Morbid: Episode 499: The Abduction of Betty and Barney Hill
Morbid Network | Wondery 10/2/23 - 1h 10m - PDF Transcript
You're listening to a Morbid Network podcast.
Audible is the home of storytelling.
You'll discover thousands of podcasts from popular favourites to exclusive new series,
guided wellness programs, theatrical performances, dev ad, comedy, and exclusive Audible originals
from top celebrities, renowned experts, and exciting new voices and audio.
The Audible app makes it easy to listen anytime, anywhere, while travelling, working out, walking,
doing chores.
You decide.
Right now, I'm listening to the seven husbands of Evelyn Hugo.
The woman who does the performance of the voice is so good.
It makes you feel like you're even more inside of the story.
It's so much fun.
I am loving Audible, and I think you will too.
New members can try Audible free for 30 days.
Visit Audible.com slash Morbid or text Morbid to 500-500.
That's Audible.com slash Morbid or text Morbid to 500-500 to try Audible free for 30 days.
Audible.com slash Morbid.
Angie's list is now Angie, and we've heard a lot of theories about why.
I thought it was an eco move.
For your worse, less paper.
No, it was so you could say it faster.
No, it's to be more iconic.
Must be a tech thing.
But those aren't quite right.
It's because now you can compare up front prices, book a service instantly, and even
get your project handled from start to finish.
Sounds easy.
It is, and it makes us so much more than just a list.
Let's start it at Angie.com.
That's A-N-G-I.
Order download the app today.
Wedding season is in full bloom, and if you've been wanting a straighter smile, look no further
than Byte.
Byte offers clear teeth aligners that help you transform your smile from the comfort
of your home, or wherever you'll be this time of year.
Forget the endless trips to the dentist.
Byte's clear aligners are doctor directed and delivered straight to your doorstep.
Just take an impression mold of your mouth, preview your 3D smile, and order your all-day
or at night aligners.
Byte also knows that wedding season is expensive enough as it is.
Their aligners cost thousands less than braces.
It's time to let your smile shine.
Get started on your smile journey by visiting Byte.com, and use Code Wondery at checkout
to get your at-home impression kit for only $14.95.
That's Byte.com, Code Wondery, to get over 80% off your impression kit.
Hey, weirdos, I'm Ash.
I'm Elena.
And this is Morbid.
She just burped.
Elena just did all big, old burp.
I knew we were recording.
We should put it in.
We should keep it in.
That would be horrifying for people to hear first as soon as they turn on their thing.
I know.
I know.
I know.
I know.
I know.
I know.
I know.
I know.
I know.
I know.
I know.
I know.
I know.
I know.
I know.
I know.
First as soon as they turn on their thing.
I would love it if I turned on my radio when I heard a burp.
My raw to you.
My raw to you.
We are all kinds of fucking goofy today.
We're feeling wily today.
What's your case?
What's your case?
My case has to do with the UFO.
Oh, perfect.
Fantastic.
I was like, we're feeling goofy!
What's your case?
That's the right energy to take into this, I think.
Hey yo!
I'm gonna talk about the Betty in Barney Hill abduction story.
What?
Betty and Barney Hill,
I would like to start this off by saying
they are such a precious couple and I love them both.
I love them both so much.
And you will also love them by the end of this.
They just seem delightful in every way.
I already love them right now.
And you take what you will from this,
but I think it happened.
I think UFOs are real.
In fact, I wanted to shout out a new show
that was actually not new, but it's new to me
that I've been watching on Showtime.
I was telling you about it the other day.
Oh yeah.
It's a DJ Abrams UFO show and it is so good.
It's either three or four parts.
I watched the first two and it is like chilling.
It's an interesting subject, everyone.
I know sometimes it gets the old lookover.
People are like,
UFOs, I'm not really interested.
And it's like, I don't know, maybe you should be.
You sure about that?
You sure about that?
That's kind of like what the show goes over.
Like how it's been like, like, oh, like so tall.
And you really look into it.
And when you look into,
we'll cover some more of these
because they're very fascinating.
I love them.
When you get like a mass sighting,
like that's like the Phoenix lights.
200 people, see one,
or like the one in the Berkshires in Massachusetts
where like over 200 people saw it,
something's awry there.
Like, you know, we can't discount it.
I love it.
So let's get into this because it's quite a tale.
Get into it, yeah.
So we're gonna start with talking about
who Betty and Barney Hill are.
So you can get an idea of them, how they came together.
All that fun stuff.
How they're the cutest couple in the nation.
They're real cute.
So Eunice Elizabeth Betty Barrett
was born June 28th, 1919 in New Hampshire.
A cancer.
Yeah, and grew up on a farm in Kingston, New Hampshire,
which is a small town near the Massachusetts border.
Massachusetts?
What, what?
You know, farming was definitely a difficult
and somewhat unprofitable life at the time,
but the Barrets were a super close knit.
Very cute, very supportive family.
Seemed like everything was, you know,
pretty top notch on there, that end.
But, you know, she was a very curious, very creative,
very highly intelligent child.
And she spent a lot of her early life
just dreaming about escaping the farm life
and going on to other opportunities.
According to her college friend, Mary Ann Franklin,
who we'll mention later too,
Betty's first attempt at becoming independent
and breaking out on her own
was when she tried to join a traveling circus
as an acrobat in training.
That's incredible.
But her parents wouldn't let her go.
Lame.
They wouldn't let her join the circus.
Why not?
So after graduating from high school in 1937,
she enrolled at the University of New Hampshire.
UNH. UNH, I've been there many times.
She met and befriended her college friend
that we just mentioned, Mary Ann Franklin there.
Mary Ann Franklin was the only black student on that campus.
Oh my God.
Can you imagine being in that position?
No, I cannot on any level in any galaxy.
And what time period was this?
This was in 1937.
Oh God.
So it was through Mary Ann Franklin that Betty learned,
this is like really the first she learned
about the extent of the inequality and marginalization
experienced by black Americans around the country,
but particularly in the South.
And this is when Betty began really taking part
in advocating for liberal causes.
Hell yeah.
Later, Franklin said she was very active.
She may have had a problem as a result of that
because so many people at the time
were not accepting of racial equality.
So she stepped out because she met Mary Ann Franklin,
became her friend and was like,
fuck this, I'm gonna stand up for you.
Hell yeah, I love that.
Which fuck yeah, Betty.
Betty forever.
Betty forever.
Now in the summer following her sophomore year,
she contracted a difficult and very long lasting
abdominal infection and it actually stopped her
from going back to UNH for her junior year.
She was like really sick.
So instead while she was kind of healing up
and while she was feeling better
but not able to return to school,
she took a job waiting tables at Rudy's Farm Kitchen
in Hampton, New Hampshire.
Rudy's.
Hampton is like a seaside town,
not far away from where she grew up.
I know Hampton.
And working there is when she met Bob Stewart
who was the cook at Rudy's.
She was immediately drawn to Bob.
This is not Bernie, by the way.
I was like, I don't care about Bob.
She was immediately drawn to Bob.
She said like he had a very warm personality.
He was very charming.
He's just got Barry.
Now what she said about Bob was Bob Stewart
seemed like the best thing on the horizon.
So I grabbed him.
Oh, that's cute.
No, so they dated for a little bit
and got married in June, 1941.
And according to Betty, Bob had an ex-wife at the time
and it was then that his ex-wife heard
about him getting remarried.
It was not pleased about it.
So Betty said she picked up the three kids
and dumped them at Bob's mother's house.
Oh.
And at this time,
Bob's mother was not able to care for three young children
that were her grandchildren.
