New age: Details about 'Hill Abduction'
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Betty and Barney Hill claimed to have been abducted by extraterrestrials on September 16, 1961. Their story, commonly called the Hill Abduction and occasionally the Zeta Reticuli Incident, was the first widely publicized UFO abduction report.
The incidentThat evening while driving back to their Portsmouth, New Hampshire area home from a vacation in Canada, the Hills spotted a light in the sky that seemed to be following them. They reported that the object came closer, and was clearly a craft. Barney was concerned that the occupants intended to kill or capture them, so he stopped to retrieve a revolver from the car's trunk. He then claimed to have seen human-like creatures peering at him through windows on the craft. He drove away quickly, but the Hills later reported so-called "lost time": several hours seemed to have passed without their recollection, and they were at a location different from where they had stopped the car. Betty was especially troubled by the incident and, in the weeks and months afterward, read a number of UFO-related books. In late 1963, the couple sought hypnosis, hoping it might help them recover their memories of the missing time. Hypnosis and star mapUnder hypnosis sessions in 1963, the Hills recounted what later became the standard UFO abduction template: They seemed hypnotized or paralyzed, and were unable to resist the apparent medical examinations they were forced to undergo. Their abductors were described as more or less human, though with very large eyes and small noses. Barney described their clothing as resembling military uniforms. While on the craft, Betty reported seeing a hologram-like star map, which she assumed depicted the craft's home planet. She later sketched this map from memory. Marjorie Fish, an astronomy enthusiast — unconnected to the Hills — analysed Betty's sketch and concluded it could have depicted Zeta Reticuli. Astronomy printed Fish's analysis, and the subject was a regular feature of their letters to the editor column for nearly a year, with a range of opinions (ranging from pro to con) offered. Carl Sagan argued that the map was so vague and ambiguous that any star system or constellation could be matched to it with little difficulty. Some have dubbed the Hills' account The Zeta Reticuli Incident because of this, but most Ufologists prefer the Hill Abduction or some similar term. Interrupted JourneyThe 1966 publication of Interrupted Journey, by John G. Fuller, details much of the Hills' claims. Excerpts of the book were published in Look Magazine, and Interrupted Journey went on to sell many copies and greatly publicize the Hills' account. Budd Hopkins writes, " .. the Hill case bears upon one popular theory which has been widely but uncritically accepted by many skeptics: the idea that such accounts must have been implanted by hypnosis, consciously or unconsciously, or by manipulative practitioners who 'believe in' the reality of such events. Simon, who hypnotized the Hills, was avowedly skeptical about the reality of the Hills' abduction recollections. Yet the Hills stubbornly held to their interlocking, hypnotically recovered accounts despite Simon's suggestions at the end of treatment that their memories could not be literally true. It can therefore be concluded that the bias of the hypnotist had nothing to do with the content of their hypnotic recall." (emphasis as in original; Hopkins, 218) Barney Hill died of a cerebral hemorrhage, in 1969, at age 46. Later, Betty claimed to have seen UFOs a number of times after the initial abduction, and she "became a celebrity in the UFO community." Betty Hill died October 17, 2004. Analysis
Fictional portrayalThe couple were portrayed by James Earl Jones and Estelle Parsons in the 1975 television movie The UFO Incident, and by Basil Wallace and Lee Garlington in the 1996 television series Dark Skies. Sources
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