So Bizarre

The Betty and Barney Hill Alien Abduction

Bianca Bafitis and Nicole Mercedes Season 1 Episode 3

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0:00 | 37:02

Don’t you hate it when you go on your honeymoon and get abducted by aliens? This story explores what the Hills recounted on the night of September 19, 1961, and how a missing two-hour window proved to be truly bizarre.

SPEAKER_02

This is So Bizarre, a podcast where we find the weirdest stories from history and share them with you. Hosted by Bianca Bafitis and Nicole Mercedes.

SPEAKER_00

Before we get started, I thought it'd be kind of fun if, you know, you told us an anecdote that was weird or bizarre. Do you have anything you're sitting on?

SPEAKER_02

I actually do. I don't know if I'm sitting on it, but I definitely have something. It's not a story per se, it's just something really gross that happened. So two weeks ago, it was like the first warm day in New York. So I'm sitting in my yard, and as we know in New York, yards are mine is completely fenced in from all of the like my apartment and then blocked in by other apartments. And I'm sitting in the yard and I walk around to go pick up my dog's poop. And um I just look and I see two chicken legs. Chicken feet, sorry, just two chicken feet.

SPEAKER_00

Oh no.

SPEAKER_02

No bones, nothing, just two chicken feet. And then I look and one of them has like one of those tags.

SPEAKER_00

Oh no.

SPEAKER_02

Because at the beginning I thought it was like a pigeon or something. And then I was like, oh maybe it's not a pigeon, maybe it's somebody's like maybe it's a uh one of those roof pigeons. Like in uh like in what? What's that movie? Waterfront? Waterfront, waterfront, waterfront. Oh, on the waterfront. Didn't he have a bunch of roof pigeons?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I think so. Mike Tyson has roof pigeons, I think.

SPEAKER_02

Where? Does he live in the page?

SPEAKER_00

You're asking too many questions.

SPEAKER_02

I want to know. Um, anyways, but then I think my conclusion now. What do you think? What do you think?

SPEAKER_00

Oh god, okay. If I found chicken feet in my yard.

SPEAKER_02

They were very weirdly placed, like together, like think chicken walking.

SPEAKER_00

I would think that I have an admirer. I would think my upstairs neighbor is in love with me, doesn't know how to show it, is getting chicken feet and just chucking them down.

SPEAKER_02

But it wasn't chucked, it was so neatly placed together, like one out of the house.

SPEAKER_00

That's how you know real love. It's like the care, it's the detail.

SPEAKER_02

Came down the fire skin. Yeah. Hmm. Interesting.

SPEAKER_00

Have I just Are you rethinking this whole thing now?

SPEAKER_02

No, I think that would be beautiful. I'll tell you what I think though. I think, even though I've been here for eight years, I have spotted one raccoon the entire time. I'm pretty sure a raccoon stole a chicken from somebody's chicken coop or one of those places that stills chickens and occasional goats. Don't ask me how I know that. And brought it into my yard, ate it, left.

SPEAKER_00

Okay, the this is the thing though, you forget about raccoons that they are kind of creepy. Creepy, chaotic, and like stealthy. But what I'm also gathering from the story is a raccoon had a chicken and looked at your yard and said, There. That's where I wanted to.

SPEAKER_02

Maybe the raccoon is the admirer.

SPEAKER_00

The raccoon is the admirer, but also the raccoon is like the one picking up on like, wow, this yard, there's a lot of dog poop here, but also the energy. The energy is correct.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. I clean up her dog poop.

SPEAKER_00

Did you come up with a name?

SPEAKER_02

I left the feet there to see if anyone would come and pick it up. No one's come and pick it up yet. I'm fucking leaving them there until someone comes and I want to see if the raccoon comes back.

SPEAKER_00

Okay. You've become the baddie.

SPEAKER_02

We are me and the raccoon are in the colleagues come back. We're in a relationship. No. Fine, it was me. And that is my gross little uh weird anecdote. We'll never know what will happen there. Just that I will not be removing those chicken feet uh to make a point. Wow. To whomever.

SPEAKER_00

To whomever. Thank you for trusting us with the uh now we all live in the knowledge that you have chicken feet in in your yard.