That's a lot.
So Bob and Betty took sole custody of the children
and three years after this,
Betty officially adopted them.
Oh, wow.
And became a full-time mother, full-time homemaker.
And Bob ended up getting a much better paying job
at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard
because the shipyard at the time was super, super active
because World War II was coming to a close.
So lots of stuff going on.
So you're literally everything going on
in the story already.
Yeah, and at this point, you look like,
okay, this seems positive.
Like they took the kids,
Betty stepped up and was like,
you're mine now, I'm gonna take care of you.
But then once he gets the job at the shipyard,
all of a sudden she found out
that Bob had been cheating on her with multiple women.
Oh, fuck Bob.
See, I knew he was no Barry.
Yeah, and she said, at first,
I thought he was a pretty good guy
and it took me years to find out different.
Oh, that's really sad.
So after 14 years of marriage
and raising his three children,
they ended up divorcing in 1955.
Kidding me, she raised his kids
and he was cheating on her all the while.
Yeah.
What a douche.
Luckily, she did get some money from the divorce settlement.
Good.
She got her own house in Portsmouth, New Hampshire
and found a job at a local department store.
She was like, I'm gonna start over.
So not long after she moved into the house,
she suddenly was approached by a representative
from the Gulf Oil Company
and they wanted to buy the house on behalf of the company.
What?
She was like, I literally just bought this.
Well, no, she was like, I just bought it.
This is like my first independent foray into the world.
I'm feeling a little territorial about this.
But she was like, you know what?
I'm gonna be a boss bitch
and I'm gonna negotiate with the shit out of this.
And she ended up getting more than twice
what the company had initially offered
and happily sold them the house.
Betty is a boss ass bitch.
So not long after though, she was like, well, it was nice.
She was like, I'm a little worried I'm gonna miss that house
because it was like my first independent thing.
You know, like all of a sudden she was like, wait,
I kind of feel like I kind of gave that up a little too quick.
So she went back to the Gulf representative
just out of curiosity.
She was like, I'm just gonna shoot my shot.
And she said, what do you plan to do with that?
You know, I never really asked you
what are the plans here?
And they said, oh, we're just gonna tear it down.
Why?
And she was like, okay, how would I offer you $1?
And I take the house and have it relocated to another lot
and you can keep the lot.
Are you serious?
And they agreed for a dollar.
So she made twice the money they offered her on that house.
And then got to keep it.
She bought the house back for $1,
got to keep the entire thing and just gave them the property.
What a story.
Yeah.
Already.
And she moved the house to a nearby lot
and she lived there for the rest of her life.
Incredible.
I love that.
I'm so glad that she didn't have to give it up.
I know.
It really worked out.
Your first house is so special.
Yeah, like that you get on your own, you know.
After what she went through, it's like, hell yeah, Betty.
So in the summer of 1956,
the house is being relocated from one lot to another.
And during that time,
Betty had to stay at a boarding house
that was owned by a couple who recently moved
to New Hampshire from Philadelphia.
Now, while at this boarding house, she met Barney Hill.
Let's go.
Now at the time, Barney was in the area on vacation
with his wife, Ruby and their young children.
And stayed at the, like just for a time at the boarding house
while they were passing through.
Initially the Hills and Betty, they all got along very well.
She liked all of them.
They were all friends.
They kept in touch.
They decided that, you know, everything was cool.
And later Barney and his wife ended up separating in 1957.
And they were not to like, this was all long distance
and stuff.
It's not like they were like meeting up or anything like that.
Like they were genuinely friends.
It just happened.
And they ended up separating.
Right.
Immediately he was like, he ended up talking to Betty
and was like, she's such a good friend
and always had a thing for you Betty.
And soon their friendship developed into romance.
And you know, there was no funny business beforehand.
It doesn't sound like it was just friendship
that developed into something else.
That's beautiful.
Now let's talk about Barney.
Let's.
I think I was calling him Barry earlier.
I'm sorry.
That's okay.
I kept saying he's no Barry.
I mean, he's no, that guy was no Barry either.
That's the big.
So you were right.
He was not that.
So Barney Hill was born July 29th, 1922.
What does that make him?
July 29th.
Hold on.
Hold on.
My brain is farting.
Fucking.
Okay.
My sister's birthday is July 25th and she is a Leo.
So I think that's Leo.
Okay.
We'll take it.
So a Leo and a cancer.
I don't know how those two things line up.
Yeah, that's fine.
He was born in Newport News, Virginia,
but little is known about his early life.
He ended up dropping out of high school
and he worked a bit as a store clerk
and then he ended up joining the army.
He served there for three years
as a truck driver in World War II.
He ended up being honorably discharged in 1943
after a grenade incident.
Oh, wow.
And it was during his time in the military
that he met and married his first wife, Ruby,
and they had two sons in the decade that followed.
Okay.
Now after his discharge,
he found work as a mail carrier
with the post office in Philadelphia.
And this is when he became very active
in what was at the time,
the very burgeoning civil rights movement
and other community causes.
He served as a committee man
for his son's Boy Scout troop.
Oh.
Yeah.
This show is sponsored by BetterHelp.
Do you ever feel like your brain
is kind of getting its own way?
Like, you know what's actually good for you
and what you should do,
but you just can't do it.
For me, it's like,
I know that I need to meal prep on Sundays,
go to bed early so that I can get a full eight hours of sleep,
but sometimes I just get stuck
in these like unhealthy loops,
where I'm like,
I know I need to do that,
but for some reason
I am just fighting against myself right now.
But listen,
therapy helps you figure out what's holding you back
so you can work for yourself instead of against yourself.
I love going to therapy
because I just sit down with my therapist
and I unleash all of the things that I'm going through.
And she says,
okay, here's what we need to deal with today.
Here's what we can deal with next week.
And we kind of like triage all of my issues.
And that's really awesome.
It's nice to be able to sit down with somebody
who can do that for you and with you.
So if you're thinking of starting therapy,
give BetterHelp a try.
It's entirely online,
designed to be convenient, flexible,
and suited to your schedule.
Just fill out a brief questionnaire
to get matched with a licensed therapist
and you can switch therapist anytime
for no additional charge.
Don't feel bad.
It might take a couple tries to get the right person
or you might get them right off the bat.
I've tried like three different therapists in my lifetime.
So again, don't feel bad,
but make your brain your friend
with BetterHelp.
Visit betterhelp.com slash morbid today
to get 10% off your first month.
That's BetterHelp each ELP.com slash morbid.
Are your subscriptions draining your wallet?
Well, the average person has around 12 paid subscriptions
and they might not even remember subscribing
to half of those.
If you have no idea just how much you're spending
each month, you need Rocket Money.
It's this great app that tracks all your expenses
so you know exactly where your money is going.
And that's a good place to be.
Rocket Money is a personal finance app
that finds and cancels your unwanted subscriptions,
monitors your spending
and helps you lower your bills all in one place.
Most people think that they're spending
about $80 on their subscriptions when in reality
that number is actually closer to $200.
Because the thing is when you're signed up
for so many things like streaming services
that you use just to watch one show
or free trials for a delivery you don't even use,
it's so easy to lose track of what you're paying for.
I've totally been there too.
But with Rocket Money, you can easily cancel those ones
that you don't want with just the press of a button.
It is so simple.
No more long hold times or annoying emails
with customer service, that's truly the worst.
Rocket Money does all of the work for you.
Rocket Money can actually even negotiate
to lower your bills for you by up to 20%.
All you have to do is take a picture of your bill
and Rocket Money takes care of the rest.
With over three million users and counting,
Rocket Money customers have saved an average of $720 a year.
