Transcript of Interview with Betty Hill.
Famed UFO abductee, conducted on October 1, 1998.
Betty
and Barney Hill are probably the best known UFO abductees of all time. According to popular claims, on September 19, 1961, while driving through the mountains of New
Hampshire, the couple were taken aboard an alien spacecraft and inspected and
interviewed by the extraterrestrials who manned the craft. Betty Hill, who was born on June
28, 1919, was 42 at the time. Her husband, Barney, was 39 at the time.
My “encounter” with Betty Hill occurred when I called her up, introduced myself as a journalist, and asked for an interview. She invited me to come to her house in small town New Hampshire, where we could chat. We met on October 1, 1998. Betty Hill was 79 at the time. It had been over 37 years since the alleged incident that had changed her life and made her famous.
Like almost everyone who had the privilege of meeting Betty Hill, I really enjoyed our time together. We spoke for a couple hours and then went out for dinner, getting some of the local fried seafood. As a full transcript of the interview is available online in at least two places, here and at archive.org where remnants of my old website can still be found: https://web.archive.org/web/20070121013509/http://www.capital.net/com/phuston/bettyhill.HTML The two transcripts are the same, aside from minor corrections to punctuation and correcting the spelling of "Roswell," the city in New Mexico. (not "Rosswell")
INTERVIEW WITH BETTY HILL
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| Betty Hill and her model of one of the "space people." |
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| Betty Hill at her home. |
*** 
I fumble around a bit, and ask for permission to tape record the interview, which is easily granted. I explain to her that I am primarily interested in the UFO abduction claims from a sociological perspective and that I am interested in the history of the UFO abduction claims, of which she is, of course, a key part.
PLH: (tape recorder starts in mid-sentence.) .... How this whole thing has grown about UFO abductions and I understand you have some strong opinions on that.
BH: (Smiles) Oh you did? Where did you hear that?
PLH: I'm not sure. I'm not sure where I heard that to be honest. I forget. (puzzled) I really don't know.
BH: I sure have some. Actually, I wouldn't say it's strong opinions. It's based on facts.
PLH: Okay.
BH: And that's the difference.
PLH: Lets go back to.... If you don't mind.... I've got this book here (hold up a copy of "The Interrupted Journey", the popular book which tells the story of Betty and Barney Hill's 1961 alleged abduction experience) My friend in Cambridge, lives with his girlfriend, and she has this book..
BH: (pleased) Oh!
PLH: It is probably in every library in America.
BH: Is it autographed?
PLH: No! No. Actually that's an excellent idea!
BH: Well, I'll do it now.
PLH: (Pleased) That's a good idea.
(She blows nose with tissue)
BH: I got allergies. They uh... I had the cast (?) in August. And then they got better in September. And every time we get heat and humidity... Everybody around here has allergies. It's because of the air pollution.
PLH: Is there a lot of air pollution around here?
BH: At times we are the second worse in the country. Los Angeles is first.
PLH: I didn't know that.
BH: Yeah, they tell us. A lot of times they tell us...
PLH: Why is it so bad up here?
BH: Because we get all the pollution from the mid-west. And the industries out there have been ordered by the government to clean it up and instead of doing that they are fighting it through all the courts.
PLH: Build taller smoke stacks.....
BH: Right!
(I laugh cynically and she holds up the book and a pen.)
BH: Shall I put her name on it? Or just sign my name?
PLH: Put "To Sue" if you could.
(She hands me the book.)
PLH: Okay, good, great.... I am sure she'll be thrilled....
BH: I did it "To Sue, All the Best..."
(We laugh.)
PLH: Anyway, I was reading this book (holding up "The Interrupted Journey.") and it sounded like...regardless of the UFO incident, you are an interesting person. It spoke about a former social worker...who was involved in civil rights and union activities and similar things. Could you talk about your life before it happened a little bit?
BH: I was on the state board of directors of the American Civil Liberties Union.
PLH: Really?
BH: I'm a member of an organization called "Vote Smart."
PLH: What is "Vote Smart"?
BH: They're going to bring this country back to being a Democracy. Vote Smart started in the state of Oregon with a group of college students who asked themselves, "When we send somebody to Washington, how the hell do we know what the hired help is doing while they are there?" (she laughs) So they started keeping records of how everybody voted. Well, it spread from Washington all over the country. And now we've spread not only to Federal offices but to state offices. And we are... Vote Smart has sent out thirty thousand questionnaires to every candidate running for office. On what their opinions are... Then all the big news media have been in touch, and they said they don't know how people vote. So that they can actually make it known to the American people before they vote what they're voting for.
PLH: Does it advocate a particular position?
BH: Oh no! No! No!
PLH: It just monitors them.
BH: I mean like who votes for abortions, who votes against abortions.
PLH: But it doesn't have a position or any policy on abortions?
BH: No, no... it’s strictly up to the voters and that's going to bring back Democracy.
PLH: That sounds like a good thing.
BH: Not only that we publish who pays the congressmen. How much money they get from all the different PACs. Like we got Bob Smith here from New Hampshire whose contributions from labor... he gets not one single penny from them... so that's what labor thinks of him... and then uh...um...you might say in his favor with the environmentalists, the senior citizens, uh... whole group like this.. but he supports the ... uh... he's against abortion. He's got a rating of 100% with the Christian Coalition. And all like this... Here we get this information out to the voters and they'll know what the heck they're doing! 'Cause nobody votes down there because they're just confused.
PLH: Okay, so there's the ACLU, you're involved in and Vote Smart. What are some other things?
BH: Some of my others.... I am a life member of the New England NAACP. Uh.... I'm a member of the US committee of the United Nations...um...I just got the publication... um... Morris Dee's group... Southern Poverty...um... um...
(We both fumble trying to remember the proper name.)
PLH: That's not Klan Watch, it's something similar?
BH: Yeah! Klan Watch! They're part... part of that ....
PLH: Southern Poverty Law Center or something....
BH: yeah!
PLH: All right... all right....
BH: Those are some of my interests. Politically I am a Social Democrat.
PLH: Nothing wrong with that... um... so... So could you talk a little bit about your life before 1961. (The date of the alleged abduction.)
BH: Oh yeah..... Well, first of all, I'm a direct descendant from the first settlers of Hampton, New Hampshire, Newington (?), New Hampshire, York, Maine and then in 1847 my great grandfather came over from Galway.
PLH: Galway?
PLH: Ireland. Okay!
BH: And three grandchildren in my family, they immediately, as soon as they came here were the leading town officials. The Dows down here in Hampton were the leading public officials for over a hundred years. And I'm descended from Henry Dow and then of ... another descendant of Henry Dow started Dow-Jones averages, Dow-Jones publications, the Wall Street Journal, and another Dow started Dow chemicals... and they all sold them and retired. (she laughs.) I mean that's the kind of background I came from. We've always been interested in ... we're not proling (?) Footnote 1 ... We've got sort of an international outlook on life ....
PLH: It sounds that way...
BH: ..... Like my father ... when I was a baby, my father was chairman of the board of select global talent (?) When he got tired of (?) the woman who lived two doors down from us became jail minister (?) My father held just about every town office, and he worked for his uncle who was a big industrialist in a big factory. My grandfather also worked in his brother's plant and I would say... We all came from above average families... and uh... not only that...um... my mother was a fighter for women's rights. (She laughs.) When I was a kid my mother's got the cigarette holder and the cigarette and the bobbed hair, short skirts and she's doing the Charleston and my father was saying don't get too modern or I'll give you one of those things called a DEE-Vorce. (We both laugh.) But uh... I'm the oldest of five... um... we grew up in a home... five of us...we were never punished. Never, never punished.... And you know you hear about these parents ... killing their kids and all... those things didn't happen when I was growing up. People didn't beat their kids....We had a value to our parents. Today kids are like one step above a dog.
PLH: Now you were a child protective worker at one time, now weren't you?
BH: Yeah.
PLH: When was that?
BH: Twenty years. Um... I started in 1950 and I retired in 1974.
PLH: Okay... and one other thing I was wondering... I didn't get the chance to read the whole book, but where did you meet Barney?
BH: First of all, I graduated from a private high school....
PLH: In New Hampshire?
BH: Yeah.
PLH: All right.
BH: And then I went to the University of New Hampshire for two years, and then the war came along...
PLH: World War Two...
BH: World War Two. I didn't go. Meanwhile I married and I adopted three kids who were all from one family and then later I was divorced. I was single for six years and during those six years I went back to college and got my degree in Social Work and then... while I was single... Barney came here to Portsmouth on vacation.
PLH: From where?
BH: From Philadelphia. That's when I met him originally. But I knew him for six years before I married him. He was married before. He had two sons.
PLH: And his two sons were African-Americans?
BH: Oh yeah!
PLH: And you lived together in Portsmouth?