SPEAKER_02

And don't clean up my dog's poop enough.

SPEAKER_00

Well, that's a great way to start off this story. Great, great, great. Because I'm going to tell you a story. You have no idea what I'm gonna say. I think this week it's gonna be a little spooky, which I know you don't like.

SPEAKER_02

I like spooky. I just don't like scary or dark places or basements or but I that's visually. I don't like them visually.

SPEAKER_00

Okay. Well then orally we'll be fine. Give it to me orally So I'm gonna tell you about the worst road trip ever. Question mark.

SPEAKER_02

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_00

And it is all about the UFO abduction of Betty and Barney Hill.

SPEAKER_02

Betty and Barney Hill. I love couples with well, actually, not to assume they're a couple, but I do love couples with the same first letter.

SPEAKER_00

Oh, they're a couple and syllables. They are a couple.

SPEAKER_02

So I like a UFO, just FYI. They're not spooky to me.

SPEAKER_00

You know what's funny is I used to be terrified of UFOs. Like I remember being a kid. Yeah. I remember being a kid, and like every time the X-files came on, like the music would even make me freak out. Like that's I think that's why I lean into it so heavily now. Because of all the damage.

SPEAKER_02

I don't mind. I think they're well, you know, it is what it is. As opposed to just straight up other humans coming in. That's what I was scared of. People coming in at night and kidnapping me.

SPEAKER_00

I love that that's your take on aliens. It is what it is. It is what it is. So, Betty and Barney Hill incident is the first ever widely publicized alien abduction account, and it has shaped how we think about alien abductions in general. So, you gotta understand this happened in 1961. So before 1961, all sort of alien references tended to be very friendly. It was very like, we come in peace, this like magical thing. And with Betty and Barney Hill, that was the first time in the wide public that people were interpreting an alien abduction story that wasn't as cutesy.

SPEAKER_02

So there are alien abduction stories from before this that are cutesy.

SPEAKER_00

Yes. Okay. Like. I believe you. Yeah. He came down and he told me, chin up. Your life doesn't matter. Is that juices or is that aliens?

SPEAKER_02

Humans are so stupid, you don't even matter, kids. Don't matter, kid. Don't matter. Eat that extra scoop of ice cream. Oh my god. It don't matter.

SPEAKER_00

Have that coffee full fat. You deserve it. Okay. So it all starts with a bad road trip. September 19th, 1961. We're in New Hampshire. Betty and Barney Hill are from New Hampshire and driving home from a last-minute vacation in Canada, spending time in Montreal, Niagara Falls, etc. Though it was a last-minute trip, it was considered a late honeymoon. So Barney is 39 years old. Betty is 41, I believe. Betty is a social worker, a civil rights advocate, and Barney is a World War II vet and a civil rights activist. And he works for the United States Postal Service.

SPEAKER_02

Oh. That is a that's a tweet job.

SPEAKER_00

It's so tweet. It's so tweet. He also has a reported IQ of 140, so hey smart.

SPEAKER_02

I'm gonna be honest, I don't know the IQ numbers. Like I know that objectively, if a number is just objectively a low number, but what is a high IQ? Do you know?

SPEAKER_00

I don't understand. So the next question. Um you know what I was actually gonna look that up, but I was like, Nicole won't ask me that, and then you did, and then uh I think it's we have a low IQ? You know what? I think we just we're on the lower end. Shit. Um, so both are active in their local NAACP. So Betty is a white woman and Barney is a black man. They are a biracial couple. And the reason why I'm saying this is not only because we're in 1961 US, tensions are high, but it does come into play later when discussing the veracity of their abduction account. So, I'm also saying all of this because I want to establish that Betty and Barney Hill are very, very credible witnesses to their own abduction. Well, I mean, they're the only ones who went through the abduction. So when they're going around telling people, it's not like crazy Tommy on the street screaming with his pants off. It's like we have a World War II vet who's super smart.

SPEAKER_02

He's screaming with his pants off. This feels like a personal friend. Was it you?

