May 19, 2020 • 30 mins
Betty and Barney Hill's experience established the framework for future tales of alien abduction. But the Hill story was just the jumping off point for abductee narratives that followed. Among the first abduction tales to follow the publication of An Interrupted Journey was Betty Andreasson's alleged kidnapping by friendly, spiritual aliens who took her on a journey to distant worlds; worlds that seemed a reflection of Betty's core beliefs.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Strange Arrivals is a production of I Heart Radio and
Grim and Mild from Aaron Mankie. This woman says that
she was abducted by beings from another planet and taken
on board their spaceship, where she experienced the bizarre, unforgetable
Atorney in time and space, and it makes her story credible.
(00:25):
Is the work that a team of Lupo researchers headed
by this man did. The document the incident. Are the
results of their findings I reported in this fascinating book
Beyond Ryerson Affair. Would you please welcome Betty Andreson and
Raymond Foller, whatever macomes very Could you briefly tell us
(00:51):
what happened. I was taken out in state backyard, and
I was taken up board dear craft, and I was
given um extensive examination, but to exchange place and then
returned home to maintain consciousness through all us inspiracy. Yes
I did. Betty and Barney Hill's experience was the first
(01:14):
story of alien abduction to become widely known, and as
the first, it established the elements that subsequent abduction tales
would contain. People such as Betty Andreason would take these
elements and expand on them, creating even more incredible narratives.
I'm Toby Ball and this is strange Arrivals Episode eight,
(01:50):
missing time. Each stage of Betty and Barney Hills September
UFO encounter seems to have a prosaic explanation. But they
arrived home around five in the morning, not two as
they'd expected. What happened during those missing hours. The original
(02:13):
estimate of two am came from a stop they made
at a restaurant in Colebrook, New Hampshire. As they left,
they noticed that a clock on the wall red just
after ten pm. They thought the rest of the trip
should have taken between four and five hours. Last episode,
(02:33):
other Jim McDonald described driving the Hills route, comparing where
in the sky he saw the light on top of
Cannon Mountain to the description of the UFOs movements in
John Fuller's book A Journey Interrupted. He believes that they
were running later than they thought, even before they entered
Franconian Notch. Author Jim McDonald now we know they left
(02:57):
Colebrook around ten pm, and Fuller says that they're at
Twin Mountain, approaching Franconia Notch at eleven. This is just impossible.
It cannot be done in eleven pm. They're only just
a little bit south of Lancaster, still north of Whitefield.
One of the pieces of evidences that their watches had
stopped when they were home the next day. Especially in
(03:20):
the early sixties with the wind up watches, it was
easy enough to break a spring to jam those things.
Watches were delicate. We have no idea when their watches
stopped working, but based on that information, I would say
their watches had already stopped at some time before they
got to Franconia Notch, before the sighting even began. They
(03:42):
were confused about the time. It's sixty two miles on dark,
winding rural roads from Colebrook to Franconian Notch. Today Google
Maps predicts an hour and twenty four minutes for daytime
driving at night in it would have taken longer as
(04:03):
far as how much time they spent. Remember they were
stopping repeatedly to walk the dog to look at their
strange light in the sky. They deliberately drove slowly for
a portion of the trip. They got lost up a
side road, and they spent some time driving around downtown
Conquered looking for an open coffee shop. How many times
(04:24):
they stopped at least a half a dozen. It's easy
to lose two hours doing that. A few months back,
I was down in Lineborough. Now, I'm sure driving around
on a road that was very much like what US
three would have been like in the nineteen sixties. Three
has been expanded and straightened and flattened quite a bit
since then. But even so, there I was driving along
(04:46):
and I thought I was driving fifty five. I looked
down at my spenometer. I was doing thirty. My thought
is that Betty and Barney, when they estimated were doing
fifty to fifty five, know they were doing like thirty
all so we know from Fuller's book. And they crossed
over from Canada at around nine and got to Colebrook
(05:08):
round ten. It's ten miles from the border crossing to Colebrook.