BH: Yup. He was in Philadelphia and, after we married, he moved here.
PLH: Now I'm just curious. Now did you still have the three adopted children?
BH: Well, they were adults by then...
PLH: Okay, all right... all right... So were they boys? Two boys?
BH: I had one son and two daughters.
PLH: And Barney had two boys.
BH: Two boys. No, my kids were grown up, during the summer his two boys stayed here with us.
PLH: When they lived here, were they adults?
BH: No, they were in high school.
PLH: Were there many African Americans in Portsmouth at the time?
BH: Well we had Pease (sp?) Air Force Base and there were lots of Blacks out there.
PLH: Okay, this is just very interesting to me, because while it has nothing to do with what I came here for, my parents adopted a couple children, one of whom was African American and one of whom was mixed race so...
BH: Really!? (Pleased)
PLH: Yeah, this was in the suburbs of Schenectady NY, so it was the kind of thing where they were the only children of that race in the elementary school and then in the middle school there were a couple more and then in the high school there were about three more and you know... so it was that kind of deal...
BH: See...a couple weeks ago, Barney's son, Darryl, came up from Philadelphia and he brought his sone with him... and uh... Barney's son Darryl teaches Spanish at a high school. He's a high school teacher.
PLH: Hmmm. That's what I might do. (Writing makes no money!) But uh.. okay... what did Barney do for work... oh yeah! (remembering) he worked for the post office!
BH: Barney... he was... back in those days, Barney was a rural mail carrier. Now back in those days, to become a rural mail carrier you had to be approved by congress. Just as though you were a postmaster. I mean you might say he had a travelling post office, but also Barney was very, very active. He was a legal officer for the NAACP, and they had a lot of problems after Pease. ( Footnote 2 )
He was always out there. And there were problems at the shipyard and there were problems in those days with housing and police and all those things....um... He organized the Rockingham County Community Hate Action Program, and he was elected director in fact for three years. He set the term... No more than three years (she laughs.) Or he'd a been there forever...um... a lot of things... he was a lot of things.... Everybody knew Barney. We were active in the Unitarian Church and ... uh... I mean he went to ... well... when Martin Luther King spoke ... "I have a Dream." .... Barney was there.
PLH: What year was that please?
BH: Oh... I don't remember. It was in the 60s. I didn't go, because his son Darryl was here. His two boys were here, so I stayed here.
PLH: That wasn't the March on Washington, was it?
BH: Yeah.
PLH: One of my aunts was there.
BH: Really?
PLH: Yeah. She's a Quaker.
BH: She was what?
PLH: Was a Quaker. Is a Quaker.
BH: Do you want to know something?
PLH: What?
BH: When I spoke about Dows, Joseph Dow, the first born Dow in the United States, started the first Quaker colony down here over here on the other side of Hamilton. ... (laughs) Obscure sociology? Now let me tell ya another thing... The other side of my family, Rollins? James Rollins came over from Norfolk county England in 1634. He was arrested and brought to trial in Boston, Massachusetts and his crime was called "That of Association". He had provided hospitality to a Quaker family and that was illegal. (She laughs.)
PLH: Well, it should be! They're a bunch of trouble makers. (We both laugh.)
BH: They found him guilty, but he wasn't fined, because he was not aware of the law.
PLH: This was 16...?
BH: This was about 1650.
PLH: 1650? Okay. (We laugh.)
BH: Let me tell you one thing. I'm gonna tell you another thing...
PLH: Okay.
BH: This side of the family, I think, might have a bearing later on me. When he arrived in this country the first thing he did was buy himself some slaves.
PLH: Well that's...
BH: Ya know, back in those days, I mean, he's gonna be a farmer. You can't ... you know... Everybody's over here to make money for themselves. You couldn't hire anybody to work. So he could afford to and he bought himself some slaves.
PLH: Some African slaves?
BH: Yeah. And whenever I see a Black on TV with the last name of Rollins, I wonder. You know, when slavery ended, they took the last name of their owners. So there was a lot of Rollins owning a lot of slaves. (Laughs.) But they didn't call them slaves. They called them "servants".
PLH: I was just reading about the indentured servants.
BH: So, I said to people, I know why I married Barney. 'Cause I couldn't buy him! (We both laugh much longer than we probably should have.) (Footnote 3 )
PLH: (I finally force myself to stop laughing, stumble over my words, and say.) Okay... Okay... let's get back to the subject at hand.... Uh... 1961... you were on vacation in the White Mountains.
BH: No!
PLH: Oh, I'm sorry.
BH: We left here to go to Niagara Falls. And we went to Toronto, and then we went to Montreal. And we were planning to stay overnight in Montreal, but... the weather report said there was a possibility of a hurricane, so we decided...
PLH: To just come right straight home...
BH: At least we would start home, and we'd been driving during the night. We figured if we got tired we could always just pull over somewhere.
PLH: And it was 1964 you saw the psychiatrist who used hypnosis.
BH: Right.
PLH: And in the meantime, there were several government UFO investigators? What was it there was NICAP and .. um.. Webb... right?
BH: When this first happened, actually the very first day we were home, I talked to the police officer and told him about this craft...
PLH: So, you talked to the local police about it.
BH: Yeah, and they told me to call Pease Air Force base. And tell them about it. Which I did. And they called back several times, and said the calls were being monitored, and some of the calls were being briefed and transferred to another area. So that's the September 20th. Right from the very beginning... Now what was your question? (laughs.)
PLH: No, that answers my question. ...Now why was it that you and Barney sought psychiatric help?
BH: (remembering) Oh... NICAP! I wrote to NICAP originally, because I was concerned, basically, with is it an outer space craft, what if, healthwise, and what had we been exposed to? What about cosmic rays? What about radiation? Those things. I was thinking of my health, But nobody had any answers. And that's how I wrote to NICAP, but then later, just very soon after that, like three weeks later, we started getting phone calls from government agents. I mean top government people. The top people of the United States government. White house. National Security Agency. NASA. And from that moment on, I would say... how many years... five or six years anyway. They were coming here and bringing other scientists with them. So actually, we didn't have any contacts with UFO organizations. It was all strictly government.
PLH: Okay, could you be a little more specific about who exactly contacted you?
BH: Hmmm.....
PLH: I looked at the "Interrupted Journey" book and they mentioned NICAP. Now you are mentioning the White House, NASA ....
BH: Well according to Philip Corso's book, I don't know if you've seen that or not?....
PLH: I'm not familiar with it.
BH: Well, in there he talks about CJ...oh...it just slipped my mind... it'll come to me....
PLH: What is it?
BH: The first person who contacted us was the assistant to President Eisenhower ... in the White House.
PLH: So an assistant to President Eisenhower...
BH: C.J. Jackson!
PLH: CJ Jackson. And how did he contact you?
BH: He picked up the phone and called us!
PLH: hmmm... okay ...
BH: Said he was a scientist, he didn't say anything about the White House, he just said he was a scientist and that he had a hobby of UFOs. And he was the one in charge of bringing up... at one time we spent a weekend with twenty six scientists!
PLH: Who?
BH: Twenty six scientists.
PLH: You said "we did."
BH: Barney and I did.
PLH: Oh... we is Barney.
BH: Yeah. Barney and I.
PLH: You spent a weekend with twenty six scientists...
BH: Yeah.
PLH: Where was this?
BH: Um, we camped out. Up in my mother's backyard. Up in Kingston, New Hampshire.
PLH: So then all the scientists came to Kingston?
BH: Yup! Also Jacque Vallee came. And John Fuller. And Doctor Simon. And Doctor Simon's son. Oh yes! It was quite a gathering.
PLH: This was all at the same time. Jacque Vallee writes books?
BH: Oh yeah. He works for the space program.
PLH: When was this?
BH: I would say about 1967. I'm guessing.
PLH: Okay.
BH: Barney died in 1969, so this was maybe two years before he died.
PLH: In 1964 you and Barney sought psychiatric help.
BH: We went to Doctor Simon. Okay. Now we went to Doctor Simon... actually... Barney's health deteriorated. And he was going to the doctor all the time. And he was not responding to medication. And he was getting worse, getting worse, and then he became totally disabled. By the time we went to Doctor Simon I think Barney had been totally disabled for at least six months.
PLH: Disabled in what way?
BH: He wasn't able to work.
PLH: Why not? I'm sorry, you sound like my father's family comes from Maine and he and his sister and his brothers have this terrible time trying to figure out their family health histories because ... It's like "What was wrong with great uncle so and so?" ... "Well, he was sick and old."
(Betty laughs.)
BH: Well, Barney had ulcers. He had fluctuating blood pressure. He'd have periods where he had extreme headaches. Nothing was working. So, his doctor thought maybe there was something emotional, so it was preventing him from healing, so he sent Barney to a psychiatrist in the same building...
