Lore - Episode 87: Road Trip

Episode Date: May 28, 2018

Every now and then a story comes along that is so powerful and compelling that it creates a new branch on the tree of folklore. Yes, it has deeper roots, but sometimes a new expression of fear grows out to cast new shade on our already-fearful lives. And one of these rare moments happened less than six decades ago. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com Access premium content!: https://www.lorepodcast.com/support See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

It was the last thing the farmer expected to find on his way to the fields that morning. The air was cold, the leaves were damp, and his body was unhappy with his decision to start work so early. But he forgot all of that the moment he saw the wolf pit. Inside the dark hole in the ground that had been dug to capture wolves was something else entirely. Two somethings, in fact, a boy and a girl. They were both shivering, perhaps due to the cold, but maybe also a bit out of fear. The farmer had never seen them before, or their clothes, or even heard their language. But the strangest thing about them was their skin, and that's because it was green.

Not faintly green, or green in a certain light. These children, according to the tale, were bright green, like clover on a hot summer day. But somehow, despite the bizarre nature of the situation, the farmer decided to help so he rescued the children and brought them home. He offered them food, but they refused everything until finally they were given raw beans, which they apparently ate with delight. The story, passed down to us over the years by the 12th century historian William of Newberg, goes on to tell us how the children were brought into the care of a local lord. Both of them eventually lost their greenish hue, but sadly the boy died shortly after being baptized. The girl, however, grew up.

She learned to speak English, and eventually married into the village community. Later in life, she was said to have explained that she and her brother had come to England from a place called St. Martin's Land. But over time, the locals began to say that they'd fallen from the sky. How else could two strange children appear at the bottom of a filthy wolf pit? Naturally, they had to be visitors from another world. Others, though, have suggested that the story might be the leftover bits from a darker tale, that the children might not have really been green at all, but they were certainly real, and they came to the village by way of abduction. And let's be honest, it certainly wouldn't be

the first time a community invented an elaborate lie to hide an unsavory truth. Each possibility offers most of us something to be afraid of. Whether it's the threat of visitors from another place or being taken against our will, we're left feeling uncomfortable and insecure. Which is why, for a very long time, the combination of those two fears has been a common, unrelenting human obsession. What if, some have wondered, we could be taken from this world by creatures from another? The answer, it turns out, is a lot closer than you might believe. I'm Aaron Mankey, and this is Lore.

The view was stunning. You could probably recreate it today and get almost the exact same feeling and experience if you wanted to. The small, two-lane highway still cuts through the never-ending expanse of pine trees, just like it did 50 years ago, and as it had for decades before that. The trees are like a tall green wall along either side of the road, a wall that separates the wild from the tamed. It's beautiful, for sure, but pull yourself out of the modern world for a moment and take a seat inside a car from the 1950s in the dead of night with no cell phone or GPS to wrap you

in that warm blanket of confident safety. I get that it wasn't a 16th century carriage ride through unexplored territory, but it was still unnervingly primitive by today's standards. Not all danger comes from the natural world, though. Sometimes the threat is just part of our everyday lives. For the couple in the car, that was something they faced each and every day. Betty was a white middle-aged social worker, but her husband, who worked for the Postal Service, was black. Even a thousand miles from the 1960s south, their interracial marriage was an uncommon sight to the people around them. Uncommon, and often times unwelcome. I don't know why they had decided to make the drive through the night.

Maybe they just wanted to get home sooner rather than later, but perhaps there was just no safe stop along the way. According to the 1961 edition of The Traveler's Green Book, a sort of guidebook for African Americans that helped them find safe restaurants, gas stations, and hotels in a country with deep racial issues, there wasn't much along their route, so they drove. It wasn't long after they passed through the town of Lancaster, just north of the White Mountains, when both of them noticed a light ahead of them, far off in the distance. Now, from where they sat, the mountains were this looming presence in the darkness. The highway they were traveling would eventually cut straight through them,

following a gap known as the notch, but this light was higher than the dark shadow of the mountains, and it was moving. They continued on, but as they both watched it, they began to feel less and less certain about its true nature. Not only was it moving, but it was moving oddly in ways that an airplane simply couldn't. Betty's husband even pulled the car over a few times so he could get a better look at the light through his binoculars. What he saw made him nervous enough to reach over, opened the glove box, and pulled his pistol out, which he then placed on the seat between them. The lighted object was still there, up in the sky, when they entered the notch,