They weren't driving any They were drawing closer to twenty,
which give him what this road looked like then. Very reasonable,
UFO investigator Robert Schaefer. They talked about driving so slowly,
you know, at one point Barney said later that he
(05:29):
was only driving along at five miles an hour. Looking
at this thing, Well, if you're driving a lot of
five miles an hour. You know at first year you're
going to get home late. Suddenly the missing hours have
become more understandable. Their watches stopped working, so their timing
was off. Before the encounter began, they drove very slowly
(05:50):
for portions of the trip. They stopped on several occasions
for various lengths of time. They took a detour through
conquered add in that they had been on the road
for so long and must have been fatigued and possibly
not driving as fast as they thought they were. The
missing time seems to have eroded away, and with this explained,
(06:14):
there's nothing left except for a strange story compelling. Lee told,
there's no evidence you can point to and say, see,
here's the proof. This is not to say that Betty
and Barney Hill were lying or deceptive. No one I
talked to believes this. They were in a confusing, stressful
(06:36):
situation and misinterpreted what they saw. They later underwent hypnosis
and told a story based on Betty's dreams that we
know can't be taken literally. Tragically, Barney died in nineteen
sixty nine at age forty six of a cerebral hemorrhage.
(06:57):
In the years that followed, Betty became a celebrity in
the UFO world, but her credibility suffered. After Barney's death,
Betty's claims about her interactions with UFOs and aliens became
more and more outlandish. She kept a journal titled Strange Events.
In it, she typed out things that supposedly had either
(07:19):
happened to her or that she had heard about. Here's
an example, taken more or less at random from February
five on one of weight As I was going down
the hill, I saw a UFO behind the trees over
the trailer. As I came closer, it moved from behind
(07:42):
the trees, crossed the trailer yard and headed towards me.
It began to descend, and here the road is higher
than the field. It was very close and large and
level with the road, about twenty ft across the law
large bright white lights and a small red one. Two
(08:04):
cars came and it turned away from me towards the field,
moving slowly. I immediately parked to watch it. It had
three lights on the back, and I began a panic.
It was less than fifty feet from me, and I
thought it was going to crash. I heard a faint
humming sound, and then it traveled just above the ground
(08:28):
and went towards the ocean. I headed for home at
the one on one bypass an Exeter. It suddenly reappeared
stopped the other side of the traffic light. I did
not see it before I went through the light. Suddenly
this UFO dropped down close to the road. I stopped
my car. All cars screeched to a hall and sat there.
(08:51):
UFO rose and began to move across the highway and disappeared,
traveling from the left to the right. Skeptoid host Bryan
n she was a lifelong UFO obsessive to a point
that was practically a psychological illness. In the letter to
a friend, she wrote, Barney and I go out frequently
(09:12):
at night for one reason or another. Since last October,
we have seen our friends in quotes on the average
of eight or nine times out of every ten trips.
She would believe that she saw UFOs everywhere she went.
She was part of UFO groups, and other people in
the group's kind of I don't want to say, laughed
(09:33):
at her, mocked her, but they knew her to be
someone who saw in the UFO and everything she looked at.
Here's a story where they were looking at a street
light and she was saying, no, it's a UFO. Standing
on a tripod, Betty took strange, out of focus photos
of what she claimed were flying saucers. Here she is
(09:53):
showing slides of her photos at a UFO conference. In
the image is she presents are blurred and impossible to identify.
This is a carrier. The bottom opens up and the
disc dropped down. Next, now they are and here we
(10:16):
have the same flight pal, same position as we had
before with the seven flying in V formation. Here this
atable next. Okay, here we have a disk in a boomerang. Next,
this one is absolutely huge. It filled up the whole field.
(10:39):
And I went back with my car and drove along
the edge of the field and it's over a quarter
of a mile. And this one was tremendous roaring sound.
It's sounded like ten jets. And that's only part of it.
I don't have it all on the slide, but they
have red light at the very ends. Next that he
(11:04):
back up to the previous question about communication. You have
had communication in the form of blinking your headlights at them.