PLH: For the physical ailments basically.
BH: Right?
PLH: So, he had psychosomatic problems.... All right. ( Footnote 4 )
BH: Barney started going to him. .... Talking about his early childhood and all. And then one day, he happened to mention to Doctor Stevens that we'd been up in the mountains looking for the place where we had seen the UFO, so Doctor Stevens started picking up on this, and he was telling him, and he recognized amnesia. So he knew Doctor Simon. So he referred both Barney and me to Doctor Simon in Cambridge.... And that's where we started going. Now, Doctor Stevens had sent for hypnosis, for at that time there were a lot of programs on TV with "first stage hypnosis." And that... I wasn't happy about this. So the first thing Doctor Simons had to do was explain hypnosis. First stage is the stage where suggestibility. In fact, in "The Interrupted Journey" while we were writing the book with John Fuller, we said "This is going to totally destroy hypnosis." Because people who don't understand this, they don't know what they're doing and anybody can do hypnosis, and everybody can be hypnotized. So you're going to totally destroy it. So Doctor Simon got a segment. Of the three stages of hypnosis, the testing and the meaning of the stage -what it's used for.
PLH: Now you said you thought the book would totally destroy hypnosis. What do you mean by that?
BH: Well, it did.
PLH: I mean... it made it look like nothing?
BH: Well, the people would put somebody in a light trance and say, "Tell me about your abduction." And you would! First stage hypnosis is the stage of suggestability. It shows the creativity of your mind. It has nothing to do with the facts.
PLH: Okay, all right, so what you are saying is that the first stage of hypnosis is where people tend to invent things.
BH: It is based on suggestibility. It does work sometimes.. uh... in diet control, to stop smoking, things like that. That's what it's used for. Second stage is to control pain. On the third stage is used for medicine, it is not known to the public. Now this is what Doctor Simons did. Now before we went to him, I'm a social worker right? I checked out his references. I did his whole background before I ever saw him.
PLH: Good idea!
(She laughs.)
BH: So I knew he was highly qualified as a psychiatrist. Much more so than everybody else. And, uh, medical hypnosis is used in the treatment.... (The cat knocks something down in the next room, the kitchen, making a noise.)
PLH: Was that the cat?
BH: Yeah. The cat... It's used as surgery... (cat enters the room and she picks up the cat and begins talking to it.) well hello... yeah. Whacha doing? Ya fell off the stove. You understand me. Oh dear. .... Now Doctor Simons had been the Director of Mason General Hospital in New York, a psychiatric treatment center for servicemen coming back from the war, world war two. The US Army made a documentary about this science (?) work.
Footnote 5 It was two hours. But in the two hours they showed how Doctor Simons did the hypnosis. In the 1980s, the US Army shortened this to one hour. And it has been shown on TV. And it's called "Let there be Light."
PLH: "Let there be Light."
BH: And it doesn't show how he does it, but it shows how he uses medical hypnosis. And it's a wonderful, wonderful, wonderful document.
PLH: It sounds very interesting. Okay, so you saw Doctor Simon for Barney's physical ailments and then...
BH: We started for Barney's ailments then I started coming along too.
PLH: And then he decided to put you in third stage hypnosis. And recover the memories?
BH: Actually, actually, when he first put us into hypnosis, he didn't know what he was going to get. There were no mention. I don't know if we even mentioned UFOs. It was to find out why Barney was emotionally upset.
PLH: Let me ask you a question. You seem like you've done a lot of reading on these things. Are you familiar with a group ..... the false memory claims that are coming out now?
BH: Well, that's first stage hypnosis. And that, um... almost all the stages, and maybe now all of them, the courts have ruled that recovered memories, false memories, uh...through hypnosis are invalid. In fact, if you have a crime committed against you, and you go to have hypnosis, you can't testify. Because there's no way to test what is real, what's fact, what's fantasy.
PLH: So you would not recommend that someone uses hypnosis to recover memories of a missing event?
BH: You can't recover memories of a missing event. That's a fallacy.
PLH: All right. I'm very surprised to hear you say that. I mean I agree with it. But...
BH: Only medical hypnosis is capable of opening up amnesia.
[SADLY THE FIRST SIDE OF THE TAPE ENDS AND WE NEED TO FLIP IT OVER AT THIS POINT, INTERRUPTING THE CONVERSATION.]
BH: Okay. Medical hypnosis. 15 minutes will open up the amnesia and you'll have full recall.
PLH: Okay.
BH: It's just like that. (fast gesture.)
PLH: Are you sure?
BH: Positive.
PLH: I haven't heard that.
BH: Yeah. Doc Simon did it all the time.
PLH: Okay, all right.
BH: The big problem is, I have met two other psychiatrists who did the same kind of hypnosis as Doctor Simon did and that's it.
PLH: All right. In your entire life.
BH: And one of 'em was a psychiatrist up in Canada. Who using second stage hypnosis in childbirth. Put them over, in second stage hypnosis and there's no pain.
PLH: To reduce the pain? Okay. What was his name?
BH: Hers. ... I don't remember. It was a woman.
PLH: Okay. And could you name the second one.
BH: Uh... not right this moment... but he's deceased. But sometimes he worked with .... I'll think of his name later... I've had so many contacts... You know in two months, June and July, part of August, I have done... I stopped counting. I have done over 125 radio shows.
PLH: Since June and August? Just in those two months...
BH: Yeah. I'm doing another one tomorrow. A week or so ago I did a two hour book review in Baltimore Maryland.
PLH: What book?
BH: Oh. My book. Just my book.
PLH: Oh an interview about the book.
BH: And uh... so it comes to me instead.
Footnote 6 PLH: Now let me ask you a question, I was going to save this for later, but you mentioned you did a hundred and twenty five interviews.
BH: I stopped counting. I'm still doing them.
PLH: Between '61 and '64, you talked to some government people but it was just about the sighting.
BH: Well, they're the ones who kept telling us to get medical hypnosis.
PLH: Oh they suggested it?
BH: Yeah. Down at Kessel (? Word unclear ?) air force because there were two hours missing. There were two hours that couldn't be accounted for. They're the ones. I mean we knew the trip took longer than what it had, should have , but we hadn't really thought about it that much. Then I figured out later, uh, (unclear -sounds like) it got reviewed in the White House. And the report of the sighting at Pease Air Force Base, they could just pick up the phone and call Pease, and find out that they picked the craft up at 2:14 AM in the morning. They sent two planes out to check it out. The reports of those pilots are still classified.
PLH: They did all that?
BH: I mean I reported seeing the craft in the beginning around midnight. He could've figured out that two hours were missing, but we didn't know this! They did, but we didn't.
(Long Pause)
PLH: Now in '64, this was apparently... How would you describe what they recovered, the memories that they recovered? What happened? How would you describe it?
BH: Uh, well first of all, they came out in Indian head area. They came out over the highway and they stopped and that's when Barney got out, with the binoculars to try and identify the craft. I mean, he'd been in the military in World War Two, he's puzzled.
PLH: What did he do in the military?
BH: He was a, uh.. actually he was training the kids coming in in war maneuvers. In war manuevers. I'm not sure just what it was.
PLH: He was training people...
BH: Uh, yeah, so he got out to look at the craft, to try to identify this craft, this is when he saw the people and panicked and ran back to the car. And we turned off and 30 miles south they're standing in the middle of our road blocking our way, stopped the car, got out, took us through the path in the woods, where the craft was on the ground. Took us on board. In separate rooms, gave each of us a simple form of physical examination, were puzzled why Barney's teeth were removable but mine were not. Showed me a book, which I looked at briefly, looking for pictures. And.. uh.. showed me a star map of where they were from and uh... when I'm leaving the craft, I'm telling the leader... incidentally there were eleven of them, they were leaving the craft and I'm saying to the leader, "This is the most wonderful experience of my life. I hope you'll come back. I got a lot of friends who would love to meet you."
PLH: Now wasn't it just a traumatic experience?
BH: NO! It was at first. When they first grabbed us, yeah, it terrified, but they calmed me down. And I'm walking along and we're laughing, kidding, joking, and see he understood the leader, the one we called the leader, had some knowledge of English, although limited. So, I would say a word and he'd say, "What's that?" And then I would try to explain to him the meaning of the word.
PLH: Okay, so you were speaking in English?
BH: Yeah, and he was too.
PLH: All right.
BH: Like I used the term, "yellow" and he said "What's yellow? I don't know what a yellow is." And I'd say, "It's a color. ... Well maybe sunlight could be considered yellow at times." I'd try and explain it to him. And, um... I mean I was totally relaxed. And I invited them to come back. "Please, please come back."
