- BETTY HILL and her husband Barney were apparently abducted by the occupants
of a UFO in September 1961. The event became the template for the ever
more elaborate abduction claims that we hear today. But they don't impress
Betty Hill, as PETER BROOKESMITH discovered when he visited her at home
in New Hampshire.
-
- I'd heard about Betty's acerbic opinions
of the modern abduction phenomenon on the ufological grapevine. Naturally
I wondered how far and in what ways we might agree. We talked a lot about
cats (it seemed as if about 15 condescend to frequent her house, but she
insisted there were only five) and politics and her own abduction. But
her less than dewy-eyed approach to most of today's abduction claims will
probably surprise people more.
-
- Those who promote the abduction phenomenon
or, by their silence, do nothing to temper its excesses, do not amuse her
though she chuckles a lot as she talks and never loses an opportunity to
make a lightning-fast wisecrack.
-
- In 1995 she published A Common Sense
Approach to UFOs, which tells of her long involvement in UFO and abduction
investigation. "I have the feeling that most UFO organizations dislike
my book," she wrote to me before we met. "None of them have reviewed
it."
-
- You must feel a certain amount of chagrin
that this phenomenon has gone the way it has.
-
- I try very hard not to have guilt feelings
about the way stupid people have misinterpreted my experience. The reason
I wrote this book was to try to get across to people that they should stay
away from hypnosis. Don't let anybody fool around in your brain. I mean,
you have problems enough to live with yourself, without other people making
their contribution.
-
- The whole problem now is the lack of
understanding of hypnosis. The first stage of hypnosis is one of suggestibility.
It's supposed to be useful to have a person lose weight, or help them cut
down on smoking, or something like that. But if you say to a person, 'You
murdered someone!' in the first stage of hypnosis, they're going to spend
the rest of their lives looking for the body. And the same too, when somebody
goes in for hypnosis for a UFO abduction, they're going to get it (chuckles).In
the last 10 years, the whole thing's been destroyed. Because a person thinks
they've been abducted, the first thing they say is 'Oh! You've got to have
hypnosis.' And that destroys the whole thing. You don't know if they were
or they weren't. Somebody says to me, 'I think I've been abducted', the
first thing I say is, 'Well, if you've had hypnosis, goodbye. And if you're
thinking of having hypnosis, goodbye.'Barney and I had medical hypnosis.
It's used in surgery. The TV program 48 Hours showed a woman having major
abdominal surgery with medical hypnosis. Nothing else. Just medical hypnosis.
The person has absolutely no control. You can't move, you can''t speak,
you can't do anything until the doctor gives permission. Well, medical
hypnosis is almost unknown in this country. They do it in the Soviet Union.
I've talked to a psychiatrist who uses it up in Halifax, Nova Scotia.
-
- I can do hypnosis, and I can give you
an abduction in 20 minutes. Sure I could. You can do it to anybody. See,
what they use for hypnosis for abductions now is what we call 'flight of
fantasy'. I do it with whole groups. Put someone in a light trance, and
give them the choice. You can go aboard a UFO, you can go back to a past
life, you can take a quick trip around the galaxy, or you can go into the
future. Ninety seven per cent will go back to a past life!
-
- So you would trust an abduction account
that came from medical hypnosis, but not one that comes from a lighter
form of the technique the kind people like Hopkins and Jacobs and Mack
use?
-
- When people tell weird tales hallucinations,
delusions, fantasy, dreams, something they've seen, heard or read when
you rule out all of those, then you may have reality. And in working with
people for years people would call me, particularly after they saw my movie,
The UFO Incident, and say, 'I think I've been abducted.' And I'd say, 'Well,
you know, we really don't know.' And I worked with these people, and we
were able to pinpoint why they thought they'd been abducted when they had
not been. As a result of this I was able to develop criteria to establish
the real abductions from the fantasies. In this country, they say 3 million
people have been abducted. Not once, but continuously. D'you realize that
means three or four thousand people every night are being abducted? In
this country alone? I don't know how the planes get through.
-
- Most abduction researchers and their
supporters say that what they find must be real, because it's consistent
from witness to witness.
