Tantalizing Teaser: Picture this: a tranquil New Hampshire night, a road less travelled, and an unsuspecting couple encountering the inexplicable. Welcome to the eerie world of Barney and Betty Hill, a captivating tale that has become an icon in UFO and conspiracy communities for over half a century. In this episode, we traverse the timeline of this fascinating story, beginning with the couple's background, moving on to their chilling encounter, and progressing to the subsequent investigations. We also discuss the significant legacy they've left behind, including a historical marker, and Betty's meticulous notes and recordings, which now lie securely in the University of New Hampshire.
Bold Statement: Truth or fabrication? That's the question we grapple with as we delve into Barney and Betty Hill's extraordinary UFO encounter. This episode recounts their story, which, originally dismissed as a psychological aberration, won credibility after the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena deemed it believable. From the release of John G Fuller's book, 'The Interrupted Journey - Two Lost Hours Aboard a Flying Saucer', to unresolved questions that still linger, we scrutinize every detail. Join us, as we unravel the unsolved mysteries of the world of UFOs, and the Hill's encounter that has left an indelible mark on it.
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When we think of UFOs, aliens and the possibility of abduction, we tend to gravitate towards Hollywood movies, parodic and cartoonish sketches, or listen skeptically to the stories of those who claim to have had a direct encounter with an extraterrestrial. It would be fair to say that, for the majority, such claims are easily squashed or redirected towards a claimant's mental instability, alcohol or drug dependency or perhaps the characteristics of an attention seeking obsessive, regardless of a person's mental state. The concept of alien abduction is something that has never been taken seriously, despite ongoing investigations, sightings and government disclosures into UFO sightings which have sparked global intrigue over the last few years. And yet there are a handful of stories, sightings and investigative reports which have remained at the forefront of the UFO and conspiracy communities for decades and show no signs of going anywhere anytime soon. The Roswell crash of 1947, the Aurora Texas UFO incident of 1897, adolf Hitler and the Nazis apparent dabbling into the occult, as well as other landmark cases, have kept the conversation on such mysteries very much alive. One of these cases centers on a happily married couple whose mysterious encounter, little would they know at the time, would thrust them into the spotlight and would forever attribute their faces to what has become known as the fourth kind. Who were Barney and Betty Hill, what happened to them and what does their story tell us about alien abduction, society as a whole and the importance of listening to what someone anyone has to say, regardless of how crazy they may seem? In this documentary, we'll travel back in time to the late 1950s, when the American dream was reborn and flourishing, to a time when, unfortunately for Barney and Betty Hill, the American nightmare was about to begin. Before we begin our tale of what happened to this now famous couple, it's worth taking a few moments to understand who they were before the nighting question occurred.
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Barney and Betty Hill were an American couple who were no strangers to gossip, suspicion and ridicule, having been one of the few mixed-race married couples in their hometown of Portsmouth, new Hampshire. Barney, a black man born in 1922, worked as an employee at the United States Postal Service, whilst Betty, who was white and three years older than her husband, worked as a social worker. The couple were extremely fond of their dog, dalsey, who was often seen in pictures and portraits of the couple and was with them at the time of their encounter. Having endured numerous comments, slurs and insults for being in a mixed-race relationship, the Hills did not deter from their obligations to the church and their community, being regular attendees of the local Unitarian congregation. Both husband and wife are also proud members of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, which was, and still is, a civil rights organization formed in 1909. Barney was also on the board for his local commission on civil rights.
