Sightings - Barney & Betty Hill Abduction: New Hampshire, 1961

Episode Date: November 4, 2024

On a lonely road, two honeymooners are about to collide head-first with the unknown. But memory is a tricky thing, and only later will they begin remembering the spine-tingling details of this fateful night - details that are truly out of this world. Sightings is a REVERB and QCODE Original. Find us on instagram @sightingspod Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. Imagine you're driving down a lonely stretch of highway. The sky above you is dark and empty until you realize something strange floats overhead. A chill creeps up your spine, and before you can stop, before you can swerve, before you can react at all, a blinding light consumes your vehicle. This isn't science fiction. It's reality. And it's just collided with you. Welcome to Sightings, the series that takes you inside the world's most mysterious supernatural events. I'm McLeod.

mysterious supernatural events. I'm McLeod. And I'm Brian. And this is going to be an exciting one because this is the first known, or at least the first widely popularized, alien abduction story. So travel back with us to 1961, where on a lonely road in New Hampshire, two honeymooners collide headfirst with the unknown. But memory, it turns out, is a tricky thing, and it's only later that they begin to piece together the details of that fateful night. Terrifying ones. Unravel the mystery with them on this episode of

Sightings. The End My name is Barney Hill. I'm 39 years old, a distribution clerk for the U.S. Post Office in Boston, and married to the love of my life. And despite everything I'm about to say, I want to make one thing perfectly clear right now. I am not crazy. perfectly clear right now. I am not crazy. It was mid-September, the leaves were just beginning to turn, and it was shaping up to be a spectacular autumn. Driving down from Portsmouth each evening, I always caught that perfect window when the sun hung low and bathed everything in brilliant gold. It almost made my two-hour commute worth it. Now, I don't mean to

sound ungrateful when I say that. Every day I counted my blessings that I was able to move up from Philadelphia to spend more time with Betty. But it still wasn't enough. We wanted to find a place to call our own. A house with shutters, a picket fence, the whole nine. But finding a New Hampshire neighborhood accepting of an interracial couple was easier said than done, and with the night shift slowly grinding away at my sanity, one persistent thought began to take root at the forefront of my mind. I needed a vacation. The state had already given Betty a week to herself, and though my supervisors took more convincing, I was able to secure a few precious days away. So I surprised Betty on Saturday with the romantic idea to finally take our honeymoon. It would be a trip to remember, we decided.

But now, all we want to do is forget it. The plan was to visit Niagara Falls, Toronto, and Montreal before returning to New Hampshire. A four-day road trip with nothing to distract us but each other. So we packed our 57 Chevy with a cooler, our pup Delcy, and Betty's small pistol, just in case. The banks were closed for the weekend, so we scrounged up every loose dollar we could find. It wasn't enough for anything lavish, but I hoped we'd stumble on a charming B&B, something to give us at least one romantic evening. I should say that this honeymoon was a very long time coming. We'd married some 16 months earlier, but always found the days,

weeks, months slipping from our grasp. And between work and the moves and all our other obligations, we hadn't had more than a day or two to ourselves. So we savored every moment. We felt like newlyweds again, and it was glorious. But soon, our journey was already winding down, and when I missed a turn outside Montreal, we scrapped our plans to stay in Canada that last night. We'd heard that Tropical Storm Esther was roaring up the eastern seaboard and hoped to beat the storm back to Portsmouth. Little did we know, that ten-hour drive would take us further off course than we could have possibly imagined. It must have been about ten o'clock at night when it all started.