-
- Of course it's real to them because they
tell `em the same thing! You know those therapy groups? A woman called
me. She quit. She said she got fed up. That therapy group it ends up in
"I'll show you the kind of sex I had on board the UFO if you show
me the kind of sex you had on board the UFO." No matter what the subject
is it's "Me Too!" I call `em the Me-Too People. Whereas every
real abduction has been totally different. There are no duplications. Actually,
the real abductions, you've never heard of. Because nobody's writing any
books about `em. Most people who've been really abducted, have the same
attitude Barney and I did. It was our experience and it was nobody else's
business. But then we got the publicity. But they have the same feeling.
It's something between them, and the UFOs.
-
- You get the feeling when you read Budd
Hopkins's books.
-
- I don't!
-
- ...that there's one kind of story that
his subjects are telling, then in David Jacobs's book
-
- never read his books either.
-
- ...his people's stories follow another
pattern, and John Mack's are different yet again. There's a similarity
among the stories told to each investigator, but the stories are different
from one investigator to another. Seems to me the investigators must be
influencing what they hear.
-
- Right!
-
- If the kind of hypnosis that's used is
producing fantasies, why do you think people are having those particular
fantasies?
-
- Because the investigators are directing
them to have those fantasies.They're suggesting them to them. They're very,
very destructive people. They don't care who they hurt to make people buy
a book, to make some money.
-
- What do you think of the apocalypse that
so many of Mack's subjects foresee?
-
- Well, we're all going to die. The world
is going to come to an end the day we die, individually, for each one of
us. Of course it goes on without us. The world's not going to come to an
end. Good grief.
-
- What about Mack's subjects who say they've
been reincarnated?
-
- Well... I don't believe in reincarnation!
[chuckles] See, I think I have a bigger problem. I don't think I believe
in life after death!
-
- Another thing Mack talks about is the
psychic experiences his subjects often have. Did you ever have anything
like that?
-
- Oh, no. A lot of people say, to see UFOs
you got to be psychic, right? So. I took a course in psychic development.
And you want to know something? I still hold the record for the lowest
marks anybody's ever seen! [laughing] If there were two answers, I'd get
the wrong one. I'm about as psychic as a dead fish!
-
- If the kind of hypnosis that's used is
producing fantasies, why do you think people are having those particular
fantasies?
-
- Because the investigators are directing
them to have those fantasies. They're suggesting them to them. They're
very, very destructive people. They don't care who they hurt to make people
buy a book, to make some money.
-
- Okay I've been having contacts with this
girl. Ten years old, she's on vacation with her parents, and she goes for
a walk in the woods. And she's late getting back. Her parents are yelling
to her, her brother's yelling to her, and they're saying, 'Where have you
been? We were ready to call out the police.' But she was just taking a
walk in the woods.
-
- Years later, she wondered: Did I get
abducted by a UFO? Even though she didn't see any UFOs. So she goes down
and visits [a famous abduction researcher] for nine days. And during the
nine days, she has all these abductees come in and tell her in great detail
what happened to them on board the craft. And then he gave her hypnosis.
Five tapes of abductions, beginning when she was three years old.
-
- You know what happened next? She joined
the military. She's been in the military maybe about six months and they
come out with handcuffs and a straitjacket and carry her off, to a mental
hospital. Now she claims that somebody somewhere sent one of the tapes
of her hypnosis to the military. I doubt it. I think if they'd sent the
tapes, they would have just called her in and questioned her.
-
- I think she was really bizarre. She's
been hallucinating ever since. She's even married to an alien now. She's
had two fetuses taken. She can't get a job and keep it. She doesn't get
along with anybody. She wrote a little booklet, but nobody'll touch it
because it's exactly what everybody else is saying!
-
- I asked this resarcher if he's given
this woman hypnosis. He said: 'Yes.' I said, 'But you had no basis to give
her hypnosis.' And he said, 'Yeah but it made her feel better.' I don't
know if she was mentally ill before or if this really threw her over the
edge. I sent her an Indian dream catcher. You know, it catches the bad
dreams but lets the good ones through. See if that'll do her some good.
-
- Speaking of influences, it's been shown
that people in the UK who thought they'd been abducted tended to report
meeting tall, blond entities rather than the little Grays. Then in 1987
Whitley Strieber pubished Communion, and the number of Grays being reported
in the UK just about tripled.