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Though the couple remained childless until their deaths, their legacy would remain very much alive. After both claimed to have been abducted by alien beings somewhere in the outskirts of New Hampshire on September 19th 1961. The Hills names and faces would become synonymous with that of extraterrestrials, ufos and the discussions surrounding closing counters of the fourth kind Abduction. After countless interviews, hypnosis sessions and public disclosures, the occurrence would become known as the Hill Abduction and the Zeta Reti Cooley Incident, due to a star map which was recognized and described in detail by Betty Hill in relation to the Zeta Reti Cooley Star System. Later, after many had made up their minds on the story, their fame would remain in the public domain, with an adaptation of their encounter being presented as a best-selling 1966 book called the Interrupted Journey and a subsequent 1970 film, the UFO Incident. With the rise of the internet, ufo conspiracy communities and collective evidence to support the theory that we are not alone in the universe. The story of Barney and Betty Hill remains one of the most interesting accounts of alien abduction in the last 100 years. It is known that the majority of Betty Hill's notes, recordings and other items are logged within the vaults of the University of New Hampshire. In July 2011, the New Hampshire Division of Historical Resources marked the site of the alleged craft's first approach with a historical marker as a dedication to the couple and their story, the Encounter.
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So where do we start? The tale of Barney and Betty Hill, as recounted in the aforementioned 1966 book by John G Fuller, starts off as a happy scene back in 1961. The reason for the couple being on the road in the first place was that they needed a well-earned rest from their busy lives, and a road trip sounded like a great idea. The couple decided to visit Montreal, canada, in what they considered to be their delayed honeymoon, having been married more than 16 months and never setting aside time to celebrate their wedding. Previously, barney had been working countless night shifts at his job in the post office and is said to have driven 60 miles to and from his house in Portsmouth to tend to his responsibilities. Likewise, betty was working hard in her job and was already finding it difficult to spend quality time with her new husband. So it was decided after dropping everything on a whim, scooping up the dog and grabbing the $70 that they had on the counter, barney and Betty took off on their adventure, enjoying a wonderful three-day trip to Canada, visiting the lights of Niagara Falls and, more importantly, taking the time to appreciate how special their relationship was to one another.
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It was reported that a hurricane was due to cut directly through the couple's root home, so it was decided that they should head back a little earlier than planned. Having stopped for a quick coffee at a diner in Vermont, the hills took to the road again at 10pm on the 19th of September, with the intention of reaching their house around 2am in the morning. Their plan would be short-lived, however, as a mere 30 minutes into their journey, something happened. It has been frequently stated and documented that the supposed encounter began at approximately 10.30pm, just as the hills were easing into their journey home and approaching a large town of Lancaster, new Hampshire, from the south end. It was Betty who spotted it first, claiming to have seen a luminous beacon in the skies, above a light that seemed to be moving from the vicinity of the moon towards the planet Jupiter. Initially thinking nothing of it, they proceeded on their journey. However, betty's eyes continued to glance up at the object as it seemingly grew brighter and larger in the night sky as they approached it from the south, directing his gaze from the road to the stars.
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Barney decided to have a look and inspect what it was that was worrying his wife. Despite having an interest and knowledge of aviation mechanics and having served in the Second World War, barney came to the passive conclusion that the entity was nothing more than a wayward satellite. From there, things quite literally took a bizarre turn. As Barney rounded a mountainous road, the light began to follow the cars, bends and turns remaining high enough not to pose a threat, but low enough to hold their attention. The sphere would navigate with precision, ensuring that it avoided any trees and mountain tops, while steadily zoning in on the couple's 1957 Chevrolet Bel Air.
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Still undeterred by the mysterious orb, betty and Barney decided to get a better look at it by pulling over to the side of the road somewhere near Twin Mountain, allowing Dalsey to have a short walk and stretch her legs. Luckily, betty had packed a pair of binoculars for their sightseeing trip in Canada, so decided to put them to good use. What she described as an odd shaped craft seemingly hung in the sky, still emitting its radiant light and becoming ever clearer through the magnifying lens of the binoculars. According to the startled social worker, the orb was in fact a solid object that was spinning in mid-air in an unrecognisable manner and displaying multi-coloured flashes of light that would have been difficult to notice without the assistance of the binoculars. Startled by this spectacle, betty instructed her husband to take a look, still assuming that the craft was a satellite or militarised aircraft, barney did as he was told and quickly regretted his decision, as the entity was now making its way directly towards them at a steady pace.