We were making good time because we seemed to be the only souls driving on Route 3 that night, and it was so warm out that we were driving with our windows open. Betty liked to put her hand out, let the breeze run through her fingers. She was all smiles, still glowing from our adventure. I figure we were a few miles south of Whitefield when Betty first saw it. A shooting star, she thought, except she said it suddenly stopped in the sky and then moved upward in a completely different direction. I was too focused on the road to find the thing, but Betty kept locked onto its flashing, multicolored lights. Like Christmas twinkles, she said. Humoring her, I suggested it must be a satellite, but Betty's nothing if not stubborn, and she insisted the thing was too big and too

close to be all the way out in space. Fine, I said, some kind of aircraft then. But Betty rejected this too and ordered me to pull over and get a good look at the thing. I wasn't about to ruin our trip arguing over this, so I did as I was told. I found a wide shoulder to slow on and pulled our binoculars from the glove box. I figured if I was going to see this thing, I'd really see it. So I scanned the skies at eight times magnification, searching, waiting. Then, suddenly, a light flashed across my view, too quick to track. But I found it again and saw a tight cluster of blinking lights holding reasonably steady in the sky. It looked to me like an airplane, and I told Betty as much, probably a piper cub in a landing

pattern or an airliner en route to Canada. But Betty insisted that I keep watching it, so I focused the binoculars back on the thing, on its white and red lights blinking in rapid succession, and reconfirmed that it was a plane, no doubt. Then it darted suddenly from view. I tried to track it and found it racing across the bright span of the nearly full moon before halting suddenly and holding in place. It was eerie, the ease with which it started and stopped. And there was something about those lights, something I couldn't quite put my finger on, something deeply unnatural.

So of course I racked my brain to explain away what I was seeing. unnatural. So of course I racked my brain to explain away what I was seeing. I'd served in the Second World War and I felt more than familiar with most types of military and civilian aircraft. So I decided this erratic flight pattern most resembled that of a military helicopter, one that was likely having a bit of fun at our expense. And since I wanted nothing to do with that kind of fun, I turned on the ignition and Betty protested as the engine hummed back to life. But as the miles passed, the thing never left our view. It was clearly playing with us, like it wanted to be seen. Worse, I got the creeping, almost imperceptible feeling that this thing wasn't just flying, but spinning. Betty must have noticed the same thing because she suddenly asked me if I believed in

flying saucers. I told her not to be ridiculous because if I knew one thing for certain it was this. Flying saucers were impossible. We were just rounding the bend near Indian Head when the thing finally vanished from view and I hoped, prayed actually, that we were finally done with it. But as we finished the turn and the trees receded to reveal an open field, Betty suddenly screamed and I slammed the brakes, unable to fully comprehend what I was seeing. A huge disc, I don't know how else to describe it, hovered above the road ahead. It was flattened and circular like a serving plate turned upside down and it was gigantic, I mean it had to be at least 60 feet in diameter. Betty and I stared at the thing without a word. Even Delcy was completely quiet, eyes wide and tail tucked between his legs in the back seat. was completely quiet, eyes wide and tail tucked between his legs in the back seat.

I grabbed my binoculars and carefully pulled the pistol from the glove box, then opened my door as quietly as possible, but as soon as my foot touched the ground, the thing darted to the left, hovering above the trees, and its eerie silence made my heart drop into my stomach. This was clearly something far beyond my comprehension, beyond anyone's comprehension, I'd imagine. So I pulled my binoculars to my eyes for a better look. And I realized the thing had two rows of rectangular windows lining its rims, with cold blue fluorescence emanating from within. And right about then is when I saw the figures.

There were twelve of them, by my count. Humanoid in shape, but not human, because something about them was off. I couldn't see their faces, but they struck me as weirdly emotionless. Maybe it was the way they moved, smooth and efficient, almost like German officers, their shiny black uniforms reflecting that cold blue light. Then I realized that one of the figures wasn't moving. light. Then I realized that one of the figures wasn't moving. It remained at the window, completely still. Waiting. Beckoning. Unnerved, I tried to reach for the gun, but for some reason my hands wouldn't leave the binoculars. And as my feet pulled me closer and closer to the thing, I could almost hear a voice in my head saying that no harm would come to me.

