Documents / FOIA release

Aboard a Flying Saucer the Adventures of Two 'Kidnapped' Humans

Central Intelligence Agency · 2001-03-12 · 29 pages · text by GLM-OCR

This CIA-released copy, approved for release in 2001, reproduces a LOOK magazine condensation of John G. Fuller's book The Interrupted Journey. It recounts Betty and Barney Hill's September 19, 1961 sighting near Indian Head, New Hampshire, their two missing hours, Dr. Benjamin Simon's hypnosis sessions and Walter Webb's NICAP investigation. Simon found neither patient psychotic but said nothing was proved. The file also includes an Air Force UFO report form and a letter from J. Allen Hynek urging scientific study of UFOs.

Read from the scan by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word.

# Approved For Release 2001/04/02 : CIA-RDP81R00560R000100010003-8

Shaken, but finding an irresistible impulse to move closer, Barney continued across the field, coming within 50 feet of the craft, as it dropped to the height of a single tall tree.

In the car, Betty waited. Suddenly, she became aware of Barney's disappearance into the blackness of the field. "Barney," she yelled. "Barney, come back! Barney! Do you hear me?"

There was no answer.

Out in the field, Barney put the binoculars to his eyes. Behind the clearly structured windows, he could see at least half a dozen living figures wearing black uniforms. They seemed to be bracing themselves against the transparent windows as the craft tilted down toward him. They were staring directly at him.

Betty, now nearly 200 feet away, was screaming at him from the car, but Barney has no recollection of hearing her.

On some inaudible signal, every member of the crew but one stepped back from the window toward a large panel a few feet behind the windowline. The remaining one appeared to Barney to be a leader.

Through the binoculars, Barney could see appendages in action at what seemed to be a control board behind the windows of the craft. The craft descended lower, a few feet at a time. As the fins bearing the two red lights spread out further on the sides of the craft, an extension began to lower from the underside. It seemed to be a ladderlike structure, but Barney could not be sure. In terror, he tried to pull the glasses from his eyes, to turn away, but he couldn't. He remembers the eyes of the one crew member who stared down at him. He had never seen eyes like that before.

With every ounce of energy he could summon, he pulled the binoculars from his eyes, ran screaming back across the field to Betty and the car. He was near hysteria. He jammed the car into first gear, spurted off down the road, shouting that he was sure they were going to be captured. He ordered Betty to look out the window to see where the craft was. She looked, but the object was nowhere in sight. He yelled that it may have swung above them. Betty checked again, but all she could see was total darkness.

Suddenly, they heard a strange, electronic sounding beeping. The car seemed to vibrate with it. It was in irregular rhythm: beep, beep-beep beep, beep, and it seemed to come from behind the car, possibly from the trunk.

"What's that noise?" Barney asked.

"I don't know," Betty said.

They each began to feel an odd tingling sensation. A kind of daze overcame them.

Sometime later—how long, they were not sure—they were again aware of the beeping sound. They were alert now to a more precise pattern of beeps: beep, beep, beep, beep.

As the second set of beeps grew louder, their awareness slowly returned. They were still in the car, and the car was moving, with Barney at the wheel. They were silent, numb and somnambulistic. A sign indicated that they were in the vicinity of Ashland, some 35 miles south of Indian Head, where the inexplicable beeping had first sounded.

As the daze dissolved, Betty Hill vaguely remembers saying to her husband: "Now do you

believe in flying saucers?" And he recalls answering: "Don't be ridiculous. Of course not."

But neither could remember much detail, other than this, until they had driven on to Route 93. There, Betty suddenly pointed to a sign reading: CONCORD—17 MILES.

"That's where we are, Barney," she said. "Now we know."

Barney, too, remembers his mind clearing fully at this point. But he does not recall being disturbed or concerned about the 35 miles from Indian Head to Ashland, about which he seemed to remember nothing.

It was nearly full daylight when they reached home. Both their watches had stopped, and never ran again. The kitchen clock read shortly after five a.m. They had expected to reach home by three. Two hours of their lives were unaccounted for—yet neither seemed aware of the loss at this time until it was pointed out to them months later.