PLH: Now in the late 70s, now I don't want to get too personal here, in the late '70s my friend Tom came out to New Hampshire and he met you and you said you meet a lot of people so you weren't quite sure who he was, not a very tall man, dark hair, Italian-looking, and apparently he was here with a short woman as well, but he said, "I've met Betty Hill." He was quite thrilled by that by the way, he still talks about it today (she laughs.) This was over twenty years ago, I guess, but he was saying that, "uh... saying, "I've met that woman. I believe something really happened because she was so shook up that something happened that really shook her up." But now you are telling me it was a pleasant experience.
BH: Yeah, but now... Okay, the experience itself was a pleasant experience. But then, in reliving this, you go through all the emotions that you had originally, like when they took us out of the car. ... You're being kidnapped. If you're being kidnapped by a bunch of hoodlums down the street you're going to be scared, and these weren't even ... us! So you don't know what's going to happen. So it's sheer terror, but then, this is the whole reason that we went so long to Doctor Simons, was to get rid of all these ... mixed feelings that we had.
PLH: I have heard from many abductees, and I've read this about your report, I hesitate, I don't want to embarrass you, but there was claims of sexual abuse and such things?
BH: Hell no.
PLH: Hell no? Okay.
BH: They had absolutely no sexual interest in me. I hear this all the time. They had no sexual interest in us at all. There was no mental telepathy. They spoke loud and clear and they had a language of their own.
PLH: A spoken language?
BH: Right.
PLH: Now the pictures that you see of the Greys.
BH: No.. no... that's pure fantasy. Would you like to see what one looks like?
PLH: I'd love to.
BH: You stay here. I'll go get "Junior."
PLH: Now there's a statue of the...
BH: That's what I'm getting.
[I turn off the tape recorder, while she leaves to go to the bedroom and fetch "Junior", a lightweight bust of an alien made of paper mache. When I turn the tape recorder back on another conversation has started. I believe it refers to a TV documentary crew that interviewed interesting people in New England, including her. ]
BH: ...an elephant buried in his backyard.
PLH: Was it.. uh... uh.. what's the place up there? Um... no no no... up in Maine there's someplace called .. "Somebody's Nuthouse"?
BH: Oh Yeah, but..
PLH: Perry's Nuthouse!
BH: That's nuts, the kind you eat, so ... um... they went up and apparently this elephant had gotten loose from the circus and this guy had never seen an elephant before so he shot it and killed it.
PLH: When was this?
BH: Oh I don't know when this happened. They were up there a month or so ago talking to him.
PLH: Now did he shoot the elephant himself or was it somebody else?
BH: This man whom they interviewed shot the elephant and killed it.
PLH: So this couldn't have been too long ago. It must have been the last thirty years.
BH: Oh yeah.
PLH: Okay, allright, allright.
BH: And then he buried it in his backyard.
PLH: (I laugh at the strange story.) I don't know? So in 1964, the.. the... Doctor Fuller, or was it Doctor Simon?
BH: John Fuller.
PLH: Okay, John Fuller recovered these memories.
BH: Doctor Simon!
PLH: Okay, Doctor Simon recovered the memories.
BH: He opened up the amnesia.
PLH: This is the first time you'd heard of anything like this?
BH: First time anybody'd heard of anything like this.
PLH: Okay.
BH: Of course, we had the contactees of the 40s and 50s going on trips on UFOs around the galaxy. I mean real.
(Long pause.)
PLH: Where did this statue come from? (Gesturing towards "Junior".)
BH: Marjorie Fish who did the research on my star map and I did Junior
PLH: So you did it together?
BH: Yeah.
PLH: So you are a sculptress?
BH: Basically she did it at my suggestion.
PLH: All right, like one of those... um... police drawings.
BH: Yeah.
PLH: So then later, after 1964, there were other UFO abductees....
BH: No! No. No. After our experience became known we got all kinds of reports of sightings of UFOs, but it was after the movie, "The UFO Incident," in 1975 then everybody remembered how they'd been abducted every year since they were three months old.
PLH: But before 1975 you never met another abductee.
BH: No... well, yes.... Uh.. Charlie Hixan and Calvin Parker. Down in Pasagoula, Mississippi. Travis, that was in '72, then in 1975, the same year that the movie came out was Travis Walton. All of them had contacted me. ... After they had their experience, they contacted me. And said, "What do we do now?"
PLH: So there was Travis Walton and who was the other man?
BH: Charlie Hixan and Calvin Parker.
PLH: What do you think of their claims?
BH: Real.
PLH: Including Travis Walton?
BH: Oh yes, I know Travis's is real.
PLH: How do you know that? I've just read things that make me indicate that he might have been making it all up. I don't know the man. I don't want to get sued, but...
BH: No. No. Travis Walton's experience is real. How do I know? The first thing I said to Travis when he called was, because I wanted to know if it was real, "I heard you got hit by a blue green beam. What did it feel like?"
PLH: Did you contact him or did he contact you?
BH: He contacted me.
PLH: He called you. Okay.
BH: I said, "What did it feel like?" and he said, "I felt like I'd been hit on the head with a sledge hammer." I said, "Okay."
BH: No, we weren't hit by a blue green beam.
PLH: Okay.
BH: But others have been. 7
PLH: All right.
BH: So I knew that if you got hit by the big bolt, in fact, a friend of mine, before Travis, was standing in her backdoor, talking on the telephone, describing, this is in the daytime, describing a UFO that's right outside of her house, and a blue-green beam came out of the UFO and hit her on the head. They found her unconscious. She was in the hospital for three years in a coma, before they did surgery. They said that, uh.., the surgery, if they did the surgery she might die. She might be a vegetable the rest of her life. But she might become one. So they did the surgery. First she, uh, came out of the coma, but she couldn't see or hear anything, but then she gradually improved. Actually she went on to lead a fairly normal life. And the last thing she remembered was that little green light. It felt just like a sledge hammer.
PLH: Was hypnosis involved in her case?
BH: No. It wasn't.
PLH: All right. And what did the doctors say caused her coma in her case.
BH: They didn't.
PLH: They didn't. They just said cause of coma unknown?
BH: I mean, what causes a coma? Like a stroke.
PLH: All right. All right. So it was after 1975, when the movie came out, all right, ... now just one thing I'm trying to remember... who played you and your husband in that movie? Do you remember? I've been trying to remember that....
BH: Barney's part was played by James Earl Jones.
PLH: That's what I thought.
BH: Before he did this, he went up to the White Mountains, all by himself, and drove down. I think he left there about ... just to get a feel for the area...
PLH: You know what's funny? Like I said, I grew up in an interracial family, but the only thing I remember about that whole movie, and I was born in '63, so I guess I was about twelve years old when it came out, the only scene I remember from that whole movie is the scene of the actor and the actress who played you and your husband discussing inter-racial marriage. (She laughs.) The UFO stuff, I don't remember any of it! But I guess it was just a little close to home.
BH: Well, uh, Estelle Parsons... who grow up over here in York, Maine, played my part ...
PLH: Estelle Parsons, okay...
BH: And she says, to play my part she had to get back her New Hampshire / Maine accent. And after the movie was over she couldn't get rid of them...
(We laugh.)
PLH: I guess actors have that problem sometimes. ... who was it? Oh you know what I heard? Do you know Hunter Thompson? ...the crazed journalist?... It has nothing to do with UFOs.
BH: No.
PLH: He lives out in Colorado. He's written a lot of crazy books, in fact, the first one was on the Hell's Angels, then a lot, a lot of... he wrote a book on the presidential campaign, but a lot of his writings he'll interrupt himself to start talking about how he was taking drugs in the hotel room. It's just weird crazy stuff. They made a movie about him recently. Johnny Depp, the actor who portrayed him, was complaining of how long it took him to get the Hunter Thompson mannerisms out after the move was over.
BH: Well, I spent some time with Estelle Parsons at the hotel in New York, so she could meet me and copy my mannerisms and things like that....
PLH: And Barney had already passed away by then?
BH: Yeah.
PLH: So, from '64 to '75, what was your involvement in UFOs? What would be the term, "the UFO scene"? "The UFO movement? What would you call that?
BH: Well...
PLH: Ufology?
BH: Uh.. now this is strange. From 1961 to 1965 Barney and I had not seen another UFO. Now in the middle of the publicity, now we didn't release this story, this investigative reporter with the Boston Herald Traveler, and later he told me he heard about it through Pease Air Force Base at a cocktail party. Some officers were there, they were drinking, and they started telling him about Barney and me, and all our experiences. So it ran for five days on the front pages of the newspaper without ever having any contact with us.
PLH: Or the psychiatrist?
BH: Right.
PLH: And how did you feel about that?
BH: So now, Barney and I had to go to the store and buy the newspaper just to see what they were saying about us. Well, of course, the very first day, I came home from the office and I couldn't even park around here. The place was all, cars everywhere.
PLH: What kinds of people?
BH: All media.
PLH: Oh okay.
