Betty and Barney Hill: White Mountains, New Hampshire, September 19, 1961

​

            Many early researchers into the mystery of UFOs had distinctive lines of belief. It is in the realm of possibility that someone could see and report a UFO, but it is impossible that the alien beings flying the UFO would interact with humans, and certainly not take them against their will. This line of distinction would forever disappear because of one flagship case of alien abduction, the Betty and Barney Hill encounter. Their journey into the unknown began in New Hampshire in September 1961, and would forever change the course of Ufology.

​

            Barney Hill, a 39-year-old man, worked for the postal service, and Betty, a 41-year-old, was a supervisor for the child welfare department. Because of Barney's ulcer problems, the two had embarked on a vacation into Canada. On September 19, they began their journey back home. At about 10:00 PM, Barney, who was driving, saw a star which seemed to move erratically. He told Betty about it, and they both kept tabs on it as they drove along. They were just north of North Woodstock when Barney noticed that the star was moving in a very unusual manner. When they arrived at Indian Head, they stopped their car and got out to have a better look. Using binoculars, Barney zoomed in what he thought was a star. This was no star! He could make out different colors of lights and see several rows of windows around a flying craft. The object moved closer, and now Barney could actually see people inside the ship. Was this strange flying object being piloted by humans?

​

            The next thing the Hills recalled was being frightened by the unusual flying object, and the occupants inside of it. Barney scurried back to the car where Betty was waiting. They jumped into the car and raced down the highway. Looking for the object, they found that it was now gone. As they drove on, they began to hear a beeping sound... once, then again. Although they had been driving only a couple of minutes, they were 35 miles down the road!

​

            Betty and Barney finally arrived home safely. After seeing the UFO, the rest of their trip home had been uneventful. They were tired from their journey and immediately went to bed. When Betty awoke the next day, she telephoned Janet, her sister, and told her about the strange object they had seen. Janet urged her to call Pease Air Force Base, and tell them what she and Barney had seen. After hearing Betty's report, Major Paul W. Henderson told her: "The UFO was also confirmed by our radar."

​

            They were trying to put the incident behind them, but soon Betty began to have nightmares. In her dreams, she would see her and her husband being physically forced into some type of craft. Before long, two writers heard about the Hill's story and contacted them. The Hills, with the aid of the writers, compiled a time chart of the events of September 19. There could be no doubt that the couple had lost about two hours of time somewhere along the way.

​

            As news of the UFO sighting became more common place, the Hills were forced to hide from reporters as much as possible. Because of the missing time element, and the desire to know what, if anything, had happened during that time, they decided to contact a psychiatrist. They decided on Boston psychiatrist and neurologist, Dr. Benjamin Simon, well-known in his field. He would come to play an important role in the Hill abduction story. His suggestion for treatment was regressive hypnosis, which would hopefully unlock the memories of the two missing hours of time. His sessions began with Betty, and soon Barney followed. After six months of treatment, it was Simon's opinion that the Hills had been abducted and taken aboard an unknown craft. Regressive hypnosis, a controversial treatment, is often used to unlock lost memories. It has been used in a number of other alien abduction cases, including The Buff Ledge Abduction and The Allagash Abductions.

 

           Some of the memories that were uncovered from the Hills included that their automobile had stalled on the road. The UFO had landed in the middle of the road, and alien beings came to their car, carrying both Betty and Barney to the UFO. They were subjected to various medical and scientific tests. Before the aliens released them, they were hypnotized and ordered to keep their capture a secret. During the intensive regression sessions, the Hills would describe their captors as "... bald-headed alien beings, about five foot tall, with grayish skin, pear shaped heads and slanting cat-like eyes." This description very much described what would become known as the "grays," now a standard description for the small beings with large heads, small mouths, and little or no ears, and hairless. Also, details were released about the actual procedures performed on the Hills. Both physical and mental experiments were conducted. Samples were taken of their skin, hair, and nails. Betty had gynecological testing, and Barney reluctantly revealed that sperm samples were taken from him.

     

       Scientists at the time discredited a map drawn by Betty which outlined the exact location of where she claimed the extra-terrestrials originated. Experts claimed there was no constellation similar to the drawing and that it bore no resemblance to any known formation at the time. Now years later, one statistician has remarkably argued that the unusual alignment of key sun-like stars in the drawing, which mirrors the Zeta Reticuli could never have happened by chance and that Betty WAS a victim of an alien abduction.

​

Travis Walton Abduction: Arizona's Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest, November 5th, 1975

​

            This baffling UFO case began on November 5th, 1975, in northeastern Arizona's Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest. A logging crew of 7 men were working on a government contract, clearing forest. The men loaded into a single pickup truck leaving work for the day. As they started their journey home they saw, not far from the road, a luminous object, shaped like a flattened disc. All of the men agreed that Travis Walton, captivated by the sight, left the truck to get a closer look. While gazing up in awe at the object, suddenly a brilliant, bluish light struck him and threw him to the ground some distance away. This event caused the other crew members to flee the scene in fear for their lives. After arguing among themselves, they decided to go back and see if they could help Travis. Returning to the scene, they found no trace of the craft, or Travis.

   

         A personal friend of Travis', Mike Rogers, was the crew foreman, and driver of the truck. According to Rogers, as the men fled the scene, he looked back and saw a luminous object lift out of the forest, and disappear toward the horizon. Rogers and the other five workers eventually would take a lie detector test. The men passed the examination, save for one inconclusive, and soon the case exploded into the national spotlight. The six witnesses, Allen Dalis, Dwayne Smith, John Goulette, Kenneth Peterson, Mike Rogers, and Steve Pierce, of this controversial case, described the craft in personal, yet similar terms. Rogers' description depicts the craft as a "large, glowing object hovering in the air below the treetops about 100 feet away."

