something in the sky, my mind doesn't go aliens. If I hear a noise, my mind doesn't go ghost right away.

Speaker 00 28:15

Yeah.

Speaker 01 28:16

But I see and hear enough stuff to know that we don't know everything. So I do have an open mind. Okay. Let's go on with the story.

Speaker 00 28:23

Okay. Okay. So we're back on the medical examinations here. So Barney's sessions were just as intense. He remembered a medical exam too and described a cup-like device. It's not funny. A cup-like device being placed over his groin.

Speaker 01 28:43

Okay. I'm getting a visual picture.

Unknown 28:47

Okay.

Speaker 00 28:48

Don't think about it. But I almost pictured when I read that, like when you get x-rays of your teeth at the dentist and they put the like lead apron on you. I'm like, I wonder if they were trying to protect his balls from something. I

Speaker 01 29:03

don't know. The more I hear, the more it sounds like they were trying to breed us.

Speaker 00 29:07

Okay. I don't want to hear you say the word breed ever again. I mean,

Speaker 01 29:10

like, in vitro. Procreate.

Speaker 00 29:14

Procreate. Okay. Breed. He actually was visibly shaken while hypnotized, not acting. He's in distress. And he's saying things like, I don't want to be touched. I don't want to be touched. Oh, it's like a cold rubber. Oh God, they're doing something to me. Oh, oh no. That just gave me an icky feeling. I

Speaker 01 29:36

don't doubt it. And this type of story was just new. It's never, it was unprecedented. There had never been anybody previous to this who had claimed to be abducted and probed by gray aliens. It must have blown everyone's minds.

Speaker 00 29:51

I mean, if you think about it at this point, they're still not really telling people.

Speaker 01 29:55

No.

Speaker 00 29:56

Like right now, it's still the inner circle and like a couple therapists, maybe a doctor. A

Speaker 01 30:01

hypnotist.

Speaker 00 30:02

A hypnotist. PhD in hypnotism. So for years, the Hills kept this whole thing like pretty quiet. They told a few people, but nothing major. Then a reporter named John Luttrell caught wind of it. probably from the hypnotist, and reached out to Barney for an interview. And Barney made it very clear. He did not want the story to be published at all. But Luttrell decided the public had a right to know. And in 1965, the Boston Traveler dropped a whole series of articles. And just like that, it blew up. They weren't chasing attention. In fact, they were horrified by it. But once the story was out, it was out of their hands.

Speaker 01 30:48

And back then there were only like a few news outlets. So once one picked it up, the other two picked it up and everybody knows. It's not like, you know, all the TikTok and YouTube and all the, you know, millions and millions of things on.

Speaker 00 31:00

Yeah.

Unknown 31:01

Yeah.

Speaker 00 31:01

In 1961, that was radical. No one had ever come forward with a story about being abducted by aliens. They literally were the OG.

Speaker 01 31:10

And they had a great story.

Speaker 00 31:12

Eventually, the Hills decided if people are going to talk, they might as well tell their stories themselves. It's kind of like they got outed. Yeah. And if they're hearing all kinds of things that aren't really accurate, they might want to... Set the story straight. Yeah. Straight from the horse's mouth. So they co-wrote a book with this guy, John G. Fuller, called The Interrupted Journey. It came out in 1966. They did a few interviews to promote it, but it was never about fame. It was just about being honest. This is my... Honestly, this is my favorite part of the whole story. Betty later became a full-on... ufo speaker and researcher which is like my dream job apparently she said it was the last thing that she thought about before falling asleep and the first thing she thought about when she woke up like it never left her

Speaker 01 31:59

and it changed her life it made a career she made a career out of it and just devoted her life to the whole thing

Speaker 00 32:07

it reminds me of the intro of ghost adventure i was just watching ghost adventures the other night zach bagans says i never believed in ghosts until i Came face to face with one. And...

Speaker 01 32:19

I'm sure he's told the story many times, but I've never heard it. I would be interested to hear his story.

Speaker 00 32:24

Yeah, you know what? I know that he came face to face with one. He's worked years to build his credibility. We want answers, answers, answers. I know the whole thing. Where were we watching? Oh, we were watching. They actually went back to the Winchester house in San Jose, which we just went a few years ago to do a seance to try to contact Harry Houdini.

Speaker 01 32:46

Wasn't it Mary Winchester that lived at the Winchester house?

Speaker 00 32:49

Yeah, but Harry Houdini's wife would do seances with the Winchester lady in her seance room to contact Harry Houdini. So this is sad. This is sad news. Barney sadly passed away in the summer of 69 from a cerebral hemorrhage. He was only in his 40s.

Speaker 01 33:11

Yeah, that was very shortly after the whole thing. What were they married in 61? So they were only married for eight years

Speaker 00 33:17

before he died? Yeah, so it came into the public in 65. So it went public in 65. He died four years later.

Speaker 01 33:23

Yeah.

Speaker 00 33:24

Yeah, so he passed in 69, but Betty lived until 2004. You were both alive at the same time? We were both alive at the same time. And you want to hear something really sweet? She's buried next to Barney.