Barney unloaded the car. Picking up the binoculars, he found that the leather strap that had been around his neck the night before was freshly and cleanly broken in half.

During the silent drive, both Betty and Barney had looked to the sky at regular intervals, wondering if the strange object would appear

again. Even after they went into the house, they found themselves occasionally drifting to the windows to look up into the morning brightness.

Also, inexplicably, each had a strange, clammy feeling. Barney went into the bathroom to examine his groin and lower abdomen, which seemed to bother him. After he came out, they reviewed what had happened and resolved not to discuss it with anyone.

Nearly three that afternoon, when they awoke, Barney again began reviewing the experience of the night before. He was baffled and confused by the total lack of sound during the extended encounter. The figures he had seen aboard the craft he shunted quickly out of his mind. He did not want to think about them.

As Betty awakened, one of her first acts, why she never fully knew, was to take the dress and shoes she had worn during the experience and pack them in the back of her closet. She has never worn them since.

Barney went over to the clothes he had worn the night before and was surprised to discover that his best shoes were scuffed along the tops. He wondered why only the tops were scarred. He concluded that somewhere in that field he had dragged the tops of his shoes along some rocks.

CHAPTER

# A talk with a skeptical investigator

2

THE HILLS' RESOLUTION to keep the experience quiet began to waver during their afternoon breakfast session. Betty telephoned her sister, Janet Miller, and told her the story. Janet, who had no reservations about the possibility of a UFO sighting because of her own earlier experience, confirmed Betty's feeling that the car might have in some way been exposed to radiation if the object had hovered directly over it. Janet reminded Betty that a neighbor of theirs in Kingston was a physicist, and said she would check with him. In a few moments, Janet was back on the phone to tell Betty that the physicist said any ordinary compass might show evidence of radiation.

Barney's skepticism stiffened, but he finally relented and got the compass for his wife. She went outside and ran the compass along the sides of the car. The needle did not react to any appreciable extent, but as she drew near the trunk of the car, her attention was drawn to a dozen or more shiny circles scattered on the trunk's surface. Each was about the size of a silver dollar. They looked as though they had been buffed on through a circular stencil.

Carefully, Betty placed the compass on one of the spots. The needle immediately reacted sharply. She then moved the compass on the side of the car, where none of the shiny spots appeared. The needle reacted normally. She shifted the compass back to the shiny spots. The needle jumped out of control. She ran back to the house.

"Barney," she said, "you've got to come outside and look at this with me." Barney reluctantly agreed to take a look while Betty called her sister to report her "findings." Janet had talked to the former chief of police of Newton, N.H. He had suggested that the Hills notify the Pease Air

Force Base at Portsmouth, a Strategic Air Command installation.

"How did the compass act for you?" Betty asked, when Barney returned.

"Just like any compass," he said. "Oh, it might have jumped around a little when it got near the tire in the trunk. Things like that."

"What about the shiny spots?" Betty asked: "Did you see those?"

"Yes," said Barney.

"Well, what about them?"

"Oh, probably something dropped on the trunk."

Betty called the Air Police at the base and gave an officer the facts in bare outline. When she mentioned the fins, which apparently separated at the sides of the craft, with the two red lights on either side, the officer suddenly seemed more interested. When she explained that her husband had a better look at this part of the craft than she, the officer asked to speak with Barney.

Barney avoided mentioning the figures he had observed on the craft, or the shiny spots on the car. But the phone call was reassuring. From the discussion with the officer, he learned of other reports, some similar to his, and he no longer felt so concerned about the possibility of being considered irrational.

Still struggling to find some correlation between fantasy and fact, Barney suggested to Betty that they each draw a sketch of their impressions of the object. Sitting in separate rooms, they roughed out two sketches. When the sketches were compared, they were remarkably similar.

Some ten days after the sighting, Betty began having a series of nightmares. They domi-

Cases discussed

About this file

FOIA release, from the cia-readingroom collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. The text was read from the page images by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word. 29 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.