I used Rocket Money myself pretty recently actually
and the amount of subscriptions I had
that I didn't realize was truly eye-opening.
Let me just confide in you that it was more than 12
and I'm a little embarrassed.
But it was so, so easy to use Rocket Money
to get rid of the ones that I don't want to use anymore.
And I ended up saving myself over $500.
And now that's so much more money to go shopping
and spend on things I do want to spend my money on.
So stop wasting money on things you don't use.
Cancel your unwanted subscriptions
and manage your money the easy way
by going to rocketmoney.com slash morbid.
That's rocketmoney.com slash morbid,
rocketmoney.com slash morbid.
Now at first, Betty and Barney's relationship,
like I said, was long distance.
They ended up really just talking through letters
and phone calls.
How romantic.
I know, but then it changed in the summer of 1957
because she re-enrolled that UNH
and took an internship position with the Layton Farm School,
which was a home for delinquent girls in Philadelphia.
Oh, wow.
Now the internship in Philadelphia made it possible
for Betty and Barney to be together in person.
Love it.
They were romance, romance, romance.
And when the internship ended a few months later,
they were now facing being long distance again.
No.
So Barney made the decision to relocate with Betty.
I love that.
So for Barney, he had spent most of his life
in and around Philadelphia.
So this was a big decision, a big move.
He was up, you know, uprooting his whole life.
Yeah, and he had children too though, which in Philadelphia.
Yeah, he did.
So he was like, I'm gonna have to really make this work.
And he was also gonna be relocating to New Hampshire,
which was a place where he would be one of very few
black people in the entire state.
Yeah.
Even today, the population is only 10% people of color,
most of whom live in the larger cities,
not like the smaller areas.
Right.
So this was like, at the time,
especially a big source of stress.
Yeah, nerve-wracking.
I cannot claim to know what this feels like.
No way.
So for Barney, the shift was very stressful,
but he did acclimate very quickly to life in Portsmouth.
Okay.
So he ended up making a lot of friends very easily.
Hell yeah.
With the tenants in Betty's building
and some of the people in her social circle.
So he really just fell right into it.
He had a good community.
Yeah.
And as a US postal worker,
he was able to transfer from his job in Philadelphia
to one in Boston, like pretty easily.
Nice.
So that wasn't an issue,
but the transfer meant that he would be working
one of the shittiest shifts because he was transferred in,
which happened to be opposite Betty's schedule.
So they hardly saw each other at first.
Oh, that sucks.
And it's like, they're just getting out of this
long distance thing.
Now, when Betty and Barney married in May 1960,
their work schedules were so intense
that they couldn't even take a honeymoon at first.
They had to go right back to work after getting married.
I hate that.
It would end up being 16 months before Barney
was able to take time off from his postal route
to actually go on a belated honeymoon.
Oh my God, that sucks.
So on September 15th, 1961,
he finally got approval to take a few days off from his job.
And he decided he was gonna surprise Betty
with a trip to Niagara Falls and Montreal.
Oh my gosh, awesome.
And he got the news on a Friday evening.
So he planned to wait until Monday.
He was like, he told her what was gonna happen,
but he was like, we're gonna go Monday
because that's when the bank's open
and we can begin our trip.
Right.
But Betty was like, I don't even care what we do.
I just wanna be together and like go.
So she was like, I don't even care about the banks.
I don't care about getting more money.
So they just pooled the cash they had on hand,
which was $70 in total, oh my God.
And Betty was like, that's enough.
It's fine with me.
And she was like, if we stick to a tight budget,
we bring food with us.
We just don't eat at a ton of restaurants.
We'll be good.
We just wanna like spend time together.
Yeah, that's it.
Let's just go.
So I love them.
Now, early Sunday morning, September 17th,
they packed up some food, their stuff,
and they brought their Daxon Delci in the back seat
and they began making their way to Canada.
I love this.
Now, they very strictly adhered to their budget
on the first few days.
So Betty and Barney decided, you know what?
We're gonna make our way to downtown Montreal
on Tuesday morning, September 19th.
We'll book a motel for the night.
We'll take in a show in the city.
It'll be great.
I love this.
It's so romantic.
I know.
But they got directions from somebody
and unfortunately that person only spoke French.
So they misunderstood.
And it caused them to get lost on their way
from Niagara to Montreal.
So they were driving east
and they realized they had gotten very lost
from the downtown area.
Where the hell are we?
They'd kind of wasted a lot of their day.
So they decided, you know what?
Let's just find a hotel for the night.
We'll try again tomorrow.
But then they realized, oh wait, it's difficult
to find a hotel that's gonna let a dog in.
Oh, true.
So to make matters worse,
there was also a tropical storm
making its way up the east coast from the southern states.
It was gonna make driving conditions difficult.
It kind of felt like it was like all conversion at once.
So they were like, you know what?
Why don't we just start the five hour drive
back to New Hampshire?
Like, you know, we're still together.
We're still making the trip together.
So even though they'd heard that storm warning,
they said that the skies were very clear
and that they were by all weather accounts
by the time that Betty and Barney passed over the border
into the mountains of northern New Hampshire.
So they were driving south along I-93 in Ashland
when Betty saw what she thought was a shooting star
and she pointed it out to Barney.
But as they got closer,
it occurred to both Betty and Barney
that whatever it was in the sky, it had stopped moving.
It was just hovering in the air.
The thing which was large and they both said
was cigar-shaped seeming at the time.
It began to move forward slowly
and then it began going upwards, like ascending again.
And this is when Betty was like,
Barney, pull over on the side of the road.
We need to get a better look at this.
Like, what the fuck is that?
So outside of the car,
they looked up at this wild thing above them.
They were super confused,
not really understanding what the hell was up there.
And they were also wondering,
how is this thing just hovering motionless
in the air like that?
Yeah, like gravity doesn't necessarily work like that.
And they couldn't hear anything,
like propellers, like a helicopter.
That's creepy.
So Betty gave Barney the binoculars
they had brought with them on the trip.
And Betty later recalled,
and as he looked up,
he could see a row of men standing in the windows
looking down at them.
I'm looking at the pictures right now,
like that they drew.
And I'm like, what?
What?
So one by one, apparently,
the figures watching through the window walked away
and then the ship began descending in their direction.
So they had no idea what to do.
So they both jumped back in the car
and headed south on route three.
And the object is following them now.
And they said it was moving
in a very erratic pattern above them.
Yeah.
And so Barney really didn't want to freak Betty out.
So he was trying to act like everything was fine.
And he said he was trying to be as calm as possible
and just drive home.
Yeah.
And his only reason was he didn't want to upset Betty.
So at one point, Barney entertained the idea
of stopping at a cabin or a motor lodge maybe,
just to be near other people
because he was like, we were just freaked out.
But he was like, honestly,
I think we should just keep going.
So they drove for about a half hour
and then they rounded a curve near Indian Head,
which is a natural rock formation
and actually a landmark in Franconia notch.
And they came to this like large open area.
And as soon as they came into this area,
they saw the flying object hovering
about 100 feet up in the area right in front of their car.
Oh.
And so Barney was startled by this.
And he said he slammed his foot on the brake
because he wasn't ready for it.
And he was in the middle of the road
that they came to a stop.
And he said he grabbed Betty's revolver and binoculars
and got out of the car and moved closer
to just see what the fuck this thing was.
Oh, this is terrifying.
And he said he approached
and the thing tilted forward slightly
and two red lights began to glow
as fins on the side of the object began to part
and the object started moving slowly forward.
Oh, fuck.