but it had moved close enough that the couple could now see details. Betty later described it as a thin band of light that was sort of curved, like a pinstripe around a circular object, and as it moved through the air, she swore she could see it spinning. That's when things got weird. Well, they were already weird, sure, but if there had been a dial, someone had turned it way up. That's when the object in the sky changed course without warning and headed straight toward them. Betty's husband panicked and took his foot off the gas, letting the car coast to a stop in the middle of the road. Not the safest thing to do, I know,

but let's just assume that he was frightened out of his wits. When the object arrived, it stopped about 100 feet above them, just off the road on the passenger's side. Up close, they had a much better view of the thing, and it was a lot bigger than they had expected. Across the front of the object was a band of clear glass, like a window, and inside it, they later said, were human-like figures, figures dressed in glossy black uniforms. Wanting a better look, Betty's husband grabbed the binoculars and opened the car door. Just before he stepped out, he reached over and took the pistol off the seat, slipping it into his coat pocket. Then, he climbed out and slowly walked forward a few paces.

As he did, the hovering object reacted, crossing the highway to have a better view of his side of the car, as if it were watching him specifically. That's when it descended even lower, and as it did, lights extended out from the sides of the object. Betty would later describe how she could see something, a ramp or metal column or something long and solid, stretched down to the ground, down toward them. She screamed at him to get back inside, but he just laughed. It was that sort of nervous sound you make when you're simply too frightened to do anything else. He muttered something about how ridiculous it all was, and then turned around and dashed back to the car. As he closed the door, he turned to his wife and spoke.

They're going to capture us, he said, repeating it over and over again with panic in his voice. He slammed his foot down on the gas pedal, and the car lurched forward. As they sped away, both of them claimed to hear a sort of beeping sound, and at the same time, their car began to vibrate and shake and hum. And that's when darkness washed over them, like a tidal wave. One moment, they were awake and aware, and the next, nothing. When they opened their eyes, they didn't recognize where they were. They could remember driving away from the flying object, but after that, everything was indistinguishable. It was as if someone had taken an eraser and dragged it across the chalkboard.

Not much was left to reflect on, and what was there was smeared and blurry. They were still sitting in their car, though, and still on that long stretch of tree-line New Hampshire Highway. But they were no longer in the middle of the White Mountains. It turned out they were over 30 miles south of where they last remembered, near the town of Ashland, and neither of them felt good about that. Betty and Barney Hill somehow managed to make her way home to Portsmouth, though, driving another 70 miles southeast. That hour and a half was filled with conversation, too. Betty was sure of what they'd seen, but Barney was more skeptical, as if he weren't remembering things as clearly as her. But she was adamant. What they

had seen could be nothing else. It had been a UFO. Now, before we dive into what she might have meant by that, I want to point out a small but important detail. The Hills knew when they should have arrived home in Portsmouth. The math was easy, and we've all done it before. Roughly an hour per 60 miles, right? So when they arrived at home and looked at the clock, they were confused, because it appeared that they were hours late. It was as if they had stopped somewhere for a very long time, but just had no memory of it. Another thing to keep in mind is that, while the term UFO had been a household name since the late 1940s, the public had heard a very few believable sightings. The Roswell incident of 1947 is the biggest one that comes to mind, but

there were others, such as the death of an Air National Guard pilot in 1948 who had been apparently chasing a flying object over Kentucky. But all of these events were explained away by experts, and none of them came anywhere close to what the Hills had experienced. There was physical evidence, too. Betty's dress was torn in multiple locations, and Barney's shoes, his nicest pair, and the ones that he kept as pristine as possible, had scratches and scuffs along the toes. Both of them had been wearing watches, but neither of those were working now, even though they had no memory of it. It felt as if they had both been through some sort of ordeal. If only they could remember what. The day after they returned home,

Betty reached out to her sister for advice, who, in turn, directed her to a retired local chief of police. After listening to her story, he recommended reaching out to the military over at the nearby Peace Air Force Base. If anyone knew what had been going on in the skies that night, it would be them. Barney, though, was fighting it. Yes, he had seen the physical evidence with his own eyes, and yes, he later reported that he felt a certain amount of violation the morning they arrived home. He even took a very long shower, as if he were trying to wash away something that had happened. But he was in disbelief. There had been no UFO, he said, no figures inside a flying craft, no sounds or lights. It had all just been a dream. When she called the Air Force Base,

Betty spoke to a man named Major Paul Henderson. At his request, both of the Hills visited the base to make official statements, but Barney's was very different from his wife's. While she was willing to share all of the things they had witnessed before their blackout, Barney held a lot more of the details back. Only after Major Henderson pressed him further, did Barney begin to share more. A few days after their reports were given, which, as far as I can tell, was the first time both of them sat down and talked their way through everything, Betty started having unusual dreams. Nightmares, really? In them, she was reliving that moment on the road beneath the flying object. But while her memories ended there, the dreams were taking her deeper.