But I snapped back to reality when I heard Betty was screaming at me from the thing, I could almost hear a voice in my head saying that no harm would come to me. But I snapped back to reality when I heard Betty was screaming at me from the car. And realizing what danger we were in, I felt suddenly terrified, gripped by an inescapable fear unlike any I'd experienced before. Because these figures, these things, they were going to take us, snatch us like a bug in a net, and I had to stop that from happening. It was all up to me. So I ran back to the car, screaming that we needed to leave now. The door hadn't even closed all the way when I slammed the gas. We must have been going over a hundred miles an hour. Maybe I thought we could outrun it or maybe I thought it would leave us alone. But Betty kept trembling, saying that it

was following us, that it was above us, that it was getting closer and closer. And that's when the buzzing sound started. Low at first, then louder, louder. Soon the entire car began to vibrate, and I began to feel strangely lightheaded. The vibrations penetrated the vehicle, penetrated us, and even though we were careening down the road at over 100 miles an hour, I felt my grip on reality slipping further and further away,

even as I felt my body lifting impossibly up and out of my seat. But I didn't stop it. Couldn't stop it. And then, I felt absolutely nothing at all. The next thing I knew, we were back on the road and driving like nothing had happened. Betty watched me drive, smiling, and I felt awash with a strange feeling of calm. I remembered, of course, that we'd seen those strange lights in the sky. I even remembered peering at them through the binoculars. We'd seen something amazing, I knew that much. But beyond that, everything else felt like a lifetime ago. Like it didn't even matter.

Betty seemed to feel the same way. She still had her hand out the window, letting the air flow through her fingertips. She was glowing and I realized that in a way I was too. Maybe our honeymoon trip had made even more of an impression than I'd thought So I took Betty's hand as we turned on to Route 4 for Portsmouth She squeezed my hand back and smiled that perfect smile Her smile We had each other And that was all that mattered We had each other, and that was all that mattered.

Dawn was breaking as we pulled into our driveway. This surprised me, because it should have been only like three o'clock in the morning, not six. But neither Betty nor I found that fact troubling in the least, and we proceeded inside the house with most of our things. Delcy went straight to sleep, but Betty and I stood at the window for a while looking skyward. Later, as we climbed into bed, Betty wondered aloud if we would see the lights again. I must not have answered because I was out before I even hit the pillow. The sun was already high when I finally woke. Betty and Delcy were still fast asleep, so I set about to tidy up and make some brunch. As I worked I noticed my profound sense of calm beginning to fade with a new feeling of unease seeping into the edges of my consciousness. I was making pancakes when Betty walked in and told me her watch had stopped.

Checking my own wrist I found that mine was also frozen in time just after midnight. I figured the watches simply needed to be wound, but we soon realized they weren't just stopped. They were outright broken. What a strange coincidence, we thought, that both our timepieces should break on the same night at the exact same time. But that was only the beginning of the strange things we discovered that day. The shoes I'd been wearing on our trip were inexplicably scraped to the point of being ruined. The shoes I'd been wearing on our trip were inexplicably scraped to the point of being ruined. Betty found a long tear in her new blue dress.

In my binocular strap, a sturdy leather thing was fully severed. Neither of us could remember how such damage came to be, nor could we clearly articulate what had actually happened to us on our drive back from Montreal. This agitated Betty, and while I agreed that we had witnessed something unusual, I proposed that we keep our encounter with the strange lights to ourselves, lest people think us crackpots. But Betty disagreed, and promptly called her sister Janet to regale her with our tale. Now, Janet happened to be something of an odd bird,

and claimed to have seen a strange object in the sky several years ago. So after hearing Betty's story, she knew exactly what to do. First, she told us to report our sighting to the Air Force, and second, she instructed us to hold a compass next to our vehicle and note any unusual activity. I dismissed both suggestions outright, but Betty immediately left a message for Pease Air Force Base and disappeared into the garage while I sulked in the den. Soon enough, Betty called me to the car and showed me something I couldn't wrap my mind around. There were, I'm trying to think of how to best describe this, polished spots the size of quarters all along the trunk and hood and roof of our vehicle.