SPEAKER_00

Are you talking? Moving on! Okay. They're driving back from Canada. They're in New Hampshire, and they're driving through the night to make it home to Portsmouth, where they live by 2 a.m. Just around 10 p.m. outside of Lancaster, they spot a strange light in the sky. So Betty saw what she called a falling star, but the star paused in the sky and she says it looked like a fly looking for a landing site. Barney wasn't having it, and he thought it was a plane or a military plane, uh a satellite, something like this. They're arguing a little bit at this point as Betty wants to stop and is sort of fascinated Barney wants to keep going. They decide to stop at a picnic area and walk their dog. The couple had binoculars, and Betty used this the binoculars to take a closer look at the aircraft.

SPEAKER_02

Oh, they had binoculars.

SPEAKER_00

I did it's actually really cute. The binoculars are such a big part of the story, and every time I was reading them, I was like, God, they sound like such a fucking sweet little couple. But yeah, moving on, she takes out her binoculars and she's just looking at it and she sees it rotating, right? And it's got multicolor lights, and then it starts to head towards them. Ooh, cute sound effect.

SPEAKER_02

I wouldn't like that.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

If I was there.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. It's it's it's stressful. It's also late, and it's New Hampshire.

SPEAKER_02

I mean, I wouldn't be out late in New Hampshire, certainly not after seeing anything in the sky.

SPEAKER_00

So they see they're kind of just watching this craft move erratically, bounce back and forth, and start coming their way. So they get back into their car and start continuing back home. They're going a little bit slowly through the Franconia notch, and they can observe that the craft looks to be about 60 feet to 80 feet wide. Suddenly, it starts to descend on them, and it kind of blocks them off, forcing Barney to stop the car. Barney gets out of the car with a gun. He keeps hidden and his binoculars in hand. As Barney is sort of making his way to the craft, he pulls up his binoculars, and he claims to have seen eight to eleven human-like figures peering out of the windows of this craft, moving with the precision of, and I'm quoting this, German officers.

SPEAKER_02

Tell me you were in World War II.

SPEAKER_00

It's very World War II. That this is okay, we'll we'll revisit. There's a lot, I'm just gonna go ahead and give you a little spoiler. There's a lot of European World War II influences here. From Barney. From Barney and from Betty, and it kind of gives people who debunk this a little bit of ammo, but we'll go through it. Right, so he sees them in glossy black uniforms, black caps, and they're all looking at him. One figure is looking at Barney and is conveying a message to him saying, stay where you are and keep looking. Barney is fucking terrified, runs back to the car and starts speeding away. But it's not long before they feel an immense vibration throughout the entire car. Then they start hearing beeping and buzzing noises and immediately fall into an altered state of consciousness. The next thing they know is they've woken up in the car 35 miles south, and they've lost two hours. They finally get home at about dawn, and immediately things are fucking weird with them. They have these odd impulses. Betty, for whatever reason, insists that their luggage that they traveled with be kept by the back door with some sort of fear of radiation. She can't explain why she has this impulse. Also, their watches stopped working. Barney said that the leather strap for his binoculars were also torn, but he cannot remember how it happened. Also, and this for some reason is the scariest detail to me, he was wearing his best dress shoes. Because they're on their little honeymoon. And the tops of his shoes were completely scraped up as if he had been dragged.

SPEAKER_02

Who first of all, who dragged someone that way, face down?

SPEAKER_00

Little aliens with little questions. Going back to their car, they could see shiny concentric circles on the trunk that had not been there before. And when they both experimented with a compass, they could see that moving the compass closer to the circles would make the needle move around erratically. But when they moved it a few inches away, it would regulate. Barney felt compelled to examine his groin area, which was fine at the time, but it would develop concentric wart slash growth circles for the next two years.

SPEAKER_02

Wait.

SPEAKER_00

What?

SPEAKER_02

What? He felt compelled.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. Well, like I said, they got back home and they didn't, they kind of had these odd behaviors and they didn't know why. So he felt compelled to look at his groin. He was like something up. And then it was fine in the moment, but it seemed like for the next two years he would develop concentric circles of warts that had to be surgically removed.

SPEAKER_02

That's a huge bummer.