In them, she could see herself being removed from the car by small figures. She and Barney were led to the mysterious craft and then taken inside, and then they were separated. Each time she awoke from these dreams, they felt as real as anything she'd ever experienced. But when she told Barney about the new details, he refused to believe her. After weeks of not hearing back from Major Henderson, Betty reached out to another organization called the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena, a non-profit research group that focused on UFO sightings and experiences. She and Barney met with an investigator named Walter Webb and repeated their stories to him. Maybe it was all the talking they were doing,

all that remembering and dwelling in the past and dredging up of forgotten events, but it was all starting to take a toll on them. Barney had relapsed on over a decade of sobriety. He also discovered a mysterious rash on his skin and couldn't make it go away. Both of them were exhausted on multiple levels. As 1961 bled into 1962 and the months ticked by, it began to feel more and more as if they were falling apart. That's when Betty reached out to a psychiatrist. Maybe what they both really needed was someone to listen and guide them through it all, to help them heal and recover. It was trauma, after all, even if the source seemed a little out there. After meeting with him through 1963,

though, they were eventually referred out to someone else, a hypnoanalyst. For a span of seven months in 1964, Betty and Barney Hill drove back and forth between their home in Portsmouth and the Boston office of Dr. Benjamin Simon. Over multiple sessions, each of them was hypnotized, interviewed, and recorded. The goal was to go deeper into the past, to sift through their memories of what had happened on that lonely New Hampshire highway back in the fall of 1961, to peel back the layers and reveal the parts that each of them had forgotten or repressed. What they uncovered, though, was more frightening than anyone expected. The voice in his head told him to drive off the road. At least, that's what Barney Hill told Dr.

Simon while under hypnosis. He called it a mind voice, a sort of telepathic invasion that pushed the voice of someone or something else into his own brain. He could hear it, but not really hear it, if you know what I mean. Barney didn't know how he knew where to drive, but he guided the car through the woods for a while before they could see an orange glow up ahead through the trees. Betty seemed to understand intuitively that it was the flying craft, the one that they had seen on the highway, but that it had landed among the trees. As they approached, Barney said the car's engine cut out and died. When they rolled to a stop, a dozen dark figures stepped out of the trees, their shapes silhouetted against the orange glow

of the flying thing. A few stood at a distance, but three of them walked over to Barney's side and opened his door. Five others did the same on Betty's side of the car. As they did, one of the figures pulled Barney's pistol out of his pocket and placed it back on the seat, and then both of them were led away toward the bright light. Betty and Barney both described the figures in the same terms, even when interviewed separately. The creatures were smaller than they were, with narrow hips and wide shoulders. The skin that could be seen had a gray tone that looked otherworldly. And I can't help but think of all the stories over the centuries of the small

creatures that litter our folklore. Native American Pukwajis and European goblins, Icelandic elves, and the brownie of Scotland, World War II gremlins and the Indonesian Ibugogo. If there is one tale that all cultures seem to have in common, it's the presence of small versions of ourselves. Betty recalled speaking to her husband as they were led inside the object. Wake up, Barney, she said to him. When she did, one of the creatures turned to her and spoke in English. Is Barney his name? It asked. Then, after assuring her that no one would be harmed, she was led by two of the creatures into a small room without her husband. Barney's story

confirms this, describing how he was separated from Betty and led into a room of his own. But these weren't meeting rooms or places for conversation. No, these were apparently exam rooms, and they were the brief calm before a horrifying storm. Barney recalled the creatures leading him to a stool and helping him to sit down. Once there, he remembered having samples drawn from his body. Skin cells were scraped off with sharp tools. Other tools were inserted into his ears and down his throat. If his body had something to offer up, the creatures seemed interested in taking a piece of it with them. These unusual beings also talked to each other while they

worked, although Barney could not understand their language. When they needed to speak to him, it happened just as it had in the car, through their unusual mind voice technique. Their mouths never opened, and yet he heard everything they said to him. Betty's experience was much the same. Her dress was pulled off and she was seated on a stool, unable to resist or leave. The same types of samples were taken from her own body, the scraping of her skin, the probes in her mouth and ears. They examined her teeth, her feet, even her fingernails. Things became more invasive after that. The creatures brought in a new device that was equipped with sharp pins,

which were pressed into various parts of her body. Betty remembered feeling her muscles react to the pressure, but feeling no pain. That changed a moment later, though, when a long needle was pressed into her navel. When she cried out, one of the creatures passed a hand over her eyes, and the pain mysteriously went away. Betty recalled a brief conversation with one of the creatures. In it, she asked for proof of who they were and where they came from, and according to her, one of them handed her a book filled with maps of the stars. After a moment, though, the being changed its mind and took the book back.