And when Betty held her compass over one of the spots, the needle went haywire, spinning wildly without being able to settle on any single direction. As I said earlier, I am not crazy. But the lights in the sky, the strange damage to our belongings, and the compass phenomenon? That was crazy, and I fought acceptance of it with everything I had. That is, until the nightmares started. That is, until the nightmares started. Tropical Storm Esther hit New England the night after our strange encounter,

so I'm not sure if it was the ferocious wind or my racing mind that kept me from falling asleep. But once I finally did, I had the most frightening dream of my life. And I've been to war. It happened in flashes that I couldn't logically piece together, but which felt so vivid and real that it seemed impossible for my mind to be inventing them. I distinctly saw some kind of roadblock, a dark shape in the night, contrasted with a glowing orb burning brighter than the sun.

Then I saw faceless figures standing over me and felt jolts of pain rocketing through my body and the next thing I knew I was awake and screaming in my own bed. Betty was already up and took my hand and asked, You're having the dreams too, aren't you? The dreams continued for both of us every night that week. Betty, it seemed, had more detailed visions than I did, and worried that we'd in fact been captured and taken on board that thing with the lights that we'd seen. I tried not to believe her, but once my nightmares began creeping into my waking life, I finally reached a breaking point. It happened when I was out on a simple errand to grab some milk.

I'd been getting more and more agitated while driving alone in the dark, and on this particular night I encountered a police roadblock. It was benign, some kind of accident I surmised, but when those lights flashed in my eyes, I became gripped by such paralyzing, inescapable fear that I turned home and never looked back. After that incident, I had no choice but to admit that something might have actually happened to us on that fateful night. Something more than just seeing lights in the sky. Something our memories were refusing to show us. Something terrifying.

Betty was the one who suggested we visit a hypnotist. We'd both been suffering from insomnia and headaches, and I in particular had become crippled with anxiety. My blood pressure, it turned out, had surged dangerously high. The hypnotist's name was Dr. Benjamin Simon, and though he was skeptical of our reasons for seeing him, he agreed to help because of my compounding health issues. of our reasons for seeing him, he agreed to help because of my compounding health issues. The story I told during my several hypnosis sessions always featured the same details in the same order, and I'll try my best to describe them here. We were driving on a rural road. It wasn't Route 3, and I wasn't entirely sure how we'd gotten there. Betty told me to slow down because something was blocking our way ahead. As the car came to a halt, I could make out the details of six men standing on the pavement, shrouded in shadow.

At first I thought they might have had car trouble, but there was no car to be seen. And when the men began to approach, their slight figures coming fully into view, I realized something horrifying. They were the same figures I'd seen earlier on the hovering craft with the lights. I slammed the gas, but the car didn't move. We were stuck there, and they were coming for us, and the only thing I could find the courage to do was to whisper to Betty. Run. Betty reached for her door handle, only to realize the door was already opening. One of the figures stood there, blocking her way, and I tried to grab my pistol. Oh God, I was shaking so much.

I wanted to fight them off, to do something, anything, but my limbs felt immobilized, and I was powerless to move, powerless to scream, powerless to tell Betty how much I loved her, and that everything would be okay. But it wasn't okay. We were pulled along a path through the woods to a darkened disc covering just above the ground. As we grew nearer, a doorway opened and a cold, bluish light engulfed us as we were taken inside. From there, Betty and I were separated. I'm not sure how much time passed, but I found myself in a stark room bathed in that same cold light. I was on a table.

Metal, maybe, I don't know, but it was too short for my body and my feet hung off the bottom of the thing. Several of those figures I'd seen in the windows stood around me and in the cold light I could finally discern their unearthly features. They had large heads and spindly bodies dressed in grayish-blue uniforms with no hair and impossibly large and dark eyes. Oh God, those eyes. Of course, I was absolutely petrified, but I seemed frozen in place and unable to move. So I waited there, lying prone as... I don't know how else to describe it. They began to work on me. They removed my shoes and pants. They examined me all over, scraping skin, taking nail clippings, hair clippings, even earwax scrapings. They seemed particularly

interested in the structure of my ear and mouth, and they panicked when one of them inadvertently removed the dentures I'd had since the war. As they spoke to each other, a thin membrane over their mouths fluttered, and though he never addressed me directly, one of the beings, the one I took to be the leader because of his black uniform, watched over me with a strangely calming gaze. Even as the others did something below my waist, his large eyes stayed locked on mine. Then I felt some kind of solution rubbed on my groin and a strange pressure as something was inserted into my rectum.