SPEAKER_00

Okay, I have another fact that's really kind of creepy. So Betty had a dress on at the time, and it was one of her favorite dresses. And when she examined her dress, she found a two-inch tear at the top of the zipper, lining torn from the waist of the hemline, the hem was torn all the way on one side, and strange pink powder, which seemed to degrade the fabric over time. This powder was sent to five different labs who could not recognize it. Pink powder? Yeah. You got an idea? No.

SPEAKER_02

You look like sounds like they went to a really weird sex party.

SPEAKER_00

I know. Maybe. Dude, don't judge. I'm not at all. Yeah, I think honeymoons, it's fine. Ten days after this supposed encounter, Betty, and mind you, they don't remember anything. This is so far what he kind of saw, and he at this point, all we know is that they were driving and they saw this thing, and then they woke up and they lost time. So 10 days after the alleged alleged UFO encounter, Betty begins to have extremely vivid dreams. The same five dreams over and over. It would be dreams of men who are about five foot to five foot four in matching uniforms, nearly human, black hair, dark eyes, prominent noses, and bluish lips. Their skin was of gray color. This is also really, really important because this is the first mention of Grays in a UFO abduction account. So she's kind of like freaking out with having these like continuous dreams. And Barney is like, leave it alone. Let's just forget anything happened. But Betty is like, no, this feels odd. And she starts telling her sister and she starts telling folks and all this stuff. So what happened to Betty and Barney Hill that night? Part of what makes this case so fascinating is they both underwent hypnosis and they were able to recall vivid details from their missing two hours. So, like I said, this abduction happened in 1961. In 1962, after reporting it to the Air Force after talking to family and friends and even their church, they get in touch with Dr. Benjamin Simon, a distinguished Boston psychiatrist and neurologist, to try and figure out what happened that evening and if they can retrieve their memories by going under hypnosis. Dr. Simon agrees to do this. And under this hypnosis, Barney starts recollecting certain alarming details. Barney reports that the binocular strap actually broke when he ran away from the UFO back to his car.

SPEAKER_02

Wait, he remembers this?

SPEAKER_00

Under hypnosis, yeah.

SPEAKER_02

It's coming back. Putting a war veteran under hypnosis. I love the 60s.

SPEAKER_00

They were just like, woo!

SPEAKER_02

Dangerous territory.

SPEAKER_00

Let's just throw some MK Ultra at him and see what happens. Fuck it. So he also says that when he was looking at the aliens, the beings were staring in his eyes with terrifying, mesmerizing effects. Barney, under hypnosis, said, Oh, those eyes, they're there in my brain. I was told to close my eyes because I saw two eyes coming close to mine, and I felt like the eyes had pushed into my eyes. All I see are these eyes. I'm not even afraid that they're connected to a body. They're just there. They're just up close to me, pressing against my eyes. So those those comments are taken from a couple different sessions, but they're all about the same experience. And now I'm going to play you a part of the clip. I'm gonna warn you, it's very intense. So you're gonna hear Barney's voice, and you're gonna hear Dr. Simon. Bear in mind the quality is not great because it's that's Barney's voice. So it's a lot. And and the reason why I also wanted you to listen to that is because I think it's really important to understand, um, especially with UFO abduction stories, it's people are really quick to call out a grift or whatever. And you can I think it's fair to say here the sincerity and the fear and horror in his voice.

SPEAKER_02

What what what do you think about hypnosis, generally speaking?

SPEAKER_00

I think that it's such a gray area, and I think that there's a lot of controversy with like planted memories and things like that. And and to be fair, I think that's why their you know account of this is so difficult to completely believe because hypnosis is not a perfect science.

SPEAKER_02

It's not, but also even if I were to believe that it is, this is still a war veteran that has seen horrific things, probably spent so much time repressing all of that, and then to put him under this session, like there's no way it's not unearthing all of his war trauma, but I don't know.