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It was now the turn of the recently married couple to navigate with intelligence and precision, making their way through Franconia Notch, a mountain pass traversed by a unique parkway which extends from the Flume Gorge at the south to Echo Lake in the north. The hills kept track of the object's movements. It was at this point that Barney holstered his handgun from the glove compartment, and Betty took the time to estimate the size of the UFO as it passed over Cannon Mountain as being approximately 40 feet long. By now, the craft was extremely visible and its looming presence was beginning to intimidate all three of them. Taking his pistol in his hand, barney kept a fixed gaze on the craft as he attempted to confront it by stopping the car again and peering through the binoculars, steadying himself in the event of a standoff.
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It was at this point that Barney claimed to have seen between 8 and 11 humanoid shapes within the aircraft's capsule. Most of them were looking out of its windows and down towards the terrified onlooker. Shockingly, the figures moved around, shuffling themselves into a collective formation, before one of the aliens approached the front of the ship and, according to Barney, decided to communicate with him telepathically For what seemed like an eternity for the postal worker. The creature stared at him intensely before sending a message to his subconscious telling him to stay where you are and keep looking. Instinct was also telling him to raise his gun, take aim and fire. Yet when Barney tried to do what his body was yearning to do, he found that he couldn't. He was frozen by fear and something else that he could not explain, something which was forced upon him by the humanoid creature. Unable to protect himself, his wife and his dog. Barney was completely at the mercy of this strange starship and its inhabitants. The creatures themselves were described as wearing glossy black uniforms and black caps.
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The craft then descended towards the ground and winged latches opened up from the sides and front, producing a long structural slide from the bottom of the ship's body. Luckily, and for some strange reason, the spell was briefly broken and so, using all the energy in his body, barney was able to break away from the hypnotic trance of the visitors and sprinted back to the car where Betty and Dalsey sat in terror. Before they could take off and drive away from the object and its colonists, the last thing they could remember was a series of loud, measured, beeping noises and vibrations surrounding the trunk of their vehicle and feeling an instant lethargic sensation consuming them, which quickly rendered them unconscious. Exactly two hours later, barney and Betty Hill regained consciousness. To their surprise and horror, they found themselves approximately 35 miles from where they remembered passing out. Not wanting to linger any longer, and with the UFO seemingly out of sight, they started at the car and drove as fast as they could back to their home in Portsmouth. Only when they arrived did they notice that they were covered in dirt and both their watches had stopped working. Although the encounter itself was now over, little did they know just how important and significant their terrifying tale would become in the months and years that follow.
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Arriving home, upon arrival back at their home. Upon arrival back at their home in Portsmouth, barney and Betty Hill would spend the rest of the day attempting to put the pieces together in determining what had just occurred. Why did they feel a strong urge to keep their luggage packed and near the back door of their home? Why did Barney constantly check his genital area? Why did they continuously wash themselves obsessively? It could have been due to fear of radiation or the possibility of being violated in all sorts of heinous ways. Betty noticed a horror that her dress had been torn, the stitching and zippers burst open, and covered in a mysterious pink powder that ever since has been unable to decipher, even after various lab tests were conducted. Unable to understand what had happened and what was happening to them, the couple attempted to draw images of what they saw that fateful night, as well as connecting the dots in chronological order as best they could, but to no avail. They described their car as having obscure circular markings carved onto the bonnet and were surprised to find that when a compass was laid next to them, the needle would spin erratically. It was then that the dreams started Dreams or nightmares.
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Approximately 10 days after the encounter with the spacecraft and its inhabitants, betty Hill began to suffer from extreme lucid dreams over the course of five nights, dreams that would initially be dismissed as mind tricks but would eventually overwhelm Betty's paranoid mindset. Trying not to worry her husband, she began to document the dreams in a diary, as they were so vivid and clear that she couldn't ignore them anymore. In one of the dreams, she and Barney came across a dead end road whilst driving in their car. Almost immediately, a group of men appear from nowhere and surround the car before it jumps ahead to another moment in time. The next scene is of Betty being led into a wooded area by two relatively small men wearing blue-colored uniforms, whose skin was a mixture of blue and gray, and she is followed by her husband, who is in some sort of uncommunicative hypnotic state. This specific dream ends with the couple being led back to their car and left motionless as they watched the men enter a similar-shaped craft that they saw the previous week, before it takes off into the sky above, reminiscent and eerily similar to the events that took place on their journey home. The loss of time between encountering the gray creatures and their craft to regain consciousness in the car terrified Betty to her core.