Speaker 01 33:36

That's his suite. I guess I was under the impression that they were together for a long time, but he died very short into the marriage.

Speaker 00 33:44

I mean, this happened on their honeymoon,

Speaker 01 33:46

pretty much. Yeah, and she never remarried, I guess,

Speaker 00 33:50

huh? Aww. I mean, I can't confirm, but she's buried with him, so probably not. So after she passed, all of their stuff, the dress... You know, the famous dress, letters, hypnosis tapes, and even the star map she drew were donated to UNH, the University of New Hampshire, which is honestly kind of iconic. Like, can I go see this stuff?

Speaker 01 34:11

I believe you can. No. I did see something. I guess I read on the news or something. It was one of those halls in UNH that you could see the artifacts from.

Speaker 00 34:21

Yeah. Yeah. So thinking back to the star map, a school teacher, an amateur astronomer named Marjorie Fish. I love that name, Marjorie. Said it looks like the Zeta reticuli. I'm not saying that right, but it doesn't matter. It

Speaker 01 34:33

looks like reticuli.

Speaker 00 34:35

Reticuli. A binary star system 39 light years away. Which doesn't sound that far away, but that's really freaking far. And of course, people have tried to debunk their story ever since, saying it was just sleep deprivation or false memories or that they were influenced by pop culture. But let's be real. This happened when alien abductions weren't even a thing. So they were the trope before the trope.

Speaker 01 35:02

Yeah, so you can't really say it was that. But I can imagine people would say, oh, it's just sleep deprivation. They were tired. They were dreaming.

Speaker 00 35:10

Well, they didn't call the police, so there's no

Speaker 01 35:11

record. They dreamt the same dream. That would be weird if you and I had the same dream one night, or me and my husband.

Speaker 00 35:20

That would be actually terrifying. If me and my husband had the same dream, sleeping in the same bed.

Speaker 01 35:25

Yeah.

Speaker 00 35:26

That's even

Speaker 01 35:28

more scary, maybe.

Speaker 00 35:29

I'm putting that on the docket. We're going to do a dream episode because there's a lot to talk about there. So, the Hills case launched the idea of alien abduction into the public consciousness. It was the first major case that included missing time, medical exams... telepathic communication, and gray type beings. And now it's basically the template for every alien abduction tale that comes along.

Speaker 01 35:54

That is weird. And I know that there's hundreds or thousands of similar tales. It's like they wrote the alien playbook.

Speaker 00 36:02

I'm going to hit you with some facts now. According to 2022 Gallup poll, 41% of Americans believe in extraterrestrials.

Speaker 01 36:12

That

Speaker 00 36:12

seems a little low.

Speaker 01 36:13

It does seem low.

Speaker 00 36:14

Like less than 50-50?

Speaker 01 36:16

Well, you know what? 41% of Americans admit. Oh,

Speaker 00 36:21

I like that. On a

Speaker 01 36:22

Gallup poll. Yeah,

Speaker 00 36:23

we're going to rephrase it. Since the Hills story, there have been over 100,000 reported alien encounters in the U.S. alone.

Speaker 01 36:32

Okay, over 100,000 in the U.S. I'm assuming those are just sightings and not...

Speaker 00 36:37

Well, it doesn't say abductions.

Speaker 01 36:40

Yeah. Encounters.

Speaker 00 36:41

Encounters. So phone calls, texts.

Speaker 01 36:45

The Project Blue Book must be pretty thick by now.

Speaker 00 36:48

Yeah. Well, they probably have many a portfolio now. There must be like Project Area 51, Project Skinwalker Ranch, Project Bridgewater Triangle.

Speaker 01 36:59

And this is why they're finally starting to let some information go. It's like, we have so much in our book, we can afford to let a few things out.

Speaker 00 37:07

Yeah, they don't have to hold the cards close to their chest anymore. And I think the thing that freaks me out the most is pretty much all of these um encounters describe very similar experiences with which are on par with the hills story you know that's eerie like to this day i've heard of a lot of the encounters the flying object is disc shaped yep it has windows gray aliens large eyes yep testing medical exams we're left with a Were the Hills really abducted? Were their memories shaped by suggestion? Or was something truly extraordinary buried in that missing time? What we know is two ordinary people had an extraordinary experience that changed how we talked about aliens forever.

Speaker 01 37:59

My opinion, there are only two options. Okay. Either the story is a memory shaped by suggestion, or it's 100% true.

Unknown 38:09

Okay.

Speaker 01 38:09

And whether you believe it or not, their story still gives us goosebumps. It's

Speaker 00 38:14

so true. All right. Well, that's a wrap for today's episode, Earthlings. As always, thank you so much for listening. If you're into paranormal, unexplained and weird stories like this one, do us a favor, hit the follow button and get alerts when we drop new episodes every Thursday. And while you're at it, drop us a rating and review on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. I really don't care what your review says it can be nice it can be what you had for breakfast as long as it's five stars thank you so much um and we're now on instagram and you can find us at inherited hauntings

Speaker 01 38:54

we will see you again next week until then keep your eyes on the skies and your doors locked at night

Speaker 00 39:02

and remember the scariest stories are the ones that are true