Active in a Unitarian congregation, the Hills were also members of the NAACP and community leaders, and Barney sat on a local board of the U.S. Postal Service, while Betty (1919–2004) was a social worker. Barney (1922–1969) was employed by the U.S. The Hills lived in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. As of July 2011, the site of the alleged craft’s first close approach is marked by a state historical marker. Its importance is such that many of Betty Hill’s notes, tapes, and other items have been placed in a permanent collection at the University of New Hampshire, her alma mater. Theirs was the first widely-publicized claim of alien abduction, adapted into the best-selling 1966 book The Interrupted Journey and the 1975 television movie The UFO Incident. The couple’s story, called the Hill Abduction, and occasionally the Zeta Reticuli Incident, was that they had been kidnapped for a short time by a UFO. My favorite part of her retelling is Betty says that she “socked” one of the entities who was trying to force her aboard the space ship.Betty and Barney Hill were an American couple who claimed to have been abducted by extraterrestrials in a rural portion of New Hampshire on September 19–20, 1961. Notes: Check out this 1999 interview with Betty Hill. Source: New Hampshire Magazine: “A Close Encounter With Betty Hill.” As encounters go, I have met only one abductee. She told me that only two other people on the planet knew what she was about to tell me. When I was content that we’d shot what we came for, Betty revealed something to me about her experience. I could almost detect constellations in her pores. All alone under that dark cloth, on the ground glass I saw her, chain smoking, her face acid-etched in character. I also remember that absolutely no one left there a skeptic.ĭuring that period I was shooting large-format, black and white portraits as a personal project so I invited Betty to the studio. I remember all of us hanging on her every word. I remember Betty being gracious in recounting, in detail and with relish, her abduction experience, a story she must have told hundreds of times before. She quickly became the central spirit among us, not through any need on her part, but simply because we all realized that any stories or insights we might have would pale against hers. One particular evening involved a painter, a surgeon, a mortician and Betty. Sadly, no recordings were made nor any records kept. The exchanges were always pretty amazing. In the early nineties, Wendy and I began gathering folks with diverse backgrounds for dinners that we’d host. New Hampshire has even memorialized the event with a highway plaque.ĭavid Mendelson recalls his meeting with Betty in the 1990s: The Hill’s abduction story was one of the first to be recorded this modern phenomenon’s history, and went on to influence countless television shows, Ufology books and pop culture references. They were taken aboard the spacecraft and the rest, they say, is history. 30 miles later, a group of strange beings were standing in the road, blocking their way. The craft began to approach, but startled, Barney decided to ditch the investigation and speed off. Out of curiosity, they pulled the car over and waved at the craft. Betty and Barney Hill were something of a national sensation in back in 1961, following their report to the media of an alleged alien abduction.Īs the story goes, they were driving in their car when a UFO suddenly swept down over their car. In preparation for the Exeter UFO Festival happening this August, photographer David Mendelsohn wrote a brief memoir for New Hampshire Magazine on his “close encounter” meeting with Betty Hill.
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