So he was fucking terrified
and he rushed back into the car and told Betty,
we got to get the fuck out of here.
Yeah, like goodbye.
Now they raced down the highway.
The object is literally above them
still pursuing them essentially.
Right.
And after a few minutes,
Betty and Barney could hear a buzzing sound
and then they felt a strong vibration.
And a few minutes later,
they heard the buzzing again louder now
followed by a much stronger vibration.
And this is when they said there was haziness.
They're like, this part is kind of missed time
because they later said that they would,
they recalled encountering some kind of roadblock
and seeing a large red orb on the ground,
but they couldn't like the details were really fuzzy.
They were like, I can't put these pieces together.
So the next thing they really remember
was feeling this desperate need to be around other people.
They just didn't want to be alone.
And so Barney drove for a while searching for a restaurant.
That would be open,
something that other people would be around,
but they couldn't find anything open at that time.
So they were like, let's just get home.
So based on when they left Montreal
and how long they'd been driving,
they expected to reach Portsmouth around 3 a.m.
But when they did reach home,
they were surprised because the sun was coming up.
What?
And Betty wrote in her diary,
we entered our home, turned on the lights
and went over to the window and looked skyward.
We felt very calm, peaceful, relaxed.
We sat at the kitchen table, looked at each other,
shook our heads in puzzlement and asked each other,
do you believe what happened?
We agreed it was unbelievable, but it had really happened.
So they're exhausted.
Yeah.
Confused.
They don't know what the fuck's going on.
What happened to this chunk of time.
And Benny and Barty decided, let's get some sleep.
Let's have a little nap, like sleep it off,
see how we feel in the morning.
When we wake up in a few hours.
Sure.
And when they woke up a few hours later,
Barney said, you know what?
This is still bothering both of us.
So he said, why don't you go into another room?
I'll sit here and we're going to draw what we saw.
Okay.
So they did that.
And they drew what they saw.
And when they reconvened a few minutes later,
they saw that it was remarkably similar with the drawn.
So they took that as, okay, we both saw this.
Like this wasn't a hallucination, we saw it.
Now, as far as Barney was concerned though,
even through this, he was like,
this story, even though I believe we saw it,
is beyond belief.
And he was like, for our jobs
and for our reputation in the community,
we should just keep this to ourselves.
I get that.
And just have this experience with each other.
Especially that time period,
you don't want to like go stern with shit.
And of course, Betty,
who has never wanted to give in to any public pressure,
very much disagreed with this,
but she was like, this was incredible.
Like we can't just keep this to ourselves.
But she was like, you know what?
I respect and understand your concern.
And so she was like, you know what?
I'm not going to run wilds,
but can I tell my sister?
And he was like, of course you can.
The other thing is technically,
he's like a government employee.
So he's probably like,
I'm not about to talk about this shit.
And he was, they were both very active
in the civil rights community and activism.
And they didn't want this to overshadow
or take away from any of the work they were doing.
So they were worried about that, which is really sad.
It is really sad.
So she called her sister Janet
and who she called the only person
who she could tell her story to without prejudice.
Janet listened and she was like, wow, this is wild,
but I believe you.
And then she was like, okay, I'll call you back.
So after hearing her sister's story,
Janet Miller phoned her neighbor who's a physicist
and asked for advice about like anything he could tell him,
you know, but physicists,
that seems like a right person to talk to.
He's like, she's like, I don't know, you're really smart.
Yeah.
And coincidentally, the neighbor had guests over that night.
And one of them was the former chief of police
from the nearby town of Newton.
Okay.
And he said, no, this isn't crazy.
Like don't worry.
And he said all UFO sightings should be reported
to the peace air force base.
Like that's what we do.
So like tell her to report it.
Okay.
So Janet thanked him, hung up, told Betty,
you know, this is what you need to do.
And also gave her a basic experiment
that the physicist had suggested that she try.
Okay.
Now according to the physicist,
Betty was to take a compass out to the car
and walk slowly around the vehicle
and just make note of any unusual changes
in the compass as she walked.
Now Barney was like, I'm not doing that.
Like he was like, I'm done with this.
He was like, I want this behind us.
I don't even want to do this.
So he refused to go outside.
So Betty did it by herself.
And she said nothing unusual happened
as she walked around the car.
And then she said, and then she reached the trunk.
And she said, she noticed a bunch of unusual,
shiny spots on the surface.
And she said about a size of a half dollar or silver dollar.
Pretty big.
And she said she'd never seen them before.
So she placed the compass on the spots
and it would spin wildly.
And she said, as I was watching this,
I was filled with an unexplained feeling of absolute terror.
I was standing there in the rain under the street light
and telling myself, don't scream, keep calm
and don't be afraid.
Everything is all right.
I would be scared too.
So a few days later,
Betty did as her sister suggested as well
and called the peace air force base
to report the whole experience.
Barney's probably like, you better stop it.
Barney's like, Jesus.
So they gave a basic description of what they'd seen,
but he insisted they leave out the part
about seeing the humanoid figures
looking at them out the window.
Cause he was like, I don't wanna sound like.
He was like very ashamed of this.
And it was very sad.
So a few hours later, they got a call back.
Okay.
From Major Paul Henderson,
who had several follow up questions.
And later, Betty and Barney would learn
that Henderson had taken detailed notes
and submitted their description to Project Blue Book,
which is a study of unidentified flying objects
conducted by the US Air Force between 1952 and 1969.
So Major Henderson's report to Project Blue Book
is basically what we described.
It's almost exactly that.
Just it includes,
but it also included a comment
that provides a little more insight into after their trip.
In the report, he notes,
during a later conversation with Mr. Hill,
he volunteered the observation
that he did not originally intend to report the incident.
He says that on looking back,
he feels that the whole thing is incredible
and he feels somewhat foolish.
He just cannot believe that such a thing could or did happen.
So in 1961, Barney Hill was the local chairman
of the NAACP.
Okay.
And a strong proud civil rights activist
who is working tirelessly to advance
the cause of equality in the community.
And in a community that wasn't very receptive
to begin with.
So he was working fucking hard.
Like over time.
And so he was also the founding board member
of the Rockingham Community Action Program,
which is an organization that provides social
and financial support to those in need.
Wow.
And one that is still a vital part
of the social service network on the seacoast today.
Sure.
And he's also a black man from the South
who was married to a white woman in a state
where many residents were not going to accept
or we're actively speaking out against interracial marriage.
So because of all that to Barney,
the UFO incident was,
it was distracting from all his work he was doing.
And he said it was embarrassing.
And he was worried that any tabloid kind of publicity
that came along with it would tarnish the battle
that both of them were fighting for equality and dignity.
So as far as he was concerned, they'd done their duty.
They reported the sighting to the proper authorities.
They needed to move on.
And now he was like, we're moving on.
Right.
Now, Betty on the other hand was,
she wasn't like forcefully doing anything,
but she just was having trouble letting the experience go,
which I can understand that side of it too.
Yeah.
Like how could you not have trouble with that?
Exactly.
So just days after reporting the incident,
she went to the library and started checking out books
about aliens and UFOs.
And she just wanted to hear other similar experiences,
just to, I think she was also just trying to convince herself,
I didn't like have a lapse of the show.
So her motivation was definitely just like,
Betty was a stubborn gal.
Strong will.
Yeah, she was strong willed.
But also strange things had been happening
since this whole situation that she didn't know
what to do about,
even aside from those like half dollar things.
Yeah.
So about 10 days after coming home,
Betty started having nightmares about the experience.
And she would also have these really scary
early morning flashbacks.
And these flashbacks were really scary experiences
from that evening,
but ones she didn't initially remember.