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No-transcript. The initial report, unable to shift the sense of dread, paranoia and fear. In the months following their strange encounter with the UFO, betty, still referencing her dreams and becoming obsessed with finding the truth, came across the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena at the local library. After discussing her concerns with Barney, it was agreed that they report the sighting to the group and to the US Air Force, for fear of radiation or infection and in the hope that they may be able to provide answers. On October 22, 1961, barney would go on record to the committee to state that what they saw that night was out of this world and the creatures were somehow not human.
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The case was assigned to Walter N Webb, a Boston-based astronomer, an NICAP member, who decided to conduct an extensive interview with the couple that lasted over six hours, whereby any and all information was discussed and recorded. As the interview progressed, it became obvious that Barney was frustrated, confused and afraid that he was losing his mind due to the loss of time, vagueness of memory and the possibility that his subconscious was hiding memories from him. Luckily for the hells, mr Webb would also go on records to state that in his opinion, they were telling the truth and the incident probably occurred exactly as reported, except for some minor uncertainties and technicalities that must be tolerated in any such observations where human judgement is involved, eg exact time and length of visibility, apparent sizes of object and occupants, distance and height of objects, etc. Were they now finally getting closer to the truth? Hypnosis After Walter Webb's report was concluded, filed and peer reviewed, it was recommended to the hells that perhaps a few sessions of hypnotic therapy would assist them in coming to terms with what had happened and possibly provide additional evidence and clarity of the events.
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One of the burning questions for both Benjamin Simon, the psychiatrist, and the hells was the concept of missing time and why the newly married couple could not account for the hours and distance that was accumulated during their apparent blackout. The only thing they could recall was the image of a blazing orb that was sitting stationary on the ground somewhere on Route 35. This, along with Barney's concerns for his wife's dreams and mental state, was enough information to begin the sessions they began with Barney who, after weeks of therapy sessions, was able to recall being led into the alien capsule. Not long after, passing out from the pressure and disorientation felt by the vibrations, barney was able to describe a small examination room with bright lights, odd shaped walls and a very small table to which he was fastened, stripped and experimented on by the humanoid beings. Through hypnosis, he described to Simon how he and his wife had hair, nail and skin samples extracted from them, as well as having wires connected to various parts of their bodies.
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Most worryingly was when one of the creatures supposedly inserted a large needle into his wife's belly to apparently test for pregnancy, causing Betty to writhe and scream in pain. Interestingly, barney then recalls being in the middle of a forest and coming across a group of men who approached his car and led him blindly through the wooden lands with his wife in front of him. He stated I was told to close my eyes because I saw two eyes coming close to mine and I felt that the eyes had pushed into my eyes. Betty concurred that the aliens were using some sort of telepathy to communicate with them, as they spoke in a language that they didn't understand, but were able to do so as instructed by the so-called leader of the extraterrestrial group, although they were notable but minor differences in Betty's recollections during her sessions, the general account of what happened to the couple was quite clearly coherent.
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After multiple neurological tests, interviews and hypnotic sessions, the Hill's record of what occurred that night was collected and reviewed extensively. Benjamin Simon would confirm his findings, publishing a full report on his conclusions in psychiatric opinion, a medical journal which focused on various mental illnesses and mysteries of the mind. He attributed the case of Barney and Betty Hill to that of psychological aberration, which is considered to be a deviation from normal mental activity resulting in derangement and or psychopathy. Although he did not believe that they were lying, simon was able to diagnose them through a variety of symptoms and reasons. This unfortunate decision was backed by members of Project Blue Book, the top secret study of unidentified flying objects by the United States Air Force which ran from March 1952 to December 17th 1969, who dismissed the story and their mental state as being down to natural causes. However, the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena would come to their defence, supporting the couple's assertions that they may in fact have been abducted by deeming their account as credible. X marks the spot.