Is that correct. Oh, yeah, that I'd say indirect communication. Um,
you know, as I was saying, they don't leave the crap,
they don't speak. But like we've done things like allowed
to emplay Christmas carols and then have a UFO fly
(11:27):
over playing back the same Christmas carols. This story is
an example of how she undermined her own credibility with
tales that seem clearly fanciful. It is important, though, to
remember that this is almost twenty five years after her
hypnosis sessions again Robert Schaefer. Betty actually wrote a self
(11:51):
published book, I think, and it was called Common Sense
about UFOs by Betty Hill. If you read that book,
utterly amazing. She'd be standing like near the mouth of
a river and she would see entire fleets of hundreds
of UFOs would come in off the ocean and would
fly up the river. I suspect she was saying some
(12:12):
birds and in her imagination of birds were UFOs, or
maybe she just made the whole thing up. In Kathleen
Martin's book captured the Betty and Barney Hill UFO experience,
Kathleen acknowledges the credibility problem caused by Betty's later years
(12:33):
Betty's fall from grace ultimately transpired because she surrounded herself
with UFO enthusiasts who looked to her for guidance. Many
were not trained observers or UFO investigators, but friends who
supported her belief that they were observing extraterrestrial craft, even
when they were misidentifying conventional aircraft. Some of their descriptions
(12:54):
seemed to support the conjecture that at least a few
of their observations were anomalous. Addition, some of these observations
were made by trained military observers and UFO investigators who
confirmed that they had observed unconventional craft. Betty publicized this
information because she thought she was contributing valuable information to
the scientific community. What we must remember, though, is Betty
(13:18):
was not a scientist or a trained observer. After Barney's death,
she turned away from careful objective evaluation and, with subjective enthusiasm,
began to identify any lights in the sky as UFOs.
In the end, it destroyed her credibility, not because she
didn't observe a photograph UFOs, but because she failed to
heed John Fuller's warnings. Fuller, the author of an Interrupted Journey,
(13:44):
wrote letters to Betty, warning that she would undermine her
credibility if she promoted questionable sightings. Betty's fantastical claims later
in life are not proof that she misidentified what she
saw in nine six one, but in my mind they
reflect a kind of openness to drawing incredible conclusions based
(14:05):
on fairly ordinary circumstances. Remember, she pegged a light in
the sky as a UFO pretty much right away, regardless
of what actually happened that September night. The Hill story
had a cultural impact that resonates today, UFO researcher Alejandro Rojas.
(14:26):
It was the first kind of in the media alleged
alien abduction experience. The whole idea about these beings from
Zetta Reticulate coming here comes from this. So for the
mythos of it all, it's been very significant. And it's
not just the concept of alien abduction that began with
the Hills. Their story of their time aboard the craft
(14:50):
became the template for subsequent alien abduction stories. It was
a template that prevailed very much from nineteen six to
really right up until the nineteen eighties. The Hill story
provided the basic framework for future alien abduction stories, but
(15:10):
it wouldn't be enough to tell a variation of their narrative.
The news stories would have to be more incredible. After
the break, strange arrivals will return in a moment. A
(15:40):
Journey Interrupted was published in nineteen sixty six. Just months later,
in January of another abduction allegedly occurred. This was the
abduction of Betty Andreasen, who was taken from her home
in Ashburnham, Massachusetts. Her story was told in the nine
(16:01):
book De Andreason Affair by Raymond Fowler, a former colleague
of John Fuller's. Betty Andreason was a fundamentalist Christian who
was taken aboard of flying Saucer by two very friendly aliens.
The names of the two aliens, as I recall, were
Quasgaw and jew Hop. This is author Terry Matheson. I'm
(16:28):
a retired English professor taught at the University of Saskatchewan
for many years, and I wrote a book back in
the nineties called Alien Abductions Creating a Modern Phenomenon, where
I analyzed a number of books about the alien abduction phenomenon.
They were all best sellers, or most of them were
(16:49):
sold very well and reach a wide swath of the public.
And I was interested in how the narratives developed. The
Bit Andreason story showed how the Hill narrative could be
used and expanded upon. Betty Andreason was a homemaker with
seven children who was allegedly taken from her home on
(17:12):
a night when her husband was in the hospital and
her parents were visiting here. Author Raymond Fowler described the
beginning of the encounter during a nineteen seventy nine radio interview.
It's how about explaining to the listeners and to me too,
for that matter, what exactly happened to Betty and Becky
Andreas And on January on that particularly evening, about six pm,
(17:36):
uh there was an intimittent power failure. Simultaneously that there
was a flashing orange light which king through the kitchen window,
which overlooks a huge field. The children was scared Mrs
Andreas and shoot her seven children into the living room.
Her father ran to the kitchen window and looked out
and claimed he saw what looked like children dressed in
(17:58):
strange Halloween cost On second luck, though, he saw that
they weren't walking, but they were moving, floating with a
hopping motion. All you can remember after that is in
somehow getting in the house. They did enter the house
Mrs Andreas and communicated with him through mental telepathy. Other
members of the family seemed to have just frozen in motion.