Okay.
So they were like, she wasn't certain if they were real,
if they were a dream, what was happening,
but they were very vivid flashbacks.
And she said, at first I didn't tell anyone about them.
They were so weird.
Oh.
So from her reading, all the library books,
Betty eventually came across a report written
by Donald Keough,
which was, he was a former major with the US Marines
and was the director of the National Investigations Committee
on Aerial Phenomena, which is NICAP.
This is a civilian group dedicated
to investigating reports of UFOs.
Okay.
In October, 1961, Betty wrote a letter to NICAP,
told them about the experience and was just like,
I just want to let you guys know about this.
If you can just take a look into things,
see if it's similar to something else.
Yeah.
So she got a response a few weeks later
and they let her know that they would be,
that she was going to be contacted
by Boston-based NICAP member, Walter Webb.
Well, Boston.
Because they were very interested.
Right now, I'd like to give a shout out to all those people
whose job it is to hire.
From the small business owners growing their team,
to the HR directors hiring hundreds across the nation,
you have one of the toughest jobs there is.
Like it is super intense.
But guys, what if I were to tell you
that there's something that can make
your whole hiring process faster and easier?
Would you jump for joy?
Would you throw out a confetti of your own?
Yes, you would.
And guess what it's called?
It's called Zip Recruiter.
Instead of you doing all the hiring work,
Zip Recruiter works for you.
Once you post your job on Zip Recruiter,
it sends it to a hundred plus job sites.
So you reach more of the right people.
And Zip Recruiter's powerful technology
scans thousands of resumes for you to identify people
who have skills and experience that match your job.
Imagine having to physically go through hundreds
and hundreds of resumes.
No, no, no, don't even imagine that
because Zip Recruiter is already doing it for you
as we speak.
Hiring heroes let Zip Recruiter help make your job easier.
Four out of five employers who post on Zip Recruiter
get a quality candidate within the first day.
See for yourself, go to this exclusive web address
to try Zip Recruiter for free.
ZipRecruiter.com slash Morbin.
Again, that's ZipRecruiter.com slash M-O-R-B-I-D.
Zip Recruiter, the smartest way to hire.
Hey, weirdos.
We want to thank you for keeping it weird with us,
traveling back in time with us,
and journeying through the strange and very unusual with us.
I have a question.
What is it?
You love getting shit early?
I love getting shit early.
Well, good, because prime members can listen
to new episodes of Morbin one week early.
And all episodes are ad-free on Amazon Music.
And it doesn't even stop there.
You can listen to all the Morbin podcast network shows,
including Colt Leader, That's Spooky, Alone at Lunch,
and that was pretty scary,
early and ad-free on Amazon Music.
You know why you get all that early?
Why?
Because prime members get access
to the largest catalog of ad-free top podcasts,
included with prime.
So download the Amazon Music app and sign in
with your prime account to listen to Morbin,
early and ad-free today.
No, seriously, do it.
Do it!
Now, a few weeks later,
Webb did come in contact with the Hills
and recorded their story for NiCAP,
in a report titled,
A Dramatic UFO Encounter in the White Mountains
of New Hampshire.
Now, the description of the experience in Webb's report
is again, the same one that was given to Project Blue Book,
but this time, Barney allowed them to include the part
about seeing the humanoid creatures in the window.
But it was really the missing time
that was the thing that was really bothering the Hills,
like that time period.
It was like, this is all weird, yes,
but like we're more concerned what the fuck happened
in this time period that neither one of us
can remember. Right.
And it was Webb's report that brought Betty and Barney's
story to the attention of Robert Homan,
who was a former interrogator for the US Army,
who was now working for IBM in the 1960s.
Homan was really interested as well
in that missing time element of their story.
And as a former interrogator,
he knew there were plenty of ways of recovering memories
or forgotten details that could be useful.
Right. They've had to do it.
But contrary to apparently popular belief about this,
it wasn't Homan who eventually suggested hypnosis
as a way of figuring this out.
It was actually his friend and fellow NICAP member,
Jim McDonald, who suggested that.
Jim McDonald was a former member of the US military
in the CIA. Shit.
He met the Hills through Homan.
And in the later half of 1961,
he became very interested and very involved
in filling in those gaps of missing time for them.
He would go back to the scene of the encounter,
like they really went for this.
So these efforts eventually led them to a hypnosis session.
And this is when the details were uncovered.
So throughout 1962 and 63,
Betty and to a much lesser extent, Barney,
dove way deeper into the investigation
into their experience.
They were very encouraged by the members of NICAP
and former military members
who had taken intense interest in this.
So Barney was still very conscious
about how this could make them look
if the story really caught out.
So he was a little reluctant to spend time
diving into the investigation,
but he tried to help whenever he could.
Yeah.
And unfortunately, about a year after the initial experience,
Barney's health took a turn.
Oh no.
And he started experiencing debilitating headaches and nausea.
And what's worse is his primary care doctors
couldn't figure out why.
Radiation.
So believing the cause of Barney's symptoms
was probably largely psychological.
His doctor referred him to Dr. Benjamin Simon,
who was a very well-known, renowned,
and celebrated neuropsychiatrist
and had a practice in Boston's Back Bay neighborhood.
Okay.
So according to Betty's niece, Catherine Martin,
Dr. Simon, quote, was skeptical about the existence of UFOs
as extraterrestrial aircraft,
but he agreed to work with Barney because he was worried
and he truly believed that this problem
was psychological in nature.
Oh no.
So when Barney and Betty actually went to Boston
for his initial consult with Dr. Simon in December 1963,
they both told the story together and it was so elaborate
and they were so insistent on it
that Dr. Simon was like,
I'm gonna insist that you also receive treatment with me
to Betty.
Okay.
And she was like, you know what?
I wanna help Barney get better.
So I'll do it.
So sure.
Like I'll absolutely go through this.
Okay.
So he was one of those countries
leading neuropsychiatrists at the time.
Wow.
He made a name for himself with a lot of things,
but one of the things he made a name for himself with
was incorporating hypnosis into his treatment plans.
Well, that's cool.
But he was quick to let the hills know,
you may have seen stage hypnosis
or like on late night shows or on, you know,
these little things, but this is very different.
And he said he had actually pioneered the use of hypnosis
to treat PTSD and soldiers returning from World War II.
Oh, shit.
So to Simon, he said Barney's symptoms
bear to striking resemblance to the trauma related
symptoms of soldiers, which led him to believe
that this could be beneficial for both of them.
Now, beginning in late February, 1964,
they began a three week period of very intense
hypnosis sessions to try to uncover these memories.
So for the first session,
Dr. Simon was very pleased, he said,
because it seemed like Betty and Barney were
excellent subjects for this.
He said they had a great ability to fall
into a deep trance like state pretty quickly and easily.
And he put them in different soundproof rooms
so that they couldn't influence each other.
Of course.
And in the earliest sessions, both Betty and Barney
described the drive from Niagara or to Niagara
of looking for a motel of Barney's apprehension
because he was very uncertain of the civil rights
situation in Canada.
So he was a little nervous.
Okay.
And in the second session, Simon moved forward in time
and started asking about their experiences
while in Niagara Falls.
And it was during the second session
that Betty and Barney's descriptions of events
kind of differed a little bit.
With Betty stated they got lost after asking for directions
and Barney stated that he misread the map.
Okay.
Insignificant difference in the grand scheme of things.
Yeah, I don't think that's like a big thing.
So through the first few sessions with Dr. Simon,
it was clear that Betty and Barney's accounts
of the trip differed in a lot of very insignificant ways.