All I wanted to do was scream, but I was lost in those huge black eyes. Blacker than night. Blacker than eternity. than eternity. I wish I could say that hypnosis revealed that Betty was spared a similar experience. But she too was subjected

to pokes and examinations ad nauseum with one key distinction. She somehow had spoken with the strange leader of these beings. And after she asked him where they'd come from,

he showed her an elaborate chart full of intricate dots and curved lines. A star map, apparently, of expeditions and discoveries. Betty tried to ask more questions, but he insisted his answers wouldn't matter. She'd remember none of this anyway. Except she did remember. I remembered. remember? I remembered. And now we have to live with it for the rest of our lives. So we've been forced to find a way to cope. To convince ourselves we aren't crazy. To accept what happened, compartmentalize, and move on. And it's worked, for the most part. True, I'm still uneasy driving alone at night. I'll sometimes still catch myself staring out the window at an idle sky.

And unsettling dreams still plague my nights. Lately I've been having one dream in particular. Betty and I are on vacation. A cozy cottage on a beach somewhere, when Betty calls me to a window. Outside we find waves and waves of flying saucers coming, the skies lit up with them. They're back! Let's go out and see them, Betty says, as the saucers begin dropping things from their shiny round hulls. And then the whole world catches fire around us, and we realize we have nowhere to go, nowhere to run, nowhere to hide.

But as we take each other's hands, we feel strangely at peace because we have each other and that's all that matters. Sightings will be back just after this. Welcome back to Sightings, where we're about to beam up into that story you just heard. We're about to talk about what's real, what's not, what's believable, according to us, what's not. And to help me do that, I'm here with my co-host, Brian, who wrote that story. Our first alien abduction story.

That's right. We've had some alien stories on here before, but this was exciting because we kind of had this mystery of what actually happened to these people. They don't even really know. Yeah. And that's kind of why it was fun to kind of dig into their headspace on this story and try to put together the pieces of this allegedly harrowing abduction story in the years after it happened. And just for the record, everything in this story allegedly happened. I just compressed the timelines a little bit. Which is heartbreaking because if this actually happened, my God, these poor, poor people. I know. I can't even imagine. And making it even harder for Barney and Betty was the fact that this was the first real alien abduction story that was made public.

Really? This is the OG abduction story? It is. That set the standard. That's incredible. So, wow, that must have been harrowing for them. They didn't have a script to go off of, feeling like they were the only ones this has ever happened to. Absolutely. And since then, of course, there's been an absolute flood of abduction stories in, you know, the news or in the media or in movies, you know, close encounters of the third kind, things like that. But back then, they must have just felt completely and utterly alone, you know, both on that spaceship and in the aftermath of it all.

Okay, so you help me process all of this and keep away from the emotion so I don't get emotional here. Yeah, well, I can help with the facts and the account. So I guess let's start with the emotion, so I don't get emotional here. Yeah, well, I can help with the facts and the account. So I guess let's start with the facts, because there are some just straight-up factual things that didn't make it into the story itself. First of all, Barney and Betty were really smart people. They were upstanding citizens. We know from the story, of course,

that Barney was a Postal Service worker and a World War II veteran. But what wasn't in the story is that he happens to have an IQ of 140. Whoa, that's like genius territory right there, isn't it? I think it is Mensa. He could be in Mensa. Okay. Okay. Well, interesting. Wow. That's crazy. So bookmark that. I want to keep gathering facts for now before jumping to theories, but something clicked for me.