For want of a better term, we called it. We
(18:19):
called it suspended animation. Mrs Andreason was very concerned about
her family, and they allowed Becky Andreas, and she was
a loving years all at the time, to come out
of this state of suspended animation, to assure Mrs Andreas
and that she was all right, uh, And then to
make a long story shot. They convinced Betty Andreas and
(18:39):
to follow them to a craft which was out in
the back yard. She felt that she had free will,
but and looking back hindsight, felt that they had complete
control over everything that she did. So you can see
where there are some of the elements of the hell story,
the abduction, the control the aliens have over her. But
(19:01):
she has already added elements the suspended animation and the
aliens themselves, two of whom, as Terry Mathieson mentioned earlier,
were named Quasga and jew hop. Betty Andreason was a
bit of an artist. She grew pictures of Clasgow and
Jew and they were sort of tow little beings. You
(19:21):
can find the images that she drew on the Internet.
They're of whimsical creatures, not the strange, ambiguous, though ultimately
friendly aliens described by Betty Hill. In another parallel with
the Hill case, Betty Andreason's experience on the alien spacecraft
(19:42):
was recovered through regression hypnosis years after the fact. Her
sessions were conducted by Harold Edelstein, who at the time
was the director of the New England Institute of Hypnosis.
Her story begins with obvious similarities to Betty Hills again
and Raymond Fowler. The craft is very small. They stayed
(20:04):
in their craft for Philly long time. She felt heaviness
and so forth, and then it stopped, and she felt
that she was taking aboard Aliga craft where she was
subjected to the effects of a number of very very
strange instruments. Fowler had brought portions of Andreason's hypnosis session
tapes with him to this radio interview. If you would
(20:27):
give us background so we can lead up to what
I understand is going to be a pretty startling piece
of audio tape that we're going to be listening to.
All Right, the audio tape that you're going to be
hearing excerpts from comes from one of fourteen hypnotic regression sessions,
and it concerns Betty Andreason, who allegedly was abducted by
uf All occupants and given, among many other things, a
(20:50):
physical examination. What you're about to hear is a small
segment of that physical examination. And I think that you
will be able to relive with her of the trauma
and the hay uh and the emotion that she experienced
reliving this experience under hypnosis. And she is under hypnosis
and recounting, reliving, not recounting, and really living. Okay, there
(21:13):
listening up, it's breaking like it, Oh, it's hanging. And
(21:40):
here is where her story diverges significantly from the Hill narrative.
After Betty Hill's examination, she talked with the leader and
was shown a map of the alien's domain. Betty Andreason,
on the other hand, was actually taken to see distant worlds,
and the worlds are pretty clearly a reflection of her
(22:03):
religious beliefs. This is Betty Andreason from an interview on
the Transitions radio show in nine Well after they had
examined me, they took me back to the cubicle where
they told me to change into my regular clothes, and
from there I was escorted into this room that appeared
(22:24):
like a quantt uh hot type from half cylindrical, and
within it were eight glass like chairs, and they sat
me down in the one of the chairs to the right,
and this hood, glass like hood came down. I could
hear it clicker on me, and then I felt very cold,
as if I was breezing. They had her switched chairs
(22:44):
and again sealed her up. They put tubes in her
nose and another in her mouth and told her to
keep her eyes closed. They gave me this reddish color
liquid to take, and it tasted very sweet, and I
felt very relaxed from it. And meanwhile this gray liquid
fell down, you know, was falling on my head, and
it was building up in the bottom of the chair,
(23:07):
and when it was filled and vibrated like a whirlpool
around about me. And from there they drained that out
to the breathing tubes out and set me on this
track where one being was in front of me and
one being was in back of me. Her captors put
black hoods over their heads and led her to a
very dark tunnel. I was taken through this tunnel and
(23:30):
we came. We were coming up to a mirror, and
I thought we were going to crash right through the mirror,
and instead we passed just like we passed through the
wood in my home. And we came into this red atmosphere. First,
She's brought to a desolate, red place with weird creatures hell.