This is kind of hinting at the unreliability of hypnosis
because emotions factor into our perception and memories.
Of course, yeah.
Everybody perceives things differently.
And this is what's interesting
because they definitely had different priorities
and different focuses on this trip.
And I think it really colored their experience
because in the transcripts of Barney's type hypnosis sessions,
it's clear that the trip to Canada
or anywhere at that time was really stressful for him
and dominated by anxiety and concerns over how them
as an interracial couple would be received
in unfamiliar parts of the USA and Canada.
I hate that he had to even go through that
while he was on his honeymoon.
Yeah, like that was his main concern.
I heard that anybody has to go through that.
And in Betty's accounts,
hers are focused on the logistics of travel
and the anxieties about reaching their destination.
Right.
This is, I don't believe their inconsistencies
and discrepancies are like deceit on any of them.
It's because they're very insignificant
and not like the deceit wouldn't make sense.
And it's not the details of like the incitement
or whatever.
I think it's just that there's obvious differences
in their priorities and fears and worries during this trip.
And it comes out during hypnosis.
Right.
Which is interesting.
Yeah.
Now by late March, Dr. Simon had done a ton of sessions
to establish a baseline.
Okay.
And he was finally ready to go into the experience.
So Betty and Barney,
at first both described the scenario
the exact same way that they did to the authorities
at Peace Air Force Base and ICAP.
And still under hypnosis.
So that's cool.
And like interesting.
And Barney said while the craft was following down the highway,
following them down the highway,
he said, I began to feel very alarmed
and hoped for some traffic.
So again, I wanted other people to be around.
Great.
Now when he came to the part of the story
where they had rounded Indian head,
Barney became visibly distressed
and he actually asked to be woken up.
And Dr. Simon assured him, you're safe.
You're in my office.
Nothing's going to happen to you.
Like please continue.
Right.
And so Barney said in a very anxious tone,
it's right over my head.
God, what is it?
And I try to maintain control
so Betty cannot tell I'm scared.
God, I'm scared.
Oh, that feels like heartbreaking.
Now clearly upset at this point,
he became screaming uncontrollably.
Oh my God.
And then became hysterical
and needed several minutes to compose himself
before they went on.
Holy shit.
Did he have to get woken up?
And well, I think they composed him while asleep
but then he continued and he said this,
this is the transcript.
This is ridiculous.
Oh, it's huge.
Oh my God, I can see it.
It's there.
And there are lights.
Oh geez, I don't believe this.
I don't believe this.
I don't believe this.
It's huge.
And there are people there
and they're looking back at me.
Oh my God, help me.
If there is a God, help me.
Coming closer, I'm coming closer.
There's a man up there
and he's not gonna let me go away.
Oh, it's big, 80 feet.
Look at it.
Oh, look at it.
Two red lights.
They're on the side of it.
It's like a pancake.
It looks, I'm not gonna say it.
I don't believe flying saucers are,
I'm not gonna say it.
I don't ever wanna say that word again.
So stressed even under hypnosis.
I know, I'm like, oh my goodness.
And he struggled to continue
but eventually composed himself enough
to describe the feeling of panic he felt
when he said the humanoid creatures,
when he saw those humanoid creatures.
He said he saw one man
who he believed to be the leader.
He was round-faced and reminded him
of a red-headed Irishman.
He said he was a not too big man
dressed in a military style cap
and black shiny jacket
with a scarf dangling over his left shoulder.
Barney also said he noticed the man
had almond-shaped eyes, which he'd never seen before.
And that the eyes conveyed a terrifying menace,
the likes of which he had experienced,
but he said only with some of the worst people
he had ever encountered.
Geez.
And later he remarked,
the man in the black shiny jacket reminded me of a Nazi.
Oh, wow.
That's really scary.
In the session that followed,
Dr. Simon pressed Barney on what happened next.
And he said that they tried to get away
but encountered a roadblock
that he'd previously described as a fiery red ball.
So the transcript says,
I made a turn and I never knew this.
I don't know why I had to make that turn and I was lost.
I saw I was on a strange area of the highway
that I'd never been before.
And I was being stopped.
I was very uncomfortable,
but somehow the eyes of the men in the craft
were telling me that I should be calm
and I would not be harmed and to relax.
And I saw those men coming towards me.
Oh.
In her sessions,
Betty's recollection was very similar.
Okay.
And to the dreams that she was having after they got home.
So in her sessions,
she described watching as the men emerged from the craft,
took hold of Barney
and led almost carrying him into the craft
and then came back to get her.
And she said,
they had him under some kind of control
and he couldn't get away.
And she said, when they returned for her,
she remembered walking voluntarily to the ship
with the men.
She's like, my man is in there.
Yeah.
She was like, I'll go get him, right?
So she said,
I was more or less walking under my own power.
And then she said as we near the door,
that she began fighting the men
until they got a hold of her and marched her inside.
Okay.
She said, they bruised me a little bit.
I had torn my dress in the struggle.
It had a built-in lining
and I was struggling so badly
that the stitching on the inside of the dress
had been torn out.
So in places it was hanging down.
Oh, wow.
Now inside the ship,
Betty described being taken
to an examination room with Barney,
which he described as being like a hospital operating room.
And in Betty's recollection,
she said her clothing were removed
and they began examining her body.
She said,
and this is gonna get like kind of graphic
just to let everybody know.
Okay.
I could feel them turning me over
and putting something in my rectum.
Oh, God.
She said, I felt it go in very easily
and then it was withdrawn.
As they examined her body and collected specimens,
she said, nothing hurts.
She said she could hear them humming in a low tone.
And she said,
she believed they were communicating to each other that way.
It sounded like a conversation, but hums.
Okay.
And later Barney also described here
seeing the men communicate with hums.
Okay.
And he said,
but he saw them open their mouth to make the noise.
She hadn't seen them
when they were communicating like that.
Sure.
So like Betty, Barney also recalled
being proked and prodded by the captors.
And he said,
I have the most peculiar feeling
that something was placed against my genital parts.
And he said,
it was more as if my parts were in a solution
of something that was there
that had substance to it,
that had body to it.
So he claimed that the men took many samples
from every orifice of his body.
Wow.
Leaving him with the feeling of having been touched.
So in the final exam,
Betty says the men performed what she understood
to be kind of a pregnancy test
by inserting a large needle into her navel.
And she said,
I would say the needle was four inches long,
six inches maybe.
And she said there was a tube attached to it
and they didn't leave it in very long,
just a second.
What?
Now, once it was removed,
she was left alone in the room with the man
they believed to be the leader.
Okay.
And she started,
she said,
we had a conversation.
So according to Betty,
the leader gave her a book to read.
And she said,
the text went up and down.
It was different.
It had short lines and some were very thin
and some were medium and some were heavy.
They had some dots
and they had some straight lines and curved lines.
And she asked the leader where they had come from.
And the man asked how much she knew about the universe
and then got up and directed her attention
to a large map on the wall.
And she said,
the map looked like what she assumed were stars
or like the galaxy of some sort.
But she said very different from any star map I've ever seen.
It doesn't look like what you are picturing.
But she said something about it
felt like that's what it was.
Yeah.
Context clues.
And the leader asked Betty
where Betty thought she was on the map.
What?
And she laughed and said,
I have no idea.
And he said,
if you don't know where you are,
there wouldn't be any point in telling you where I am.
What?
Which is like chilling.
That's so, I don't even understand.
She's like, I could point to you where I'm from,
but if you don't know where you are right now,
then what's the point?
So creepy.
And I was like, okay.
Okay, Mr. Depth.