-
- I met one of those! A Venusian! Sure!
In 1978. He was six foot two, blond with blue eyes. And also out of this
world! [Peals of laughter] His name was Peter. He lives in Europe now.
[More laughter] But the UFO people well, you've seen the pictures. They
don't look like any of Budd Hopkins' bug-eyed monsters.
-
- If you didn't know whether or not someone
claiming to be an abductee had been hypnotized, would you be able to tell
whether their story was genuine or not? Is the real thing that different
from the standard abduction story that you see on TV and so on?
-
- The real abductions are totally different
from what you see on TV. The UFO people now, I don't say 'aliens' are people,
but they're different from us. There are certain fundamental, physical
characteristics which are different. And if a person has really seen one
they know it. And the real abductees have never had any need for therapy.
And not only that, but every one of them has had changes in their lives.
Of benefit to them. It's been a very positive experience.
-
- Professor John Salter [now known as John
Hunter Gray] in North Dakota, he and his son were stopped. Now I don't
think they were actually taken on board the craft, but the UFO people came
out and looked his truck all over and did some testing on them, and gave
them some kind of injection. It left a round circle and a puncture mark.
-
- And after that, healthwise, it was like
he was reborn. Any problems he had disappeared. He gets along now on five
hours' sleep a night. He had scar on his face from a car accident that
disappeared. He was beginning to get wrinkles they're gone. There were
22 different physical changes. And no hypnosis. He remembers the event
clearly. I told him, don't have hypnosis. In fact, Dr Simon told us, we
were so close to remembering, that if we had not gone to him for hypnosis,
we would have remembered anyway.
-
- Do you think there's anything to the
notion that the UFO put in screen memories, to blank out the memory of
the experience?
-
- What I think is, first of all, like I
said, Dr Simon used medical hypnosis on Barney and me. You can do this
while talking. When Dr Simon said he'd put me into a trance, I thought:
No way. I'm walking around the room, looking at pictures. And he said,
'Turn around and walk towards me.' And I did, and he said, 'Oh, that's
easy!' I was in a trance. And I think that's what the UFO people do. They
get face to face, while talking, and schwwiitt, you're in. A deep trance.
That's how they control people. I've never said that publicly. But now
I might as well!
-
- Dr Simon said to us, if we couldn't get
together once a week, we would have to go in and be hypnotized. He said
we should not go more than ten days without hypnosis because if it went
longer than that, the amnesia he put on us would open up and we'd start
to remember what happened during our sessions with him. So we had to keep
the amnesia on. So ten nights after the experience, I had my dreams. They
must use the same kind of hypnosis Dr Simon did. What the UFO people do
is nothing magical. It's nothing we can't do to each other.
-
- You must feel a bit ambivalent, though
given that (if you won't hit me for saying this) you're the grandmother
of the abduction phenomenon that we see today.
-
- Do you realize what I could have done
with this? You realize the money I could have made? You know how many cults
I could have set up? But I never got paid for TV programs. Not at any point.
Never got paid. I got my expenses. But I was told the UFO people would
like me to do it that way. Look at the dedication to my book. 'To UFOs
with love.'
-
- Probably one of the best things ever
said to me was, 'Stay away from the UFO "experts". Stay away
from the UFO organizations.' And I did. And by staying away from them,
I made contact with the top scientists in this country. I've done TV programs
with the astronauts. NASA has some of my pictures of UFOs. I've had all
kinds of people here. I've got UFO reports from the Pentagon, from the
CIA, the FBI, the military. I think they're keeping quiet now because I
don't think they really know enough. I think they're building up. They're
letting a little bit out here, there, and everywhere. I think when the
announcement is made, it's going to be worldwide. At the moment, they have
insufficient evidence. Even though they do have the bodies. I'm sure of
that. I'm positive.
-
- You mean from Roswell?
-
- I don't where they're from, but they
have bodies. I will tell you how I knew they've got bodies. I said there
were two characteristics, where the UFO people are different from us. We
abductees never reveal these characteristics. And one day I got a phone
call from this man, no identification, he just said, 'I want to ask you,
when you saw these UFO people, did you notice bla-bla-bla-bla?' And I said
to myself, 'He's seen 'em, 'cause he knows it.' And I said: 'Yes.' And
I said: 'And how did you know that?' He said: 'I did the autopsy.'