Yeah. And Betty was also way ahead of her time. She was a college graduate. She was a social worker. Together, they were also ahead of their time, I guess, in the sense that they were a mixed race couple in 1961. Right. That was hinted at in the story, which, you know, unfortunately to me could potentially complicate the narrative, considering, you know, this happened in the early 60s, biracial couple on a backwoods road trip, which, I mean, sounds super tense. Not complicated in terms of whether I believe them, but more in terms of what I imagine could have happened. Yeah. And I mean, just being alone on these back roads in the middle of nowhere must have been terrifying enough. And that's before they even see the UFO. Right. Oh, gosh. Okay. So

if I've got this right, they see this thing in the sky and it seems to be following them. And then they remember encountering some sort of roadblock and then they're taken on board. Yeah. And most of that only popped up in the hypnosis that they did, which we'll get to in a minute. But just like in the story, you know, they're just one minute driving down the road, seeing the light in the sky, seeing it kind of following them, getting closer to them and closer and closer. The next minute, it seems to be several hours later, and they're overcome with this overwhelming kind of eerie feeling of calm, I guess. Which struck me as the most unsettling part of this story, that they seem to have just had some kind of harrowing experience and are just driving along like nothing happened. But then they got home and started to realize, like, wait, wait a minute.

Yeah. And I don't know if that can just be chalked up to, I'm no expert in trauma or anything like that. So, and I'm sure we're going to be talking about trauma later on in this. Sure. But yeah, I mean, so besides this fact that, you know, oh, wow, that's weird. I feel like something might have actually happened. And they had all this physical evidence around them, as we kind of hinted at in the story. You know, both their watches were broken.

Barney's shoes were all scraped up, basically ruined. He had this thick leather binocular strap that had somehow snapped in half. Betty's dress was torn. And it wasn't in the story, but Delcy, the dog, also was dealing with some kind of PTSD. Oh, no. Yeah, he started having health problems. He was barking in his sleep and panting and... Oh, my gosh.

We got to get PETA on these aliens. Leave the dogs alone. I'm just saying it like it is. And I guess we'll never actually know, you know, what Delcy's side of the story was because he was not hypnotized in this situation. Of course. But Betty and Barney were hypnotized as we saw in the story. And that's where most of the details of the abduction kind of started really to come out.

Not only the time they spent in the spaceship, but the details leading up to that. But before I get into those details, I wanted to ask for your thoughts, McLeod, on hypnosis. Do you think it's valid? Do you think it's bullshit? What do you think? I think it's plausible that hypnosis can actually unlock sort of suppressed experiences, perhaps. But I also think it's kind of like with kids, like you can say like, and like, what did the stop sign look like?

And they'll be like, oh, it was red and it was whatever. But there was no stop sign. You planted the idea. Yeah, you're talking about like false memories. Yeah, false memories, suggestions. Yeah, I agree. I've not been hypnotized myself. I think anytime anyone is hypnotized and that is the where the account comes from, Yeah, false memories, suggestions. Betty recounted during these sessions, especially since this was the first public account of an alien abduction.

And we heard in the story, you know, a lot of Barney's recollections, the account of the gray aliens, their interest in all of his orifices, to put it mildly. You know, it seems to be kind of standard fodder now for what abduction stories are. You know, you've got the rectal probes, things like that. But Betty claimed to actually talk to the aliens, didn't she? That's different. Yeah, it is kind of weird. And she did say that she was shown a star chart by the leader of the aliens in her room. The star chart didn't illuminate where the aliens were from or where Earth was or anything like that. But she saw it.