Yeah, for real.
Like that was like philosophical.
Look at you little hipster.
I was like, I liked that.
But according to Betty,
she spoke with him for a little more time
about various aspects of human life on earth.
Until finally the conversation ended
and Betty and Barney were allowed to dress
and were escorted back to their car by two men.
And they regained what I guess could be described
as consciousness at that point.
And we're just driving along route three towards Portsmouth.
Weird.
So the whole thing took like a couple hours, I guess.
I guess like the time just like jumped.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Third of ads interrupting your gripping investigations.
Good news, ad-free listening on Amazon Music
is included with your prime membership.
Ads shouldn't be the scariest thing
about true crime podcasts.
To start listening,
download the Amazon Music app
or visit amazon.com slash truecrime ad-free.
That's amazon.com slash truecrime ad-free
to catch up on the latest episodes without the ads.
So from the moment he began working with the Hills,
Dr. Simon was very clear that he had little,
if any, interest in UFOs.
Wow.
He was entirely motivated by his desire
to just help Barney Hill relieve his stress symptoms.
Yeah.
So when he was asked questions later,
like years later about this whole experience,
he was very reluctant to engage in anything
that could treat UFOs as a serious subject.
He was like, eh, like in the introduction to a book
about the Hills experience called The Interrupted Journey,
he wrote, the charisma of hypnosis has tended to foster
the belief that hypnosis is the magical
and loyal road to the truth.
In one sense, this is so,
but it must be understood that hypnosis
is the pathway to the truth
as it is felt and understood by the patient.
The truth is what he believes to be the truth.
And this may or not be consistent
with the ultimate non-personal truth.
Okay.
So when the hypnosis session was done,
Betty and Barney continued their relationship
with Dr. Simon through more traditional therapy as well.
Over a year actually.
Wow.
They were meeting in correspondence for many years after.
Like they kept in touch, they were,
they kept the relationship.
Nice.
And I think Dr. Simon is like, listen,
this is what was told.
The transcripts are true.
They both had genuine reactions.
Their emotions about it were genuine.
They were in different rooms when they told these stories.
And they line up almost perfectly.
And he said, and he's saying, they are not deceiving us.
This could very well be the truth.
Like the absolute non-personal truth reality.
Yeah.
Or it could be that both of them
truly believe that this happened
and that this is what they experienced
in some way, shape or form.
Whether it be whatever, you know what I mean?
Like this could be just their truth, but we will not know.
Like that's, all we know is that
they both came out with these things
under hypnosis in separate rooms
with very real emotions attached to them
and no sign of deceit.
That's crazy.
Which is like, that's really all you can take out of that.
And be like, that's pretty incredible.
It is.
I think that's the perfect word for it, incredible.
And honestly, this probably would have been
the end of their experience with like the world of UFOs
and alien abductions,
like them going through the hypnosis session.
But an unexpected newspaper item
in the Boston Traveler in the fall of 1965
took them out of the ordinary citizens
who just went through this
and dealt with it on their own kind of thing
to like the biggest names in the UFO community.
Yeah.
So in November, 1963,
the way it happened is really shitty too.
I feel bad for them.
They didn't seek this out.
I hate that.
So Betty and Barney were invited
by the two state UFO study group
to present their story to the group's members
at a private event in Quincy, Massachusetts.
The group had found out about the hills through NICAP
and had reached out to Betty
at the time when she was very desperate for answers.
So she was like, I'll participate to this like private event.
Oh no.
You're investigators, like you're all just,
like it's the same kind of thing as NICAP.
Like this is, it's private.
It's private.
They're just trying to understand this.
They're not here for publicity.
And what sucks is that she didn't know
and a lot of other people didn't know
that a reporter for the Boston Traveler, John Latrell,
was in the audience that night
and recorded the entire presentation.
Isn't that illegal?
It's a real ship move and it gets shittier
because you can't record people without their consent.
I don't know what the situation is there.
But two years later in the fall of 65,
Latrell was writing an article
about another reported UFO incident in Exeter, New Hampshire,
which is known as the Exeter incident.
And he reached out to the hills for comment
on this, like talking about this other incident.
And he said he wanted to include their story
in the article to kind of beef it up.
And they still wanted to remain anonymous a little bit.
They were like, we dealt with this on our own.
We shared our story with the, you know,
with the private groups
so they could do their investigation to help them.
But we're not looking to be in newspapers and shit.
So they declined to speak with him.
They were like, no, we would like,
and they said, the only thing we will ask is,
do not include us in the article at all, fair.
We don't want our incident in there.
We don't want any of it.
So, yeah, and Betty said, I do not know.
This is what she had said.
I do not know what effect publicity would have
on Barney's position in so many of the things he is doing.
That's what she had said to him.
I don't want publicity because it's gonna ruin
what he's done for the community.
And that's been his number one thing
throughout this whole process or short deal.
Being a slimy fuck and ignoring the hills request
to remain anonymous, which was very black and white,
like literally told him, do not include us in that.
He still did.
LaTrail published the article in the Boston Traveler
on October 25th, 1965.
And he frequently referenced the hills experience
and quoted heavily from Betty's presentation
at the conference in Quincy.
How did he get away with that?
Not only that, it also very much trivialized
and sensationalized their story for like his own game.
Yeah.
And it also caused them to seriously question
who the fuck they could trust anymore.
They were like, what the fuck?
We told you not to include us.
Cause aside from that presentation in 1963
to the private group and talking to the government agents
they talked about with it, Betty had only told her sister
and maybe like one or two close friends.
That's right, it was private.
So the fact that he was doing this felt like a betrayal
on like a massive front.
What an asshole.
So the article in the Boston Traveler prompted
a ton of calls from reporters all around New England,
all wanting comments and interviews.
And Betty recalled, I took the newspaper
and locked myself in the bathroom.
I was stunned, unbelieving.
I noted it was going to be a series to run for five days.
Oh no.
Now the next day when she went to work, Betty,
to work at the New Hampshire division of welfare,
she was met at the door by flurry of reporters
all trying to get a comment.
And later when Betty and Barney arrived home after work
the phone was ringing off the hook.
And they just wanted to like go home with their lives.
Yeah, they did their due diligence.
They did everything they were asked to do.
Right.
They didn't seek this.
And the days after that they were approached
by strangers everywhere they went asking questions.
Some people wanted autographs.
Oh, that's so weird.
And it sucks, it's so sad.
And it's like all of this, they had no way of knowing
that doing that private speech,
just to people who they were trying to help
and not gain any publicity that it was going to have
the potential to compromise their jobs
and undermine all the civil rights work
that Barney and Betty had done up until this point.
So seeing no other option at this moment,
Betty and Barney were like, all right,
we got to try to get in front of this now.
It's out.
Right.
So now we got to take control of it.
So they said LaTrell's article included their story
but also quoted them without their permission.
So that was a series of misrepresentation.
Right.
And they have controlling that.
And it misrepresented their experience
and it misrepresented them as people.
So they were like, you know what, we'll go out
and we'll tell the story and we'll be like,
because now we have to.
We have to now.
So on the evening of November 30th, 1965,
they held their own event at the Garrison Inn
in Dover, New Hampshire,
which was only a few miles from their home in Portsmouth.
And they talked to a crowd of more than 600 people
who attended.
Oh my God.
And we're probably so nervous.
Yeah.
And Betty opened up the program
by giving a brief overview of the history of UFO sightings.
I love her.
She said, up until the 19th century,
there have been over 300 scientific recordings of UFOs
and this rate has continued up until the present time.