SPEAKER_00

I think you're right, and I think that that's it's that's such a fair comment to make because Bernie is also describing them like having movements of German precision. It's I think very, very easy to connect those dots that the trauma is ongoing. So once they are in an altered state of conscious, this is when they go to the ship. They go on board the ship, and they're recounting this. They have hours of recorded sessions with Dr. Simon. But they go into the ship. This is when we assume that Barney has she scuffed. And they were separated and taking turns in an examination room. The examination room apparently had curved walls and a large light from the ceiling. Oh, this is so creepy. Exactly, exactly, and I want to go ahead and re-emphasize that this is the first time we think of now like alien abductions of probing and getting on a table and some nefarious like shit. This is the first time that there was a widely publicized account that had these elements in it.

SPEAKER_02

So then everyone took this story and everyone said me too. They're like, yeah, same, same but scarier. I hope they're getting Hollywood residuals. Oh, sweet.

SPEAKER_00

So the exam was apparently performed in English, though it was broken English, with, and again, this is maybe the World War II.

SPEAKER_02

A German accent.

SPEAKER_00

A vague European accent. And also in mumbling language. Okay. So during the examination, uh the human-like beings, and it's very interesting that we say human-like because apparently to Betty and Barney, it's almost like they were trying to appear human and it was a little off. So the human-like beings removed Betty and Barney's clothes, took their hair, took some nail clippings, scraped their skin. There's a lot of needles involved. They probe their heads, arms, legs. Um, they put a needle in Betty's stomach through her navel for a pregnancy test.

SPEAKER_02

Pregnancy test.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

I feel like their IQ is lower than mine.

SPEAKER_00

I think their IQ might be lower than Bernie.

SPEAKER_02

Definitely. They're just like pass me all the needles.

SPEAKER_00

It's not the it's not the A-team that's going out and doing most words. It's definitely not. It's definitely not. They saved the bench warmers.

unknown

Right.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. They're like, they're just humans. It's fine, just sound.

SPEAKER_00

They're joy riding.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Um. They put a needle in Betty's navel, but as she felt a huge amount of pain, and apparently the leader just waved a hand over her face, and the pain went away. They also placed a cup over Barney's genitalia. They're such freaks. I love fucking freaks to collect semen.

SPEAKER_02

Well, let's not get into the He didn't come.

SPEAKER_00

He said he didn't orgasm. He did.

SPEAKER_02

It's true. But they collected covering his ass. I bet he did. Yeah. A woman with broken English.

SPEAKER_00

You wanted you wanted a honeymoon? We're gonna have a honeymoon.

SPEAKER_02

Wasn't too off about the sex party though, was I?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. So there was some levity. The aliens appear to be just curious at the difference between them and humans, and they got a kick out of Barney being able to remove his teeth, his dentures. So a big thing that happens at this moment is Betty is shown a star map. So the aliens show Betty where they are in the galaxy with a star map that Betty is actually able to redraw later. She drew it out and it didn't match anything. But about eight years later, with stronger, more powerful telescopes, some astronomers concluded that it matched a star system detected called Zeta Reticule. I think I yeah. I'm sorry, I said that like I was saying ratatouille.

SPEAKER_02

Well, no one else knows how to say that everyone's gonna be. You know what? It might as well be that I think it's actually Zeta one person knows how to pronounce it.

SPEAKER_00

It's Zeta Reticuli. I'm not remembering, but I think Zeta Reticuli sounds love it. Kind of cool. So either or so Carl Sagan later on, uh, he himself debunked this and said that regardless if it matched this other star map, it was random. But other established statisticians like David Saunders said actually the randomness would be extremely unlikely. You can kind of choose which side to sit on there, but the star map is a very big part of this whole abduction. Also, apparently, Betty was given a book by the aliens who were like, You want a book? She was like, Yeah, I'll take a book. Where's the book? And then they took it back the last minute. It's like fucking aliens, man. Sorry, you don't understand the language. It's useless. You can't take back a gift. You've just stuck a needle in my navel, and you're gonna so stingy. A fucking book?

SPEAKER_02

Very stingy.

SPEAKER_00

But you know that's why we're not working with like the A-Team. It's like they probably were like, Josh, did you just try to give away the manual? My grandma gave that to me. Not even. He was like, we're not supposed to give them anything, Josh. And he was like, my bad. Okay. God, what are you gonna tell on me now? Fuck. You said this would be fun. So, let's examine the aftermath of everything, right? The case has gained national attention. Newspapers, books. There's even a movie starring James Earl Jones. And it has also shaped our narrative around alien abductions. While the Hills weren't the first to spot a UFO or report an abduction, this is the introduction of gray-skinned aliens, large heads, black eyes, lost periods of times, and forced medical examinations.

unknown

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

But what happened to the when did the green skin come into play?