-
- What do you reckon to the idea they're
interbreeding with humans?
-
- They can't interbreed with us. They don't
have the same internal organs. It's no more likely than we could breed
with chimpanzees. I don't believe in alien foetuses, and I don't believe
in floating out windows and walking through walls or down through ceilings.
Or implants. You know, let's face it. UFO people do not walk through walls.
UFO people do not carry people up and down on beams of light. [Chuckles]
They have beams of light. And they'll come in on a beam of light. But they
don't take anyone up with 'em on a beam of light.
-
- So your feeling is the UFO people can't
do 'magic' like that?
-
- No, they're people!
-
- Because they're as limited by the laws
of physics as we are.
-
- Right. You know, actually they show these
sketches of UFOs on TV that give a totally wrong idea of what a UFO should
look like. Most of them are little. They're not much bigger than a car,
the ones that come here. Some of them are 20, maybe 25ft across. They not
great huge things. The best thing I ever saw in UFOs, I didn't film. I'm
just standing there with my mouth open. One of the things that they do
and I never told anybody else this is hook up together. The UFOs would
come in, and all of a sudden they'd go off in all directions. Then they'd
come back, and attach themselves to each other somehow. And so they appear
like some big craft. I tell people, they've been flying around here since
1932. They don't abduct people, those are fantasies. They've never hurt
people. Just go out and say Hi! to them. Be friendly. They're a long way
from home!
-
- But why do I think the UFOs are here?
Well, look at it this way. There's huge numbers of these big, big crafts
circling this planet, and they leave these and use big, smaller, smaller,
smaller, smaller ones and we're their shopping mall. They're coming down
here to pick up whatever they need for up there.
-
- But why do they actually need to pick
people up?
-
- Haven't explorers always done this? Explorers
have always done it. Even Columbus took some of the Indians back to Spain.
Captain John Smith took Pocohontas back to England. So why not? However,
I can't say that they're taking any of us back with them. Maybe they are.
I don't know. That was one of the things I was afraid of. But then [laughing]
they rejected me!
-
- THE HILL ABDUCTION CASE
-
- Betty and Barney Hill were allegedly
abducted by aliens in September 1961. Barney, then aged 39, worked as a
mail sorter in Boston, commuting the 120-mile round trip from Portsmouth
each day. Betty, aged 41, was a social worker for the State of New Hampshire.
They had decided on the spur of the moment to drive to the Niagara Falls
for a short break. The Hills decided on an all-night drive home from Montreal
to Portsmouth to avoid a storm.
-
- On US Highway 3, near Lancaster, NH,
Betty noticed a bright light near the Moon. The light seemed to be pacing
them and several times they stopped the car to see it better. At one point
Betty saw it cross the face of the Moon. The light dropped to tree height,
and they stopped again. Barney took his binoculars and walked across a
field towards the light, and came within 50ft (15m) of it.
-
- He could now tell it was an object 'like
a big pancake' with a row of windows. Through the binoculars he could see
several occupants, dressed in Nazi-style uniforms. Suddenly convinced he
was about to be captured, he fled back to the car in terror. At some point,
they realized they had somehow driven off the main highway. The couple
remembered little after this until they eventually rejoined US 3 near Ashland,
when they heard another set of beeps. They reached Portsmouth as day was
breaking, having taken 7 hours to cover the last 190 miles of their trip.
From 29 September to 3 October Betty had a series of nightmares in which
she saw a group of humanoids blocking US 3; she and Barney were then led
aboard the UFO.
-
- Under hypnosis with psychiatrist Dr Benjamin
Simon in 1963, both told approximately the same story. Uniformed humanoids
with large, wrap-around eyes, small, flattened noses, and slitted, lipless
mouths had appeared in the headlights, waving them to a halt. On board
the UFO, each was given a medical examination in separate rooms. A skin
sample was taken from Betty's arm, part of a fingernail was cut off, and
a hair was pulled from her head; a long needle was inserted into Betty's
navel: she was told this was a pregnancy test. Barney had a circular instrument
applied to his groin, apparently to extract semen.