BH: Well, so then I mean this is the way it was so every night Barney, and I would go somewhere to get away from us. And so, in the middle of the week,
PLH: This was '65?
BH: We went away to my parents’ home. I think it was a Wednesday night. And now we're leaving their home, and we come out and stop at the stop sign, and right in front of us there was a second UFO. And it goes back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, and then it goes down in the trees. Barney said, "I'm gonna go in there and knock on the door and give 'em hell for what they did to me!" (We laugh.) I said, before you do then, I'll wait for you at my mothers house. (we laugh.) So we went back to my parents home and my mother and my sister went with us. Barney's gonna go up and knock on the door! But we made a discovery. We went up all through these back roads and actually may have landed right in the middle of a deep swamp. We couldn't get there. So that's why Barney...
PLH: Did you see a spaceship?
BH: Yeah! We saw a UFO.
PLH: What did it look like?
BH: Well, all you could see was the lights.
PLH: So, what you saw was a light?
BH: Yeah. It was going back and forth, back and forth, and then it lands....
PLH: And when it landed it still looked like a light.
BH: Yeah.
PLH: Okay, all right... It wasn't like it had windows and a door?
BH: No. No. We recognized it. And that was the beginning. From that night on, wherever Barney and I went UFOs paced us.
PLH: Hmm...
BH: Every single night!
PLH: '65 on?
BH: Yup.
PLH: Okay.
BH: And there was huge numbers of UFOs around my parents’ home in Kingston. Which is towards Massachusetts.
PLH: Kingston, Massachusetts?
BH: No, New Hampshire.
PLH: Kingston, New Hampshire?
BH: It's about thirty miles south of here.
PLH: I was thinking of Kingston, New York, sorry.
BH: But then we found this spot where the UFOs come and land almost every night.
PLH: Let me just ask you a question... A skeptic would ask, "Have you ever studied astronomy or anything with lights in the sky?"
BH: I know a little bit about astronomy. But, uh, .. well anyway. This ... we knew UFOs were sort of flying around this general area, but the people who lived in this area are the ones who told us, "This is where the UFOs are coming in and landing."
PLH: In New Hampshire?
BH: Yeah.
PLH: Okay.
BH: Um... just about the time that I found out about this, was just about the time that Barney had died. And, well, so I started , well, mmm, the very first night, we went out. Actually the woman who told me about this was a family who was adopting a child through our department. And I had to go out to write the final report to the court to approve the adoption. As I'm leaving, she says, "I don't want you to think I'm crazy but every night right out there that's where the UFOs land." So I gotta go back that night and check it out. To see if she's having hallucinations or if she's seeing UFOs.
PLH: And did she know about your interest in UFOs? About your background in UFOs?
BH: Oh yeah.
PLH: Oh! Did that cause you problems at work?
BH: No. Word got out, I thought it would, but instead I got promoted!
PLH: Really? You got promoted because of that? Or just incidentally?
BH: Uh... I don't know if I would have been promoted or not. Whereas my first thought was, "as a social worker, I'm going to get fired." But everybody supported me. All my supervisors came out publicly and so forth. "If Betty Hill says this happened, then it happened. That's it."
PLH: Okay, one of the questions I've been wondering is do you think that your UFO experience improved your life or made your life worse?
BH: Both! (She laughs.)
PLH: In what ways?
BH: Well... like the last two or three months, because of the radio programs and so on, and all the telephone calls and everybody, it totally disrupted my life. I mean I haven't been able to do anything this summer, that I normally would do.
PLH: Let me just.... Now first of all, I am very grateful to be here. I am very grateful to have the chance to meet you, but you could have said no.
BH: I know.
PLH: Okay. Right?
BH: I could've said no to the radio shows too.
PLH: Right.
BH: But... So why did I say okay? Okay, basically I would say what I'm trying to do is put a little common sense back in the UFO field.
BH: That's the main reason I'm doing it. That's the main reason I wrote my book.
PLH: I think we've gotten up to '69. You were seeing UFOs from '65, well the newspaper report came out until '69,( Footnote 8 ) then this continued until '75? Or...
BH: Oh later than that...
PLH: Okay.
BH: Well, uh... see this place where the UFOs came down, where the UFOs were coming in, everybody knows about that, well first of all, get back to me about hypnosis, so I have to go back out that way. And verify what she says. So, I go out, I drive up the dirt road behind her house, and over here, a lot of trees, and I back into the trees, sitting there, in the dark, and I saw twenty six UFOs come in and land in the field!
PLH: What did they look like?
BH: Every shape you can imagine. I couldn't believe it. I didn't even dare to light a cigarette. (She laughs.) And they stayed there for a while, then they took off again, and they're gone! And I said, "My god. She's right. She knows what she's talking about." So I started going out there. And, uh.. actually I would say, I call them volunteers, at least half the people, in the town, were going out there.
PLH: Portsmouth?
BH: No. For this area.
PLH: What area?
BH: Central Point, a little restaurant.
PLH: What area was this?
BH: Outside of Register (?)
PLH: Outside of Register. Okay.
BH: There was a central little restaurant that we used to meet. And we would swap, you know. What this afternoon, I had one mine out in my backyard. Because they do fly around you know, just in daylight, too, and, uh.. well, over the years, you name it, we had it. We had every level of police. Up from bicycle riders to ATF, uh... we had all levels of air force. Uh... we had medical doctors... We had all kinds of scientists. We had all kinds of equipment. We had associated Press. We had the United Press International. Um... We had TV cameramen. We had, but everybody was sworn to secrecy.
PLH: By who?
BH: By us. You're not to tell. This is research. It's not for publicity. We will tell each other. Oh... and we filmed. And we recorded. And we did this for at least, I'd say we covered that area almost every night for about fifteen years. And... uh... I mean where we came from. You saw a UFO person, "Hi boys! How are you?" (She laughs.) They flash their lights, got the car lights back in the same pattern. They'd fly right down. Halloween night.
PLH: Let me ask you a question. If.. If UFOs are this easy to see, how come many people don't believe in them?
BH: Did you ever see anything that everybody could believe in? Name one thing that's universal thought. You can't. Because there's nothing in this world that everybody believes in. I mean like take Columbus discovered America. Like Hell he did. We just had a viking ship duplication come over here. Well, really up in Canada.
PLH: If somebody were to come to you and say, "I don't believe in UFOs until I have proof." What would you recommend that they do?
BH: I'd say, "Look in the sky!" All you got to do is look! They fly around in the daylight.
PLH: Okay.
BH: If you don't look at the sky, that's not my fault.
PLH: All right... Okay...
BH: Look in the sky.
PLH: All right. Let me see. So... until '75 there was, actually I guess we're talking about ... you said fifteen years... so I guess we're talking about '65 until... that would be... about 1980.
BH: Actually, it was later than that. Because, uh, ... I was going out there in the eighties. Not every night. They were beginning to taper off, because uh... you see, when the UFOs were coming in, there were hayfields and cornfields...
PLH: Okay.
BH: And then the town got commercial. And sold the land. And one of the favorite spots for UFOs to come in now has two hundred houses.
PLH: Oh.. okay. So development has.. cut this down.
BH: Right. I mean, at least in our going out there. Instead of flying all around and coming in and landing in the fields, they can't houses are there. But when I got out there, um... If I'm driving through the area, at night, okay, then it's a certain sequel and I watch. And in an hour, three, four, eight UFOs come in.
PLH: Every night.
BH: Whenever I've done this.
PLH: Whenever you've done this?
BH: Right. I mean it's not an experiment.
TAPE ENDS- END OF TAPE ONE, SIDE TWO. NEXT TAPE BEGINS MID-CONVERSATION
BH: This one usually comes in and lands. And then the others, do you have the tape recorder on?
PLH: Yes, I do. Yes, I do.
BH: Okay. And then the others come in and fly up to the landed one. And then go off in different directions. So we figure it comes in and then somehow gets its orders away before coming back (This part is unclear.) And another thing, I assume this is for their own self protection, if you see one UFO somewhere around there's another one to two hundred. They fly in big squadrons. They are not one individual UFO.
PLH: Now a lot of people say, "why don't they just land on the White House lawn and tell us... ?"
BH: (Interrupting) Do you know why they don't land on the White House lawn?
PLH: No, I don't.
BH: We'd arrest them for violation of immigration laws!
(Pause.)
PLH: Are you serious?
BH: Wouldn't we?
PLH: I don't know. I would think...
BH: (Interrupting.) Of course, we would!
PLH: They would have the technology to...
BH: (Interrupting.) They don't need to land on the White House Lawn, if they don't want to get arrested they can sneak in over the Mexican border. (She starts laughing.)
PLH: What's the purpose to all this flying around? Do you know?