SPEAKER_00

Oh, I'm a strictly gray-skinned girly. Green skins are friendly theirs. I have no idea.

SPEAKER_02

With German accents, of course.

SPEAKER_00

I told you, I was so scared of aliens. I've gotta be really careful how in depth I go because I will actually scare myself. But Nicole, did it really happen? What do you think?

SPEAKER_02

As I said before, it is what it is. I think that if it happened in Barney and Betty's head, then it happened in a sense.

SPEAKER_00

Okay, well that's actually really interesting. Theories have ranged from sleep paralysis, government conspiracy, and even psychosis from stress of being in an interracial relationship. Interesting. Dr. Simon, the one who's leading these hypnosis sessions, believe that the couple certainly were convinced of what happened to them, that it literally happened, but that it was most likely fictitious, inspired by Betty's dreams and Barney's subconscious, i.e. World War II drama. And Barney had also watched an episode of The Outer Limits two weeks before his first notes of session. And it had a similar-looking alien. The Air Force from Jump was notified of everything, and this was even part of their super secretive Project Blue Book, which was a government branch that investigated UFO sightings across the nation. The Air Force officially said that it could be explained by natural causes, and they blamed it on Jupiter.

SPEAKER_02

They said some weird some weird thing to blame.

SPEAKER_00

Bernie is like a level above, and like everyone else is like, I don't know. Did you think maybe it was like Jupiter?

SPEAKER_02

Well, the Air Force is historically incapable of taking any kind of accountability for anything. Everyone can just say the word drone, and then it's, you know.

SPEAKER_00

Well, I'm super happy that you said that because there's one thing that is irrefutable. That evening, while the Hills were going through their experience, there was a blip on the weather radar. And you gotta remember, 1961. It's not like there's drones and planes or whatever in the sky. It's quiet. But the other side of that, Betty's sister had a history of observing aliens, of reporting UFO sightings. As a hobby? She just saw things and she was like, it's an island. Sad news. Barney passed away from a cerebral hemorrhage in 1969, just eight years after the event. Most likely from the stress of the entire event. Betty went on to become a big figure in the, and this is my favorite phrase of this entire podcast, the uethology scene.

SPEAKER_02

UFO?

unknown

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

I've never heard that.

SPEAKER_00

She's big on there, bro.

SPEAKER_02

Wait, is she still alive?

SPEAKER_00

No, she's super dead.

SPEAKER_02

But I got so excited.

SPEAKER_00

So yeah, I think I think your take is good. It may have happened, but they definitely believed it. I'm gonna go ahead and take a big bag old leap of faith. I think that there's some credibility to this because that pink powder that freaks me out. It does freak me out. I could see in your eyes that that was an important didn't know. My last question's for you, Nicole. Do you have any UFO story? Do I have a UFO story?

SPEAKER_02

I loved the first season of Roswell. I I hope that's helpful for younger people that have no idea what Roswell used.

SPEAKER_00

You just dated yourself so hard. You know, my mom's actually said she's seen UFOs. Multiple? I think she had one intense witness. Like. Do you wanna share it? Yeah, I think it's I'm gonna share it, but I'm gonna preface this with saying my mom is like the least like woo-woo person. Like she's the kind of person that doesn't believe in like anything like tutu out there. Like she she's open, but she's also like okay.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, I've met your mom.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, you know, you know the you know the fucking score. And she was born in Argentina, and she said that when she was younger, she used to see once or twice it'd be multicolored lights. In Argentina. Yeah. Multicolored lights in the sky moving erratically, similar to this description.

SPEAKER_02

Well, she lucked out. She could have gotten a needle in her belly board.

SPEAKER_00

In her navel. In her navel.

SPEAKER_02

Alright, Bianca, what is your real housewife's tagline?

SPEAKER_00

You'll definitely need a map to find this star.