She also claimed to have seen a book full of symbols in the spacecraft room that she was in. Can I just ask straight up if there's any corroboration, actual evidence surrounding the story, or is it just their account from this hypnosis? Good question. So if you remember from the story, Betty's sister told her to call the Air Force. And Betty did it, even though Barney did not want anyone to know that this happened to him. He didn't want prying eyes on them. But Betty called and the Air Force theoretically investigated this and ended up publishing their findings in Project Blue Book. Project Blue Book. I think I've heard of that. Yeah, it was a compilation of reports involving UFOs that the Air Force investigated between 1953 and 1969. I am sure this is going to come up again in a lot of other stories. Right. In this particular case, though, the Air Force made no mention of the

abduction part of the story and focused solely on the UFO sighting itself. Huh. Okay, well, pushing that aside for a second, let me guess, weather balloon? Close. They said it was, quote, an optical condition resulting from a weather phenomenon. That feels kind of dismissive to me. Yeah, that seemed to be Project Blue Book's MO. You know, just dismiss it all. And I think of the thousands and thousands of cases they examined, they managed to explain

away all of them as weather or balloons or whatever. But complicating things in this story, military radar picked up an unidentified flying object in that same area of New Hampshire the same night that the Hills saw something in the sky. And Project Blue Book investigated that one, too. And they ended up saying it was probably a balloon, using the word probably. Yeah. So it's plausible that it's just a balloon. Yeah. You know, a balloon just kind of strikes me as a little easy for this, especially given that they described seeing an actual flying saucer. They described seeing, you know, the two rows of windows. They described seeing the creatures inside. And their experience. A balloon can't do the things to them that they describe having been done to them.

Exactly. So in my mind, it seems like the Air Force didn't really investigate very thoroughly and kind of just swept it all under the rug. But again, that just seems to be kind of how they did things back then. So how did this story get out? It ended up going public in a huge way. It did. But it's important to note that Barney and Betty were not the ones who made that happen. Okay. Some reporters started digging in Boston. And I don't know if he talked to the hypnotist or what, but he ended up publishing an article about it without having interviewed Barney and Betty. And it generated a giant media storm. And then in 1966, this book came out,

not written by the Hills, called The Interrupted Journey. Then there was a TV movie made about this in 1975 that starred James Earl Jones, Darth Vader himself. So I wonder if it's because of this publicity that it seems like this story became kind of the poster child for alien abductions. Like every alien abduction I've heard of kind of hues closely to this story, which could be because it's true. kind of hues closely to this story, which could be because it's true or could be because this cemented in the mind of the masses what an alien abduction might entail. I don't know. But anyway, the question that's still on my mind is if it wasn't aliens, what actually happened to these people? Well, let's dive into some theories before I give you some food for thought. I want to get your thought on what you think might have actually been happening here. Well, let's dive into some theories. Before I give you some food for thought, I want to get your thought on what you think might have actually been happening here. this discussion is just like, what does that mean if it's true? So if this is true, my goodness, that's, uh, you know, a day's long discussion about aliens. What do they want? What are they

doing here? Why are they being covered up? If it's not true, then there's kind of, I think, two subcategories. It's either fraud, like it's just been made up for whatever the motivations, fraud, like it's just been made up for whatever the motivations, be they benign or malignant, or it's just a misinterpretation. And do you think that this settles into one of those groupings based on your gut? Because I'm a skeptical gecko, I tend to lean towards some combination of, in this case, I don't think it's fraud. Fraud, they just don't strike me as those type of people from how they've been characterized.

So I lean more towards a misinterpretation, whether it be, I don't know, like some processing of some trauma. Or I mean, they were sleep deprived because he was driving for a long time. Yeah, I think that you're onto something with the misidentification. That's very common in these kind of stories, it seems like. And is it possible that they're driving late at night, they're exhausted, getting bleary-eyed, and they see an aircraft or a balloon or weather phenomena, if we want to follow the Air Force's thoughts on this. And it kind of amplified into something else when they went to sleep or when, especially when they went into hypnosis. I'm sorry to interrupt, but I think it might be helpful to refresh our minds about why they went to a hypnotist. What led them to do that? Yeah, I don't have the exact answer, but based on my recollection,

they had just reached a breaking point, essentially. You know, it had been two and a half years or three years since the incident, and they were having nightmares. And I'm sure that when you have some kind of traumatic experience, it starts nagging at you, and it starts kind of just being there in the back of your head, and eventually enough is enough. And that sounds like kind of what happened here. However, I don't know if it's a coincidence or not, but two weeks before they first visited the hypnotist, a very popular