BH: Well, I assumed... UFOs, huge UFOs... are out here circling this planet. And they come down. They have a big craft. And the smaller, the smaller, the smaller, the smaller until they get down (she illustrates this diminishing size by stacking her hands.) here they use the little crafts, okay, so I assume they're coming... We're their shopping mall. They're coming down here to get what they need for their survival up there. That's my opinion. I don't know what they're taking. But I know they take water. There are a lot of sightings (near water). And they take electricity.
PLH: Now changing, getting back, you said that in the late 70s after the movie came out, you started being contacted by UFO abductees, and three you thought were sincere, Travis Walton and two others.
BH: Yeah. They were real.
PLH: Okay.
BH: Then the Mulwakey (?), then it was, "I think I've been abducted, but I'm not sure." So I used Doctor Simon's, I'm a social worker, I used Doctor Simon's formula. When people tell weird tales, they can be fantasies, hallucinations, delusions, dreams, recall of something they've seen, heard, or read. And when you rule out all of them, then you may have .. the truth. So over the years, in working with people, um... I was able to set up, criteria, um... the difference between a fantasy or a real abduction.
PLH: Could you share those?
BH: Some of them. Most of the real abductions. Most, the majority involve two people, although there are, I know one situation where there were three people involved, and, on a rare occasion, there's just one person. They usually happen at night, while the person's driving out on the road somewhere. Um... after the abduction, the person almost every single one of them, the real abductions! Went to the police, or the military, or both and reported 'em. They didn't say they'd been on board, but they said, "I was followed by a UFO" or "I was harrassed by a UFO" or "A UFO hit me with a beam." These things. Um... fifty percent of them ended up in the emergency room at the hospital.
PLH: From what?
BH: Right away. After it happens.
PLH: Okay, from what? From the beam? Or something else?
BH: From the experience itself.
PLH: From fear or something?
BH: No. Linda, couldn't breathe. She had terrible breathing problems. She had been in, been to the emergency room. Um... there now. Other cases... loss of balance, eyes won't focus, upset stomachs, discoloration on their skin... all those things. And not everybody completely. There were like two men, they remembered what happened. I mean because they, they went from the abduction right from directly to the home of the mother. And she said, "My god! What's happened to you?" And they said, "a UFO got us." Not only did the UFO get them, they're driving the UFO actually pulled their car sideways way out into a field, and left marks on the ground.
PLH: Hmmm, that's interesting.
BH: And quite often, but not always, quite often, with a real abduction, they will take something that belongs to the person... And sometimes, they'll leave, bring it back, leave it. Now Charlie Hixon, he's still mad at 'em 'cause they took his new fishing pole, and they never returned it.
PLH: All right. Is there anything else they did to Charlie Hixon or er...they just took his fishing pole?
BH: Took his fishing pole. Never returned it.
PLH: All right.
BH: There were three women in Kentucky, they took their jewelry. And then, a couple out a week or two later, they left it back, all the jewelry, from the three women on the back porch of the home of one of them.
PLH: Oh so... the ... UFOs took the jewelry for three weeks and then left it on the back porch?
BH: Returned it.
PLH: All right. Okay.
BH: With me...
PLH: Now...
BH: They took my blue earings. And about six weeks later, Barnie and I were up in the mountains, thinking if we could find the spot, where we had... been stopped, we could remember what happened, and since we went and came home, right there in the kitchen, a pile of leaves, and in the pile of leaves were my blue earrings.
PLH: So, you were up in the mountains, you came back from the mountains and the earrings were on a pile of leaves in your kitchen. Okay.
BH: So, you know, they returned my earrings. So, also, they knew where I lived. They knew where I lived!
PLH: Um... Now, when somebody contacts you, what do you usually do for them?
BH: Well, they contact me. (This is unclear.)
PLH: I know in the late '70s, when my friend Tom came, he said that, that you were down here, and he said there were a couple men living upstairs, I believe. Upstairs. I think it was upstairs.
BH: Yeah. I've got two small apartments.
PLH: Okay.
BH: Two men, so that must have been Bill and Reed.
PLH: Yeah. Bill and Reed. Those were the names.
BH: Now, they, they came, they actually, uh... Bill owned his own business. And he sold it, to come here and help me with my research into UFOs. And Reed was an actor, a professional actor and he was travelling in, uh.. "Charlies' Aunt" or something, some play, and he quit that and he came here. And actually Reed is still, not in this house, but ... he still lives in the area. And, uh... it was wonderful. Um, I mean, um... when we were here. We decided, we went out to the ... right in the middle of the area! Where the UFOs came in, that's Halloween night, and on the radio is the program, "War of the Worlds." (We laugh.) We sat there with the windows down and the radios as loud as it would go and there were UFOs all over the sky everywhere. They were jumping right up and down! And we kept saying look at them, and we were sitting there laughing like hell. (She laughs and laughs and laughs.) ... So that pinpoints too. Bill and Reed came here in seventy eight.
PLH: I think this might have been '79. Summer of '79. I know it was the summer. Um... So... do you often meet with other UFO contactees?
BH: Um...
PLH: You said when they come to you and ask you for help you use the following ... whatever....
BH: Yeah. If somebody says I think I've been abducted, the first thing I say is, "Have you had hypnosis?" And if they say yes, I say, "I'm sorry, but there's nothing I can do to help."
PLH: Why's that?
BH: Because I can't! Because once that... some story, some kind of tale, is put into your brain through hypnosis, you can't get rid of them. And this is why so many who have hypnosis and tell of abduction have to have therapy. I... there's not one single, real abduction has ever had therapy. Not only that, every single one of them considers it to be a positive experience, and uh... we live in... we say we live in a peaceful co-existence with UFOs.
PLH: Okay, clearly something is going on where .... I'm not sure... I'm not saying something real is going on, but something is going on in that, uh... the early UFO contactees, who I don't think you ..... Actually, what's your opinion on the contactees before you?
BH: Okay, um...
PLH: Adams... Adamski! And those people...
BH: Oh. Okay. Um.. Dan Curtis was the movie producer in the movie called "Before the Landings." At um... which was shown at the European film festival. And what he did was go through ...
PLH: "In Advance of the Landings?" Yeah! I haven't seen that book, but I want to see that book!
BH: Okay. Now what he does is, um... go back to all the public appearances of these contactees. And um.. this one woman says, "Listen. You don't have to worry about them. They're going to land all over the world and make themselves known in 1950. They told me so themselves." That kind of thing. And then there was the man who, uh... the UFO landed in his backyard every night and took him on a little trip somewhere, brought him back before daylight, ya know. ..
PLH: So, you don't believe them?
BH: Hell no! Not one of 'em! See, if you had an abduction, you've got some proof of this. It isn't just a matter of telling. I mean like, all right, John Sullivan, he's another one. He's a real abduction. He and his son were driving through North Dakota to Mississippi, and all the way down, they were followed by a UFO, stopped and, um... for one thing, they gave John an injection right here. It left a round circle with a puncture mark in the middle of it. Now he had that mark there for years. Totally changed his life. Uh... John, um... he was a college professor. He's getting ready to retire, right? He's getting old. Older, he's getting wrinkles. They're gone! He had a scar, from an automobile accident on his face. Nothing. Now John's Indian. Now Indians do not have body hair.
PLH: From India or American Indian?
BH: American Indians. All of a sudden John has to start shaving. And some other Indian gal says to him, "My god! Your arms are as hairy as an ape's!" (She laughs.) I mean he has something like, I don't know, twenty to twenty five actual physical changes.
PLH: Now these things are... now... the reports of abductions have been getting progressively more disturbing. You know you have a lot of things about anal probes and other awful things.
BH: (She laughs.) That's simply the hypnotist.
PLH: That's the hypnotist?
BH: Right. I mean like Bud Hopkins, all his abductions are the same. Now David Jacob's abductions tell totally different stories but they are all the same.
PLH: Okay, now let me interrupt for a second. Here and I don't wanna get too into this. Now, with David Jacobs, the historian from Temple University...
BH: I know David Jacobsen.
PLH: Here's ...
BH: He was here a couple weeks ago...
PLH: Okay, his book states...
BH: Which one?
PLH: Huh?
BH: What was the name of his book?
PLH:...uh... it's a red book. It's his book on UFO abductions.
BH: The last one he wrote the name of it is "The Threat." In fact, he gave a lecture here in Portsmouth. At which he's telling about this details of hypnosis.
PLH: I think he states that the aliens gave you and Barney... They took a sperm sample from Barney...
BH: Well, that's not true...
PLH: And gave you a pregnancy test...
BH: They put a needle in my navel, which they said was a pregnancy test. And I said, well there's no pregnancy test here. It wasn't. But now there is. In 1970, they invented it in Houston Texas.
PLH: Houston, Texas. Okay, so that's where that came from.
BH: But it had nothing to do with sex.
PLH: Okay, all right, so your opinion is all of that is confabulation.
BH: Hogwash!