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One of the most significant, not to mention bizarre, descriptions came from Betty whilst under hypnosis in which she drew a star map that initially was considered an insignificant doodled sketch but would later be the talking point of a 1966 book named the Interrupted Journey Two lost hours aboard a flying saucer. After hearing of the couple's testimony and becoming fascinated with their story, john G Fuller, a New England-based American author, gained approval from both the Hills and Benjamin Simon to write and publish their strange adventure in print. Already an established columnist and author of multiple articles and books on the supernatural, fuller took the project seriously and gathered as much information, no matter how irrelevant, to form the basis of his book, including the illustrations of the star map drawn by Betty. After his publication in 1966, the Interrupted Journey became its success and helped reignite the debate surrounding UFO phenomena and that of the various kinds of close encounters. However, for Marjorie Fish, an elementary school teacher and amateur astronomer, it was the picture of the star map that led to her personal fascination with the couple's story In Red Fuller's book.
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In 1968, fish took it upon herself to try and analyse and decode the drawing in relation to the cosmological blueprint of space, to try and understand where the craft and the alien creatures had originated. She was able to construct a 3D model of sun-like stars, using various materials to measure the distances in comparison to the same stars which were documented in the 1969 Gleasy Star catalogue. Fish concluded that the drawing was extremely similar to that of the Zeta-Retticuli star system, as the illustration supposedly shows the sky as seen from a planet orbiting the Zeta-Retticuli. This large southern system within Reticulum, a small faint constellation in the southern sky, can be seen with the naked eye as a double star in very dark skies and is located approximately 39.3 light-years away from Earth. After an in-depth analysis and conclusive report were issued to Walter Webb, both parties agreed that the drawing was indeed that of the Zeta-Retticuli star system, something Betty Hill knew nothing of.
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Though many subsequent reports, investigations and astronomers would reject the hypothesis posed by Fish, it certainly got people talking. How could someone with a basic knowledge of space, stars and planets be able to draw, under hypnotic therapy, an advanced star system 39 light-years from Earth? In 1989, the Hippocast satellite of the European Space Agency was launched, deemed to be the first of its kind. This satellite's obligation was to document and analyze the measurements of the positions of celestial objects in the sky. After a combination of radial velocity measurements from spectroscopy, those involved in the project were able to calculate the relative information needed to determine the motion of stars. The mission ended in 1993,. However, whilst in space, astronomers decided to put Fish's theory to the test and use their technology to take measurements of the Zeta-Retticuli. Unfortunately for the teacher, the Hippocast's findings showed that some of the stars on her blueprint were much further away than previously thought, resulting in Fish publicly renouncing her theories and assumptions.
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Skeptics and so, with this public rejection, we now look at a few skeptics who weighed in on the story hypotheses and the married couple themselves. Robert Schaefer, of the Skeptical Inquirer, took to printing his review of the account after attending the National UFO Conference in 1980. The event, which took place in New York, was attended by Betty Hill herself, who spoke of the incident and presented the audience with supposed photographs that she had taken of UFOs. According to Betty, those mostly blurred images were evidence that the extraterrestrials were still haunting her, watching her every move and continuously experimenting on her and her environment. For Robert and the audience at large, this was the final straw, as he states that after her talk had exceeded about twice its allotted time, betty was literally jeered off the stage by what had been, at first, a sympathetic audience.
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This incident, witnessed by many of UFOlogies' leaders and top activists, removed any lingering doubts about Betty's credibility. She had none. The columnist noted that in the years following her husband's death, betty would go on UFO vigils on a regular basis throughout the week. It was apparent that she was becoming frantically obsessed with the concept of UFOs, aliens, and possibly attempting to relive or at least make sense of what happened that fateful night in 1961. One of these patrols was attended by John Oswald, a local resident who had a keen interest in the UFO phenomenon. However, when he was quizzed on the event and Betty Hill stayed in mind, he responded Mrs Hill was unable to distinguish between a landed UFO and a streetlight.