television show at the time called The Outer Limits aired several episodes that happened to have alien stories in them. And in these stories, they weren't abduction stories or anything, but there were creatures that looked vaguely similar to the aliens that they described, kind of with slanty black eyes you know big heads uh this kind of leathery black uniform just like barney ended up describing under hypnosis and i think one could and people have posited that they saw this on television and either that triggered them to go to hypnosis or they saw it and it just ended up kind of getting sloshed around in their brains along with everything else and just, again, kind of amalgamated into this story. Aha. So if the Hills saw this Outer Limits episode and images of those aliens are floating around in their unconscious, it's what comes out bingo i don't want to sound like i'm trying to discredit them out

right here because i would like to think that they did encounter something on that road rather than just seeing something on tv and making this up right so that brings me uh back to something we talked about earlier which was there being a mixed race couple and it's the 60s and they're in a country road and they encounter a roadblock and um i don't want to get too graphic because it's too upsetting but i imagine it's possible they could have encountered some horrible people who did some really horrible things to them yeah that theory certainly bears weight with me because the mind does crazy things when you experience trauma and we don't actually know what could have happened to Barney and Betty, who they might have encountered, what could have been

done to them. But it is known that Barney had anxiety regarding his race, especially up in New Hampshire, where he was worried about small town cops who might do things and look the other way, where they were having trouble finding a place to live, a neighborhood to buy a home in because people weren't accepting of mixed race couples at the time. Right. So that so for me, I think I'm more inclined to believe, unfortunately, that there are some crazy racists on the road that night rather than some aliens. than some aliens. And also, I understand maybe another aspect of like why Barney would be so reticent for this story to get out as a black man in America at this time. Like, I think it would be a risky thing for him. Absolutely. Absolutely. And I think it just opens up so many possibilities for what might have happened here. And that's absolutely horrifying. Right. But at the same time, I think part of me doesn't want to necessarily diminish the idea that, you know, radar caught something weird in the sky and the hills themselves made it clear

that like they weren't looking to publicize this. And why would a biracial couple make something like this up? And shine this giant spotlight on themselves right exactly unless they genuinely thought we were abducted by aliens who it's it's a surprisingly heavy story which i think also reminds me to really look at all these stories maybe with a certain amount of empathy and compassion first rather than just kind of scooby-oo fact-finding. No, that's a really profound insight, McLeod. I don't know. But that's, I think, about all the time we have.

We could probably go on, and we're probably not qualified to discuss some of this stuff. But listeners, we want to hear what you think. So if you're 80 years old, happen to be on that New Hampshire road in 1960, and can tell us about that weather balloon or UFO, let us know at theories at sightingspodcast.com. Or check out our Instagram at sightingspod or leave us a comment on Spotify. I'm still trying to shake this one off. Brian, I am now going to demand some concrete clues for what kind of story we're exploring next week.

Okay, in ultimatum, I will say that we are heading to the Pacific Northwest. That's all I'm going to get out of you, isn't it? Just that it's the Pacific Northwest. I'm not saying anything else other than it is a creature story. It's salmon, isn't it? See y'all next time, everyone. Same time, same place, here on Sightings. It's monster salmon. You're kind of a jerk, isn't it? See y'all next time, everyone. Same time, same place, here on Sightings. It's monster salmon.

You're kind of a jerk, you know that? Sightings is hosted by McLeod Andrews and Brian Sigley. Produced by Brian Sigley, Chase Kinzer, and McLeod Andrews. Written by Brian Sigley. Story music by Madison James Smith. Series music by Mitch Bain. Mixing and mastering by Pat Kicklighter of Sundial Media. Artwork by Nuno Cernanus.

For a list of this episode's sources, check out our website at sightingspodcast.com. Sightings is presented by Reverb and Q-Code. If you like the show, be sure to subscribe on your favorite podcast platform so you're first to hear new episodes every week. And if you know other Supernatural fans, tell them about us. We'd really appreciate it.