​

            The details of the event quoted from the investigator's report are as follows: As Walton approached on foot across the clearing, the "UFO began to wobble or rock slightly," and then emitted a "bluish light from the machine... a blue ray shot out of the bottom of that thing and hit him all over," "that ray was the brightest thing I've ever seen." This light sent Walton "backward through the air ten feet," "hurled through the air in a backwards motion, falling on the ground on his back," "flying -- like he'd touched a live wire." Walton reappeared five days later, confused and scared, with fleeting memories of alien entities, and descriptions of the inside of their craft. He was also subsequently subjected to a number of polygraph examinations. The Travis Walton event would soon become the very first abduction case to be given serious consideration by many credible scientists.

​

The Allagash Case: Allagash Waterway, Maine, August 1976

​

            The Allagash Waterway is a series of lakes and canals in the breathtaking mountains of Maine. This lovely area would be the site of one of the most discussed and best documented alien abduction cases on record. The Allagash incident would involve multiple witnesses, four to be exact, twin brothers Jack and Jim Weiner, along with their friends Chuck Rak and Charlie Foltz. The four men had met while studying at the Massachusetts College of Art, and they were all beginning their respective careers. The four artists would turn into sportsmen for what they thought would be an enjoyable, relaxing trip. Their trip to Allagash would be memorable, but not for the reasons they had hoped for.

​

            It would be in August 1976, that the four men began their vacation, and part way through their canoeing, they reached Eagle Lake, padding to its mouth to do some fishing. Not having any luck, and running low on food, they decided to try some night fishing. Before leaving the bank, they built an extremely large campfire to be a landmark light from the water. After a time on the lake, the four suddenly saw a light... a light that seemed much brighter than a star. The glowing orb was hovering over the trees a couple of hundred yards away. The object changed colors as it moved back and forth; red, then green, then a whitish yellow. The massive object was estimated to be about 80 feet in diameter. The object slowly moved across the tops of the trees along the bank, and as it came closer to the four fishermen, Charlie Foltz signaled an SOS with his flashlight. Immediately, the object silently moved toward the canoe.

​

            A guarded curiosity now turned into a frantic dash for the bank. As they paddled as fast as they could, a hollow light came from the object, engulfing the men and their canoe. The next thing the men knew, they were standing on the bank again. Charlie pointed his flashlight toward the object again, but this time it rose up and out of their view, as it showed its beam once more before disappearing into the Allagash sky. Wondering what had transpired, the men were shocked to see their once glowing fire to be nothing but smoldering ashes. This should have taken several hours, and the four friends wondered, "What happened to the last couple of hours?"

​

            Very little was said as the four men packed up their gear and went back to the everyday grinds of their respective careers. In time the night of the UFO would begin to have a profound effect on their lives. Jack Weiner was the first to start having nightmares. In these dreams, he saw beings with long necks, and large heads. He saw the beings examining his arm, while Jim, Chuck, and Charlie sat on a nearby bench, not able to intervene. The beings had large metallic glowing eyes with no lids, and their hands were insect-like, with four fingers. The other three men were experiencing very similar dreams, with short, mental clips of that awful night on the lake.

​

            In 1988, out of curiosity, Jim Weiner attended a UFO conference hosted by Raymond Fowler to whom he related his strange encounter. The investigator was especially impressed by the fact that it was a multiple witness occurrence. Fowler suggested to Jim that he and the others undergo regressive hypnosis. After the sessions, it was revealed that all four of the men had been abducted, and subjected to humiliating physical examinations, including the taking of skin and fluid samples. The men's description of the aliens was also consistent, and being artists, they were able to make detailed sketches of the entities, the craft, and the examining instruments. Chuck Rak added that the aliens' test area was similar to a vet's office, with a silvery table. He also related a strange fact: he had much difficulty in focusing on the aliens. When he tried, he could not put an exact image to them. He compared it to trying to tune in a fuzzy radio station. After undergoing psychiatric examinations, all four of the men were deemed to be mentally stable, and they all passed lie-detector tests. All of the information gleaned from the detailed hypnotic sessions, and investigative reports provide strong evidence that something "not of this world" was encountered by these four men on the Allagash Waterway in 1976. This case is still considered unexplainable by conventional scientific means.

 

Ariel School in Ruwa, Zimbabwe, September 14, 1994

​

            On 14th September, 1994, a UFO streaked across the sky over Southern Africa. Two days later, something landed in a schoolyard in Ruwa, Zimbabwe, with three or four things beside it, according to journalist Cynthia Hind. This was witnessed by 62 schoolchildren, who had little or no exposure to TV or popular press accounts of UFOs. Cynthia Hind interviewed them the day after the encounter and made them draw pictures of what they had seen. They described seeing a disc-shaped craft land behind the school during morning break time. Some of them reported seeing two beings approach the group. There were multiple sightings of unusual aerial phenomena by thousands of Zimbabweans during this same time period.

​

            The children were interviewed immediately after the event by Tim Leach, BBC Bureau Chief for Zimbabwe, and then by several other news agencies. Noted Harvard psychiatrist Dr. John Mack traveled to Zimbabwe to interview the children in depth due to the unusual nature of this event. After exhaustive investigation, Dr. Mack concluded that the children were not making up the story. Twenty years later, Randall Nickerson interviewed the now grown children about the Ariel School event. What struck him most was the sincerity of the original interviews and the consistency of their testimony 20 years later.

​

​

​