PLH: Okay. That's all an artifact of hypnosis.
BH: Cause first of all, you see there were a few, couple things about the UFO people... I don't call them aliens... the UFO people were definitely different from us. And two totally different kinds of species cannot interbreed.
PLH: Right. Right.
BH: And UFO people cannot interbreed with Americans. It's physically impossible.
PLH: I believe it was Carl Sagan who said it was a little bit like a clam and a horse trying to ... (She laughs.) I forget how he said it. Something like that.
BH: Did you by any chance see on TNT, two or three weeks ago, a... "UFOs in the Soviet Union."?
PLH: No, I didn't. I missed that.
BH: They did the autopsy of a body...
PLH: In the Soviet Union ?
BH: Right.
PLH: OK.
BH: They said the internal organs were totally different from ours. And they, uh, you know... Santilli's autopsy tape. Same thing. The organs are totally different.
PLH: That's the Roswell one, right?
BH: Right. They look like us, but any advanced form of human life would have to have the same characteristics that we have. Hands, eyes, that kind of thing. Those things.
PLH: What's your opinion on the Roswell autopsy?
BH: It's real.
PLH: You think it is real?
BH: I'm positive.
PLH: Okay, but, but here ..... this guy (pointing at statue) doesn't look like the Roswell aliens. Or the alien in the autopsy film.
BH: Okay, let me explain something to you. We saw a group of eleven. There was as many individual variations among those eleven as there would be among any group of eleven men. They do not look alike. No way! .... That's another fallacy.
PLH: So you believe that a spaceship did crash at Roswell in 1947?
BH: Yup!
PLH: Okay.
BH: And as I told Dr. Jesse Marcel, a couple of weeks ago. You know why I'm sure a UFO crashed?
PLH: Why's that?
BH: Because no fool lieutenant on a military base is going to come out all by himself and say, "We have a crashed flying saucer." He had to clear it with the top guy. The general, who had to okay him, or he never would have released that.
PLH: But then they changed that....
BH: (Excited) But then the Pentagon came and said that it never happened. But the base said it did.
PLH: Now... I'm listening to you and I'm looking for a pattern .. to determine how you determine what is real and what is not real and I'm having trouble finding one. I mean, from what I understand you're saying Hopkins, Jacobs, Mack and the Streiber stuff are wrong because it's unpleasant and involves hypnosis.
BH: Right! Now, now, I've worked .... Well, I know from three people who've had real honest to god abductions. Valuable information was learned in those, and then somehow...
PLH: Those were yourself, Travis Walton...
BH: No, these were three others, had real abductions.
PLH: They want to remain anonymous.
BH: Right!
PLH: Fair enough.
BH: Then they had hypnosis, .... I was actually sick when I saw the hypnosis... It had absolutely nothing to do with the real experience.
PLH: You said you saw the hypnosis. How? Real life? Or on a video or....?
BH: No. In a book. This woman I worked with had a tremendous UFO experience. She went right immediately to the police department.... As soon as it happened. Then later they gave her hypnosis.
PLH: Who’s they?
BH: (Ignoring me) And um they gave her the hypnosis and uh ... Philip Hooksmith, whose the writer from Wales. Published her hypnosis and I'm sitting there reading what she said under hypnosis and thinking back to what really happened. There were no similarities. Under hypnosis, can you imagine that, she's telling about, she's flapping her arms and flying all over the city over the roofs of all the buildings. And the hypnosis... I mean they tell absolutely unbelievable fantasies. And, well, you know what happened with her happened, don't ya? She got so disgusted, and to protect herself if anything like this ever happened again, she changed her name and moved, so no one could ever find her.
PLH: Really?... Do you think that was necessary?
BH: Well, it protected her from all the weirdos in the UFO field.
PLH: Are weirdos a big problem for you?
BH: Yes.
PLH: Will you tell me a little bit about that?
BH: Well, uh, one day at 11:30 at night I'd just gotten into bed and the phone rings. Anyway, (changing her infliction slightly, speaking rapidly. )"You've got to help me. Do you know the world is going to be destroyed? But you see there's UFOs coming here, huge UFOs, they can carry thirty thousand people, and they're coming, rushing here, to save certain people from total destruction, but not only that, somehow I've got to get on the internet, because Clinton is sitting down there in the White House when these aliens materializing right in the Oval Office every night and he's denying it and not telling the people and I've got to get it on the internet so everybody will know about this!" (I begin to laugh. She looks at me.) Would you call that weird?
PLH: I would call that weird... (I laugh.) Now most of the people who come to you, what kind of people are they?
BH: Most of the people I have contact with are very, very nice. That's why I'd say, 'Okay, come on.'"
PLH: Okay, great... and you said that, ...um.. there were a couple other things I wanted to ask you. Do you know Phillip J.Klass?
BH: (Quite excited.) Now listen! The last time I did a program with Phillip J. Klass he grabbed me and kissed me.
PLH: Really!?
BH: Right in front of the TV.
PLH: In a nice way?!
BH: Oh yeah!
PLH: Okay.
BH: Do you know why?
PLH: No, why?
BH: This is the TV program. I said, "Phillip Klass, look. Before me nobody ever heard of you. (I laugh.) Not only that, you've written a lot of books, and you always put me in 'em. And if it wasn't for me, you wouldn't be making all that money." And he grabbed me and kissed me and said that's right! (We both laugh.) I got a lot of response from that. Everybody said, "Why didn't you slap his face?" (We laugh some more.)
PLH: I've never met him. What do you think of his attempts and the other skeptics attempts to ...um... explain your experience?
BH: The only trouble with Phillip Klass is that he tries to explain experiences that he doesn't know what happened in the beginning. Anything, he doesn't like, that doesn't fit in, with his thinking, he discards it. He ignores it. It didn't happen.
PLH: Can you give an example?
BH: oh... there's been so many of them... (long pause.) no, not right this moment.
PLH: Okay, all right, all right. How do you think skeptics should treat UFO abductees? There's a lot of skeptics out there and ...
BH: You mean people who say there's no such thing as UFOs? So how can you say that?
PLH: Right, and the organized skeptics, like the Skeptical Inquirer people and those groups?
BH: They have a right to their opinion. (Long pause.) Well, people say to you,"I don't believe you" and I say, "If it happens to you my phone number is in the book." (We laugh.)
PLH: That's a good answer. And you said you wanted to bring more sense into the UFO movement. Can you give some examples of that?
BH: Get rid of hypnosis.
PLH: Get rid of hypnosis.
BH: And get rid of every report, of course, it's impossible, every report of abductions that's been revealed through the use of hypnosis.
PLH: Okay.
BH: If you've had a real experience, run like mad, don't let anybody play around with your brain.
PLH: Okay, meaning hypnotists.
BH: Right! Hypnotists. And, uh, then say, aren't you, isn't there, a lack in this country. Of general information. People don't even know. In New York City, researchers there, they've found out that all children. Years ago they used to dream about a monster under the bed or in the closet. Not any more. It's a monster in a UFO in the backyard. Every child who has a nightmare today, has a monster in the backyard. Ranging in age from a two year old to a twelve year old. Now if the child repeats this dream, it means the child has a fear of separation from the parents and should have therapy.
PLH: Are you agreeing with this?!
BH: Yes, I am.
PLH: Okay.
BH: I am. If these little kids when they have nightmares through television think that they've heard, it's all a monster in the backyard. And is a fairly common nightmare. You know what happens is that the danger is that the parents believe it happened. Now you've got an upset kid.
PLH: But you said if they repeat the dream, they should have therapy.
BH: Now they should have therapy because of fear of separation from the parent.... That's all it is. It never happened. It's not reality.
PLH: What would be your thoughts on the problem of hypnosis and other forms of therapy? Because there is a big problem with other claims of abuse coming out now through hypnosis and other forms of therapy.
BH: Do just what the police do. Throw them out.
PLH: Throw them out?
BH: Right! Now here in New Hampshire, this girl suddenly remembers, a woman, suddenly remembers that when she was in school, one of her teachers threw her on the floor and raped her. That's what started this bit, would you like a cigarette?
PLH: No, no thank you. I'm fine.
BH: That's what started this theory of 'did it happen?" This is when New Hampshire did all these investigations, had all these top experts come in, testifying and it never happened. She only learned this through hypnosis. Which was a fantasy. But not only that. It's gone one step further than that. Oh first of all, if you've had hypnosis you can't testify in court, but also the prison gates are opened up and those people who got convicted based on testimony of someone who had hypnosis are being released. Including murder!
PLH: Are you familiar with the False memory syndrome foundation? What do you think of that?
BH: False memory? You can give anybody a false memory!!
PLH: No, no... I mean the False Memory Syndrome Foundation.
BH: I don't know about the foundation, but I know about false memory syndrome.