-
- After her examination, Betty had a conversation
with the leader of her captors. When she asked where they came from, she
was shown a star map with no legend on it, and was given a book as a keepsake
of the event. (Later, this was taken from her and she was told she would
not remember the experience.) Each understood the other as if they were
speaking plain English, but Betty had the impression that they communicate
telepathically. The humanoids used colloquial English, but were sometimes
confused by very basic concepts asking, for example: 'What are vegetables?
What is yellow?' They seemed to have no notion of time, although they used
phrases like 'Just a minute'.
-
- They were particularly intrigued by Barney's
dentures, and when Betty explained that he had them because of an injury
but that many people had them in old age, they did not understand the idea
of aging. The couple were walked back to their car by the aliens, and watched
the UFO depart as a glowing orange ball.
-
- Dr Simon noted that Betty's account under
hypnosis precisely matched the content of her dreams, and concluded that
the Hills had had an imaginary experience whose content was based on Betty's
dreams, which had been brought on by fear after a genuine close encounter
with a UFO.
-
- Betty Hill has continued to believe in
the reality of her abduction. Barney died in 1969 of a cerebral hemorrhage.
-
- _____________________
-
- Terry W. Colvin, Sierra Vista, Arizona
(USA) < fortean@primenet.com Home Page: http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Shadowlands/8832
Sites: Fortean Times * Northwest Mysteries * Mystic's Cyberpage *
-
-
-
- Rebuttal
-
- By Beverly Trout <btufo@netins.net>
- 9-22-98
-
-
- What we have here in the Betty Hill comments is someone
who wishes to look at the abduction phenomenon for WHAT SHE WANTS IT TO
BE - RATHER THAN WHAT IT IS!
-
- There are those of us who have had CONSCIOUS ENCOUNTERS
as well as undergoing hypnosis sessions. Personally, I can attest to the
fact that I was ANYTHING BUT suggestible to what the psychiatrist (Dr.
Grey Woodman of Clinton, Iowa) was saying during the sessions. In fact,
I would CORRECT him if he mis-stated/repeated something I'd just said.
-
- I have read the research of major researchers....I have
been heavily involved in researching the cases in my state (other than
my own). For quite some time, I've been working with abductees who have
never undergone hypnosis, but who clearly have factors in their lives indicating
abduction (i.e. waking in the night to see entities in the room).
-
- My conscious encounters left NO room for doubt as to
my status as an abductee - and the "aliens" have no problem in
keeping tabs on my whereabouts....i.e. I was deliberately awakened for
an encounter in a Motel 6 motel room in Winnemucca, Nevada in the early
morning hours of September 6, 1993....on that occasion they did not take
me from the premises, but simply sat down and communicated with me (no
big, important, global message, folks - I am convinced they were "setting
me up" for what they really wanted twelve weeks later).
-
- Twelve weeks later (in the early morning hours of November
22, 1993) they were back - this time at my residence in Iowa. And they
didn't sit down and chat. They took me from the building. And I must
needs take seriously the alien ability to make their way through dense
spaces (walls, etc.)
-
- Yes, hypnosis can be mis-used, but to throw out the baby
with the bathwater serves no one.
-
- I have long advocated the need to read widely on the
subject of abduction research AND the WHOLE UFO ENIGMA!! To restrict ourselves
to contemplating only our own experiences just might wind up limiting us
to a somewhat narrow view of the alien agenda - perhaps a bit like staring
at one's own navel. We need to understand as much as possible about the
UFO occupants' activities among us....
-
- Mrs. Hill conveniently overlooks the bottom-line factor
of MANIPULATION inherent in the encounter situations....And I've never
been able to convince myself that the universe likes manipulation - no
matter who perpetrates it. I'm NOT painting the aliens as all-black here,
but neither will I paint them all-white.....they have an agenda!
-
- At present, we find ourselves in an extremely UN-balanced
relationship with the aliens. Change is needed in order for humans to
find a more level playing field with the manipulation factor eliminated
from our alien-human interaction. A change that could allow us to enter
into a RELATIONSHIP with the aliens. That change, I am convinced, will
not come about through looking at the abduction phenomenon for WHAT WE
WANT IT TO BE - RATHER THAN WHAT IT IS.
-
- There's much more that can be said about the change that's
needed, but that's for another time.
-
- Bev Trout Iowa MUFON State Director
|