After all of that, we know how the rest of the night played out. Betty and Barney were placed back in their cars in the woods. They watched the bright lights of the flying object ascend back into the sky before vanishing into the night, and then they drove. It would take them another 30 minutes before the fog lifted and they were fully aware of themselves once again. Nothing, though, would give them back that lost time. Maybe it was the pain that she had endured that Barney seems to have escaped, or maybe it was something in her personality that refused to let go of the experience. We don't know why Betty fought to hold on to her memories, but she certainly did.

That as the years unfolded, it was she who pushed herself and her husband to figure out exactly what had happened. She eventually had her dress from that night examined by a handful of different laboratories, and she wrote and spoke often about what had happened to them. Barney suffered more than Betty, though. He was never the same man who had left Colbrook, New Hampshire on the 19th of September in 1961. He was Barney, sure, but he was different, too. Maybe he was afraid, or broken, or even sick, or all of the above. Barney Hill died of a cerebral hemorrhage in February of 1969 at the age of 46. Betty outlived him by decades, passing away in 2004 after a battle with cancer.

She'd spent half her life telling her story, trying to put the pieces together and find the answers hidden in the back corner of her own foggy past. Whether she succeeded, though, is open to interpretation. She told a story to the world that was difficult to swallow, and yet, for many, it offered an unusual form of hope. We may or may not be alone in this universe, but it's clear that there's much to explore. Barney might have run away from it all, but Betty took a different path. In her mind, the truth really was out there. You just need to know where to look. When Abraham Maslow proposed his theory for human motivation back in 1934,

he included safety among his five essential human needs. We want to feel safe. Some would say that we need to, that a life of fear and uncertainty can harm our ability to function properly. When our safety is threatened, we react from the core of our being. So it's no wonder that stories of abduction send us into fits of anxiety. The idea that our freedom might be taken away, that we might be taken away. Well, it's a deep fear that all of us flinch away from, which is why folklore has always explored that concept. Just think about the Irish legend of the changeling. Folklore spoke of elves in the woods outside the safety of the community, and that sometimes, when you least expected it,

those elves could creep into your home and steal a loved one. Sure, the changeling was used to explain away drastic changes in personality or health, but they also poked at that dark, ancient fear. We don't want to be taken. So while there are a lot of ways of viewing the experiences reported by Betty and Barney Hill, it's important not to forget one of the most basic elements of their story. Fear can cause people to do and say a lot of unusual things, and if that fear is deep enough, perhaps it can also cause people to see things. What the Hills witnessed certainly falls under the category of unusual. Here's what I do know. The story of Betty and Barney Hill's road trip

changed things for us. It altered the public narrative in a way that seldom happens, in much the same way that the exhumation of Mercy Brown in 1892 led to the modern version of the vampire legend. The Hills tale of missing time and flying objects represents the birth of a new mythology. Without the Hills, we wouldn't have any of those alien abduction scenes where the cars die and the watches all stop working. They gave us the examination room and lost time and hypnosis as a treatment. Without them, we certainly wouldn't have Chris Carter's ex files or Steven Spielberg's taken. New folklore isn't often created today, but the Hills did just that. That doesn't necessarily mean it's all true, though.

There are a lot of people who think the story was a total fabrication. They don't believe a single element of the tale and point to the lack of other witnesses or physical evidence as proof. Even the Hills own hypnoanalyst, Dr. Simon, doubted it was anything more than intense dreams. Of course, dreams are tricky, aren't they? Sometimes the real things we experience in our waking lives can influence our dreams. That's what the Hills were claiming. But dreams can also become so vivid and powerful that even after we wake up, they felt as if they really happened. Without proof to back up their claims, the Hills could fall into either camp. In 1965, a reporter named John Luttrell wrote an

article about the Hills for the Boston Traveler. Their story had become more and more popular, and he wanted to make sure that a local publication did the story justice. He was thorough, too, traveling around New Hampshire and putting the events together on his own. And he found something. Witnesses Luttrell managed to find other people who had looked up into the night sky on September 19, 1961. People who had looked toward the White Mountains and had witnessed something unexpected. He took statements from all of them, people who did not know the Hills or even each other, and then gathered them together in his files for the article. For whatever reason, though,

