The First Alien Abduction
Barney and Betty Hill Twist the UFO Mythology
The first "documented" alien abduction story establishes the classic structure of such stories.
One enduring thread of American popular culture during the last half of the twentieth century was a strong interest in unidentified flying objects, or UFOs. Starting in 1947 in Washington State, the stories began as simple sightings of strange things in the sky. The 1950s saw so-called "contactees" who claimed they'd been taken on rides aboard alien spacecraft, warned against nuclear holocaust, and treated kindly by aliens who looked like us.
Barney and Betty Hill: Contactees
Barney and Betty Hill were also taken aboard an alien spacecraft, according to their story, but their captors did not look like us-- and the Hills were not treated kindly. The incident allegedly occurred one night in 1961, on a lonely stretch of New England highway. The Hills were bothered by the fact that they got home a couple hours later than they should have. Barney, in fact, was so bothered that they went to a Boston psychiatrist, Dr. Benjamin Simon. Dr. Simon hypnotized Barney in an attempt to help Barney remember that missing time. Dr. Simon also hypnotized Betty, as a check on Barney's story. Both Hills told essentially the same story of being abducted by small alien creatures and undergoing physical examinations. The Hills' story became public in the mid-1960s in the book, The Interrupted Journey. Most subsequent alien abduction narratives followed the same pattern.
UFO skeptic argue the similarity is due to human suggestibility, not alien methodology. After the Hills' story became known, skeptics say, anyone who wanted to be abducted by aliens, subconsciously or otherwise, "knew" what aliens were like. Or, if a person had an experience that was out of the ordinary, that might be interpreted within the alien context. That could also explain the stories surrounding Roswell. Though that incident allegedly occurred in 1947, it did not burst into the public mind until roughly 1980-- ample time to borrow little gray aliens from the Hills.
Witnesses
Of course, just as the UFO community struggles to develop an overarching theory of the phenomenon, skeptics also fail to account for every reported incident. The more complex narratives involving several witnesses might be particularly resistant to explanations focused on a single factor. The Hills' story involves two witnesses who seemingly corroborated each other's story, but no other evidence was clearly relevant. There are other, singular incidents, such as Canada's Shag Harbor in 1967, for example, that seem to have substance beyond human testimony.
Just to note-- Betty and Barney Hill were an interracial couple in America at a time such unions were not necessarily accepted gracefully by everyone. What role, if any, that may have played in the couple telling a story in which they were powerless, abused victims us beyond the scope of this article.
Kathleen Marden, a niece of the Hills, and Stanton Friedman, a prominent UFO researcher, have recently published a book about the Hills' experience. The book is entitled Captured. To begin to understand the UFO phenomenon, the story of Betty and Barney Hill is one key.