And as evidence, Betty shared stories of sailors
and other respectable citizens who reported the sightings,
including the recent sighting in Exeter
that had started this whole thing.
So with the introduction, after the introduction,
Betty and Barney began the presentation part.
And they told their entire version of the events.
Barney said, I thought it was probably a helicopter,
but I heard no familiar whirring of the propellers.
I then became quite apprehensive,
got back into the car and continued driving southward.
He finished telling the story
and then the audience just went nuts asking questions,
wanting to know whether they appeared threatening,
hostile, like very normal questions.
Sure.
They answered they did not feel like at first they were scared,
but they didn't come off as hostile or threatening
and they didn't hurt them.
And the audience was like,
were like, did you suffer any ill effects from this?
Like, were you hurt?
Did you, you know, and Barney said, no, we feel pretty fine.
And we both felt like we had just been in contact
with something and they said, alien,
it's a very, very hard feeling to describe.
So for Betty and Barney, so that worked out well
because people were asking genuine questions
and respected the story.
So for Betty and Barney,
who were very anxious telling their story publicly,
the overwhelmingly positive response from the audience
was definitely validation for their experience.
They deserved that.
And this did begin a lifelong involvement
in the pursuit of evidence of UFOs
and extraterrestrial.
It's always hard to say.
It's to earth, it's really hard to say.
In the years that followed,
their experience became, you know, a popular book,
The Interrupted Journey,
which was adapted into a television film,
the UFO incident, starring James Earl Jones
and Estelle Parsons as Betty and Barney.
Love.
There were books, movies, lots of media
that followed all that craziness.
Now, unfortunately, on February 25th, 1969,
Barney Hill died unexpectedly from a cerebral hemorrhage.
Oh my God.
He was only 46 years old.
Oh my God.
They only got that much time together.
That's awful.
And what's even worse is despite everything he had done
in his life for the civil rights movement,
his community, his obituary in the Portsmouth Herald
focused almost entirely on the UFO incident.
That's really shitty.
The opening paragraphs describes his as a Portsmouth postman
who maintained he and his wife were taken captive
aboard a UFO in the White Mountains.
It's like, okay.
He did like a gazillion other wonderful things
for his community.
That's so shitty.
Now, he died only a year after Betty's father died.
Oh God, for Betty.
And a few months after their beloved Dash and Delcey died.
No.
So she was devastated and it took months
before she could even function.
Yeah.
But her lifelong friend, Marianne Franklin from college,
said she always suspected that Betty
never stopped grieving for her soulmate.
Like, just ruined my heart out.
Ruin me.
They were soulmates.
They absolutely were.
Now, in the years after Barney died,
Betty threw herself into the world of UFO stuff.
You know, speaking at conferences,
she gave interviews, she investigated,
she was like, I'm gonna find answers.
Yeah, well, you probably spend the rest of your life
wondering what the fuck happened to me.
But she also maintained her full-time job
as a social worker for the New Hampshire Department
of Welfare.
Wow.
And by the late 1990s, at that point,
she was like, you know, and I'll just fade
into the background and the UFO stuff.
Like, I'm gonna gracefully bow out
and just let someone else take that over.
Yeah.
And she was just kind of done with the attention
at that point.
And so she said, and you know what?
She said, I'm no longer really consumed with questions
about the universe.
So I feel like very content.
Peaceful.
And so she was like, I decided to transfer
into a new hobby, which is family genealogy.
Very cool.
And she said she was just really interested
that some of her ancestors met the Pilgrims.
Cool.
Now, on October 17th, 2004, Betty Hill died
from lung cancer in the Portsmouth home
she lived in since the 1950s.
The one that she bought for a dollar back after.
Bought back for a dollar.
She was 85 years old.
Hell yeah.
And although Betty and Barney Hill
will definitely be remembered by most
for this fantastic tale that occurred in September, 1961.
It is very important to remember them
as also hugely important in their,
in civil rights movements, in their community, inequality.
Of course.
Like they committed their entire lives
to helping them to that.
Like that should be also right up there
with this wild incident that happened.
Perhaps above it, one might say.
Exactly.
So that is the story of Betty and Barney Hill.
What a wild story.
I believe them.
I believe something happened, man.
I believe them.
Yeah.
I believe something happened.
That shit is so scary.
It'll be interesting to see what you guys believe.
And just be nice about it.
Especially now.
So much more shit is coming out about.
Yeah.
Aliens.
And if you don't believe it, that's fine.
Just don't.
Yeah, just don't be mean.
Don't be mean to people who do
or people who are interested in it.
Yeah, exactly.
There's plenty of things that people are interested in
that you're not and vice versa.
Sometimes the internet can make it like
if you believe certain things,
then you're a piece of dog shit
and I'm gonna shit all over you for it.
Don't do that.
Don't be that person on the internet.
Don't be that guy.
Have important discussions about it
because this is interesting.
It is interesting.
I agree.
And Betty and Barney Hill for life.
I love their love.
Yeah.
Wow.
Yeah.
Well, with that, we hope you keep listening.
And we hope you keep it weird.
But it's weird that you get abducted by aliens.
Yeah.
Don't keep it that weird.
So we keep it that weird.
Bye.
Hey, Prime members.
You can listen to Morbid early and ad-free on Amazon Music.
Download the Amazon Music app today.
Or you can listen ad-free with Wondery Plus
and Apple Podcasts.
Before you go, tell us about yourself
by completing a short survey at Wondery.com slash survey.
Hey, weirdos.
Before we get back to our regularly scheduled programming,
I wanted to let you know that Wondery's shocking true crime
podcast over my dead body is back for a fourth season
that will literally give you literal goosebumps.
The newest season covers the story of Mike Williams.
It was Mike's sixth wedding anniversary
when he set off on a hunting trip
into the gator infested swamps of North Florida.
He figured he'd be back in time to take his wife Denise
out to celebrate, but he didn't come back.
Friends and loved ones feared he met his fate through bad luck
in a group of hungry alligators,
leaving his young family behind.
Except that's not what happened at all.
And after 17 years, a kidnapping,
and the uncovering of a secret love triangle,
the truth would finally be revealed.
Enjoy Over My Dead Body, Gun Hunting,
on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.
You can listen to Over My Dead Body early
and ad-free on Wondery Plus.
Get started with your free trial at wondery.com slash plus.
Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.
Shop Morbid coffee at www.deadsledcoffee.com and the Morbid Zodiac Mug Collection at www.wonderyshop.com
In the fall of 1961, Betty and Barney Hill took a trip to Niagara Falls. On the drive back from Canada to their home in Portsmouth, NH, the Hills claimed their trip was interrupted when, after stopping to investigate a strange flying object hovering above the car, the couple was abducted by what Barney later described as “beings [that] were somehow not human.”
Thank you to the wondrous Dave White for Research Assistance!
References:
Friedman, Stanton, and Kathleen Marden. 2007. Captured! The Betty and Barney Hill UFO Experience. Red Wheel : Newburyport, MA.
Palmer, Barry. 1965. "Portsmouth couple wes 600 persons here." Nashua Telegraph, December 1: 3.
Public Broadcasting Sysetm. 1997. Nova: Kidnapped by UFOs? Boston, MA, April 1.
Robinson, J. Dennis. 1999. "The Grounding of Betty Hill." The Portsmouth Herald, February 5.
—. 2008. The UFO romance of Betty and Barney Hill. Accessed August 17, 2023. http://www.seacoastnh.com/the-ufo-romance-of-betty-and-barney-hill/?showall=1.
The Portsmouth Herald. 1969. "Barney Hill dies in city at age 46." The Portsmouth Herald, February 26: 3.
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.