PLH: Okay, they're down in Philadelphia. They publicize the problem.
BH: Um... If you say to a child, do you remember when you are three years old and you went shopping and you got lost in the store. I couldn't find you and the police found you and I had to go to the police station and pick you up. And the child will say, "No, I don't remember that." But you tell them four or five times and in six months the kid's gonna give you all the details. Of the experience that never happened.
PLH: Did you see the Nova episode on UFO Abductions?
BH: Probably. But that's false memory syndrome.
PLH: That was Elizabeth Loftus's experiment. She was the one who did that with the kids in the shopping mall.
BH: Oh really? But you can do that with any kind of experiment.
PLH: Right. Right. And how would you to respond to critics who attempt to explain away your experience through the use of hypnosis?
BH: Well, I'd simply say that they don't understand the differences in hypnosis. We had medical hypnosis. Basically, it's almost unknown in this country. However, um, Soviet Union do it all the time, but of course, Doctor Simon was a Soviet Jew. Most people don't know that.
PLH: Oh, I didn't know that.
BH: He came to this country as a child. His parents were Jewish. And, Dr. Simon told me, when he was twelve years old, he had his Bar-Mitzvah, and he said after the Bar Mitzvah, he said, to his father, "That means I am now an adult, right?" And his father said, "Yes." And then said, "From now on I am no longer Jewish."
PLH: Huh? What'd his father say about that?
BH: What could he say?
PLH: Okay.
BH: And.....
[End of First Side of Second Tape]
BH: (continuing) He liked the girl, but he didn't want his son to be Jewish and you know quite a few people who used to be Jewish are saying that it's the Jewish philosophy that in time always leads to, no matter where they go, to be persecuted. In fact, I knew a girl whose parents were Jewish, and they brought her up to be a Methodist to break the cycle.
PLH: (I fumble around trying to think of an appropriate question/response.) What do you think it would take before UFOs become accepted by most scientists? Carl Sagan for example, spoke out very much against UFOs as did Isaac Asimov. What do you think it will take before Ufology becomes an accepted science?
BH: I don't know. All you've got to do is see 'em.
PLH: All you've got to do is see 'em? All right, I think I'm done. Is there anything else you think I should be asking?
BH: Well, I know one thing we didn't talk about.
PLH: What's that?
BH: Our investigation of our own experience.
PLH: Oh, please tell me about that.
BH: I mean, like, uh, all these things like a Chinese box in the trunk of the car that caused a compass to act real erratically -the scuff marks on the tops of Barney's shoes. My dress which was torn, covered with a pink powdery substance.
PLH: Somewhere, it may have been in Phillip Klass's book, he may have said something, somewhere, somebody quoted Dr. Simon as stating that he thought perhaps your memories had been created through hypnosis. Have you heard that before?
BH: Hell no. I haven't heard that. Don't pay any attention to what Phillip Klass says.
PLH: Okay, (I laugh.)
BH: Do you know what I told Phillip Klass?
PLH: What?
BH: Phil, I wish I knew where you lived. I'd send a UFO down there to take you on board, fly you around and then drop you off in the middle of a field when a baseball game was going on and you will tell everybody you got abducted by all these beautiful nude women. (We laugh.)
PLH: There aren't beautiful women on the spaceships, are there?
BH: I don't know.
PLH: Okay.
BH: However, I went to a lecture and this woman is telling about her abduction and she was abducted by these beautiful women. There was only one problem.
PLH: What's that?
BH: She recalled all this through hypnosis.
PLH: Okay.
BH: And actually it was a segment of Star Trek. The only difference was that in the hypnosis she played the part of Captain Kirk. (We laugh.) We told her this. That was the end of her lecture tour.
PLH: Which Star Trek? Was that the one with Spock's brain or something?
BH: On this one the beautiful women were the Antrons. She even had all the names right!
(We laugh.) But to get back to our own experience, we went back to our capture spot, we went back several times, and other people saw UFOs flying around in this area. Talked to people who lived in the neighborhood who saw UFOs coming in there and landing. In fact, we collected hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of UFO sightings in New Hampshire, beginning back in 1932, um, then we got the radar report at Pease airport base. Later I went on a TV program where I was questioned by F.Lee Bailey, and then I sat down in front of the cameras, nationwide, and took lie detector testing.
PLH: And you passed?
BH: (Continuing) And the question which was asked was, "Is it true that on the night of September 18 you and Barney were taken on board a UFO in the White Mountains of New Hampshire where you were shown a star map of where they said they came from?" I said, "Yes, that's true. I got high marks. And the next question was, "Did you have any prior knowledge of this pattern of stars or is this a hoax in any way? " That covers the whole thing.
PLH: Any thoughts on why they might have chosen you two?
BH: Yup.
PLH: Why's that?
BH: Well, this is between the tourist season. All the facilities are closed. We gassed up the car and at in Coldburg (?) and we left there at ten O'Clock at night. We're driving down, there's no traffic, we're the only car on the road for miles and miles and miles, total darkness, there was a very bright moonlit night, and we see this very strange light in the sky. It's dark. We stop, get out to look at it, get back in the car, it follows us, we stop to look at it, we're driving along, and it's pacing us for about thirty miles and, we got to Indian head, and I'm curious, and so, just before Indian head, I put the car window down and said, "Hi! Hi!"
PLH: You think it's because you waved to them?
BH: I think so. I think that... well... they zeroed in on us because we showed an interest in them. And their probably saying, and where else could they get two different specimens at the same time. (She laughs.)
PLH: I think what I'd like to do is purchase two books. If you could sign one to me and one to Tom.
BH: They're $15.95 each.
PLH: All right, that'd be nice. Just one question I have. As I was looking at this book quickly I noticed, it's self published.
BH: Yup! I did it myself!
PLH: Why'd you do that? I would think that since you are a celebrity, you could, somebody else would be anxious to publish your book.
BH: Well, ya see. In the beginning I wasn't writing a book. It was January. It was cold. The winds blowing. It's snowing and I'm bored. So I decided I would write a little booklet with some of my experiences and make 'em into a little booklet and give 'em around to my grandchildren, my family, friends, relatives, acquaintances, ... well... I continued to write, then I got too much for a booklet, so this friend of mine said she'd put it on disk for me, and I took, we have a local author around here, who's very well known, by the name of Peter Randall so I decided I'd got out and have a few copies of the book published and do this through Peter Randall. Well then Peter Randall says, "Rita! (??) Fifty copies?! You don't want fifty copies. The minimum amount was 2000 copies. Anything under that it would be... you'd pay as much for fifty books almost as you would for 2000. So that's what I did!
PLH: So you printed 2000? Well, it seems to me that ...
BH: I was just looking in here for one... (??)
PLH: It sounds like with since, with the way you published this book, and I think you've ... tell me if you're wrong, but could you have gotten a mainstream book deal if you wanted do you think?
BH: Oh sure.
PLH: I would think so.
BH: Actually. See, if we were going to do that I would publish some of the pictures that I've taken of UFOs. I don't know. Depending on how they'd come out.
PLH: So you weren't too anxious to make money on that.
BH: Oh no. I wrote it actually at the beginning, just for my friends and relatives. I was just looking here. I started this guest book in '81 to see if your friend was in here.
PLH: He said it was definitely the late 70s. In fact, it was kind of funny the story he wrote about it.
BH: You can also sign my guest book.
PLH: That'd be great. Now you had Reed up stairs.
BH: No. Used to be.
PLH: Okay. Reed and somebody else.
BH: Bill. Now Bill, used to be upstairs. His father got sick, so Bill went back to North Carolina, and stayed with his family. And then his father died. The last time I heard from Bill, Bill, he was out in Phoenix Arizona. Do you have a pen on you? (As she signs my books. We discuss signing and paying for the books.) Actually, I've got pictures of this, I filmed it. This is the carrier, down here is the little blue pays (?) or color and the base of this here opened up and died this drop out.
[THIS IS THE END OF THE TAPE]
FOOTNOTES
1 I've listened to this four times and it's not clear. "provincial" would fit. Could "provey" be a term for provincial? BACK TO TEXT
2 I assume she means Pease Air Force Base. BACK TO TEXT
3 I considered excising this section from the transcript, but it should be obvious to thinking people that Betty Hill is clearly not a racist. Those likely to be offended are probably people I wouldn't respect anyway. BACK TO TEXT
4 Clearly I should have said, "suspected psychosomatic problems." BACK TO TEXT
5 It might be "side of" instead of "science". The tape is unclear. BACK TO TEXT
6 I'm not sure what this refers to. She may have been talking to the cat for a moment. BACK TO TEXT
7 This is an interesting statement as she states there were only two other abductees known to her at this point in time. BACK TO TEXT
8 It appears that here I mispoke myself. '69 is not the correct year. The newspaper article was in 1965. BACK TO TEXT
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