they never made it into the final piece. Years later, when he moved on to other jobs, he handed his files over to his editor at the Boston Traveler, in case an article ever needed fact checked or expanded upon. Which means that anyone today might be able to reach out to them and rediscover the lost evidence of the Hills story. Except we can't. And that's because those records have gone missing. Lost, perhaps, or intentionally destroyed to hide an unsettling truth. Perhaps we've dismissed the Hills story because it rings with delusion and fantasy. Or maybe, if the stories of disappearing eyewitness reports are true, our disbelief has had a little

help. Either way, we all have something in common with the Hills. We want to believe. But that's a lot easier said than done. Betty and Barney Hill injected the story of abduction and experimentation into the American sub-tissue. They introduced a new mythology to our popular culture and set off a chain reaction that can still be felt today. But they weren't the first. Outside the United States, someone else went through his own horrifying abduction experience four years before the Hills. If you'd like to hear about it, stick around. I'll be back after this short sponsor break. October in Brazil can be unbearably hot. This is just as true today as it was in 1957,

which is why Antonio, a local farmer, was out working his field in the middle of the night. Seated atop his tractor, an island of light in a sea of darkness, he must have felt like the only person in the world. Except, according to his story, he wasn't. He remembered looking up into the sky, all shimmering with countless silvery points of light, only to see a star that stood out to him as unusual. Unusual because it was red and because it was moving. And not just moving, this red star almost seemed to be growing as if it were approaching him from the sky. A moment later, it was close enough to see more clearly, revealing the star had actually been a circular object. Antonio panicked and turned the tractor around, attempting to drive away from

the oncoming light. But almost immediately, the engine died and the lights went out. Turning back, he discovered that the object had descended to the ground, and three metal legs had extended down to the field. Without the tractor to take him away, Antonio let fear propel him, hopping down and running away. He didn't make it far, though. According to Antonio, a strange figure appeared and took hold of him. This creature was shorter than him, perhaps four feet tall, and wore an unusual uniform of gray fabric and a round helmet. Inside it, Antonio could see bright blue eyes, smaller than his own, but full of intelligence. Three more creatures joined the first, and together they dragged

Antonio back toward the strange object. Once inside, he was taken to a room where the creatures undressed him and then treated his skin with some sort of liquid substance. After that, he was examined in ways that would have felt familiar to Betty and Barney Hill. Skin and blood samples were taken, and his body was examined, all while watching the mysterious silent creatures. Antonio would later recall what could only be described as a breeding experiment involving another creature in the room, but I'll leave that one for you to seek out on your own and read, if you want to. When this was over, though, he was allowed to dress himself and then taken on a brief tour of the flying machine. Wanting to be able to prove his experiences, Antonio claims he

tried to steal a device, but was stopped by one of the creatures. Perhaps because of his attempted theft or maybe just because they were finished with him, Antonio was finally escorted back outside to his field. Disoriented, he managed to wander home, but was shocked to learn that hours had passed since his time in the field. Hours that he had no way of accounting for. There's this unusual thing that happens in our brains when we hear these sorts of stories. It's similar to that attitude of, been there, done that, you know? We've all seen versions of this tale played out in novels, in television, and film for decades. It's not new or unique or even special. Except in Antonio's case, it is. That's because he was the first, the original

abductee, as far as we can tell, at least. Before him, we looked into the sky and wondered. We occasionally witnessed objects in the sky that left us scratching our heads, but they were always distant and untouchable. And because of that, we felt safe. But not anymore. Antonio gave us something new that day in October of 1957. He gave us a new kind of story to tell, a new framework for viewing our world, and something else that's darker and more troublesome than all the rest. He gave us something new to fear. This episode of Lore was written and produced by me, Aaron Mankey, with research help from Marseille Crockett and music by Chad Lawson.

Hey, do you want to know a secret? I've been a fan of the X-Files since my college days in the early 90s. It's a love affair that has lasted decades, and thanks to having legendary X-Files writer and producer Glenn Morgan work on the first season of the Lore TV show, I had a chance to visit the set as they filmed episode 2 of season 11 of the X-Files back in August. And if you look real closely at the beginning of the scene that takes place in the classroom, you'll see me sitting in a chair before standing up and walking out of the room. My own 15 seconds of fame. Speaking of side projects, the second book in the World of Lore series called Wicked Mortals

comes out tomorrow. You still have a chance to go pre-order it if you want to, but any sales that happened in this first week are essential to helping the book land on the bestseller lists. There's a lot of you out there, and I know how much you love this show. If you can, please give this book a boost this week. Head over to TheWorldofLore.com slash Wicked Mortals to find a link where you can buy a copy now. You can also follow the show on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Just search for Lore podcast, all one word, and then click that follow button. And when you do, say hi. I like it when people say hi. And as always, thanks for listening.

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