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Another critic of the Hill's version of events came from another local resident named Jim MacDonald, who felt obliged to propose an alternative theory based on his knowledge of the landing and adjoining Rhodes. After fully analysing the account, paying particular attention to the supposed route of the couple took on their way home from Canada, macdonald was able to deduce the spacecraft as being nothing more than an aircraft warning beacon that sits atop Cannon Mountain. Having travelled the specific route many times himself, macdonald states that the warning beacon intermittently appears and reappears throughout the high mountainous skyline. At exactly the same time, the couple claimed to have been chased by the UFO. This information, though helpful, is somewhat diminished when MacDonald proposed his theory on the subsequent events of the night and the possible abduction, relating it simply to stress, sleep deprivation and false memories. The word stress appeared quite often by those who didn't believe the abduction theory.
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Being a mixed race couple during a time of social unrest throughout the United States would have certainly played a major factor in the couple's relationship as well as their safety. Undoubtedly, they would have encountered racial abuse, ridicule and threats from those who adopted the close-minded mentality at the time and would have put unquestionable strain on their relationship at some point, with their workload and responsibility to the community and local church taking up most of their time and resources. The possibility of hallucinations caused by burnout cannot be overlooked. It has been declared by leading psychologists that false memories force the brain to conjure up stories, sometimes highly elaborate stories, to fill in the blanks in order to piece together the mysterious events or timelines that took place. Some say that the social, financial and emotional pressures faced by the hills resulted in the couple using the rise of the UFO phenomenon and that of the Cold War to take advantage of growing paranoia to make money via a carefully calculated and coordinated scam. Perhaps this opportunity, mixed with a mental breakdown, led Betty Hill to pursue her obsession with identified flying objects and photographing the so-called evidence of her captor's aircrafts throughout the rest of her life. Legacy Barney Hill died of cerebral hemorrhage on February 25th 1969, age 46. Betty would live on to the age of 85, passing away on October 17th 2004, due to cancer, having never remarried or bearing children.
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And yet, even to this very day, the events that took place in September 1961 to Barney and Betty Hill remain a fascination for UFO enthusiasts, filmmakers and investigators, as they continuously fixate on the mysteriousness of the evening in question. A film was made in 1975 for television audiences and starred James Earl Jones as Barney and Estella Parsons as Betty, and focused on the couple's story as well as their relationship to one another. In 2015, there were reports of a film and television series based on the incident. An adaptation of renowned American nuclear physicist Stanton T Friedman's 2007 book Captured the Betty and Barney Hill UFO Experience the true story of the world's first documented alien abduction. Though many documentaries have been shelved, the latest report as of late 2022, is that the streaming giant, netflix, will be producing an in-depth documentary on the couple and the occurrence. A roadside marker on Daniel Webster Highway on Route 3 in Lincoln, new Hampshire, was also erected to commemorate the incident and the couple's legacy.
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So what do you think? Here Were Betty and Barney Hill, the victims of a terrifying ordeal, abducted by extraterrestrial beings as test subjects for their invasive, hideous experiments. Did they really experience a close encounter of the fourth kind, only to be ridiculed and ousted from many within their community and humiliated by those to whom they were seeking help? Or could it be that Barney and Betty Hill were mere scam artists looking for a loophole in a world that was slowly losing its mind to paranoia, fear and confusion? Perhaps we'll never know.
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The truth is, we live in a world where technology and scientific advancement is constantly ingraining itself within our society, our relationships and into the exploration of our surrounding planets and that of the cosmos. Television, social media and the internet gives one the opportunity to seek out the truth and discuss many of life's mysteries. And yet, despite this massive step towards infinite knowledge and information, there are still those stories that are worth retelling and remain unsolved For Barney and Betty Hill. Their case will forever be caused for speculation, investigation and argument. All we know for sure is that something happened that night which made us question who we are and who else is out there. We hope you enjoyed this video. Take care and, as always, keep searching.