And in this red atmosphere there was no vegetation. There
(23:51):
were just large buildings with square windows, and there were
the strange creature like beings having like two stocks for
a head, was very large eyes on the end of it,
and they were crawling all over the walls and in
and out the windows and all over the place. And
we passed through this area into a green atmosphere and
then the fantastically beautiful green area heaven. That was beautiful.
(24:16):
It was just fantastically beautiful. They were things there I
can't even described today, you know, nothing that I could
relate to in this and planet Earth. And so I
saw different things there. A dome city. This was obviously
the poorful. No, this was not their planet. They told
me that this was the high place. Betty Andreason has
(24:38):
taken the Hill story and made it more spectacular. The
religious imagery continued as the story went on, and I
came up to some crystals that were just hanging in
mid air, and I did become fearful. I wanted to
go back at that point because it was awesome, and
they just wouldn't go along with my request, and we
(25:00):
on going until we came to this area where this
large bird stood, and the beings just got off the
track and I was left there along where this huge
bird was, and it was alive, and there was light
and back of it just radiating, kept on radiating, and
I kept getting hotter and hotter and hotter, and these
blocks of gold were flying around in front of me,
and I felt like I was being consumed by fire.
(25:22):
And at that point I must have passed out of something,
because the next time I looked that the bird was
gone and there was a pile of ashes there, and
out of these pile of ashes, a large gray worm appeared.
And then from the side of a voice spoke to
me very loud voice and called my name twice and said,
you have seen and you have heard. You understand And
I said, I I don't know, I don't understand. I
(25:44):
don't even know why I was there. And then the
voice talked with me and reassured me that everything was
all right, that some of the pain that I experienced
was because of my fear, and I just felt better.
I felt elated, enjoy filled me. I felt very happy
at that. To get a point in the Andreason affair,
(26:06):
Betty goes into a great deal of detail about her
interactions with Quasga and jew Hop, who served as friendly
guides on her Uncanny journey. They also advanced the religious
tone of Betty's story. The aliens behave in a way
that reflects the belief systems of the abducte. Betty Andreason
(26:29):
was a very devout Christian Krasgown. Jew Hopper constantly saying
little passages, the epigrams and stuff that sound profound and
and spiritual. They don't make much sense when you analyze them,
but they're an extension of Betty's beliefs. Betty reports jew
Hop saying things like, because man has separated himself, he
(26:53):
has become dual separation, duality a love, there is no separation.
Quasca also talks cryptically. Many riddles will be given. Those
that are wise will understand, those that seek will find.
They must be hidden in this way because of the
(27:14):
corruption the corruption that is upon the earth. If they
are revealed outright, man would use it. Fowler eventually wrote
three books about Betty Andreasen and her previous and subsequent
dealings with aliens, but this is the crux of the
(27:34):
initial story. In addition to the religious themes, Terry Matheson
also found that her descriptions of the imagery from her
journey were often influenced by popular culture. In fact, a
lot of vys events in her account, together with the
pictures that she drew of her experiences, are taken lights
(27:56):
from science fiction and fantasy movies from the nine in fifties,
and I was able to trace most of them. Is
not all of them. I know. There's one picture she
drew of herself in a very sort of attractive party dress,
and I thought I've seen that before. And then I
went downstairs and found an old movie of Cinderella. And
(28:19):
remember when the very Godmother was apped her magic wand
and Cinderella puts on this beautiful dress and she whirls around. Well,
Betty's picture of herself is almost identical. And there are
other scenes too. She talks about being in a flying sauce,
and I mean put in some kind of pressure chambers,
and that I found immediately from a very well known
(28:39):
science fiction movie from that period, from the fifties called
This Island Earth. The two of you beginning a strange journey,
a journey that no Earth people have evern have taken before.
Now with you, consider me at devil or a saint
is unimportant. What is important is that you're here on
this spaceship. And also from another famous movie that I'm
(29:01):
sure Betty may well have seen, called Forbidden Planet. This
is no offense, but you are. That is correct for
your convenience. I am monitored to respond to the name Robbie,
Betty Andreason's story was the first step in what became
(29:24):
a succession of ever more incredible abduction stories. Each next
step had to top the previous tale. But as with
narratives of any sort, there comes a point where incredulity
is strained and the genre falls apart under its own weight.
How far did Ailien abduction stories go before they reached
(29:46):
the breaking point? Next time on Strange Arrivals. Strange Arrivals
is a production of I Heart Radio and Grim and
Mild from Aaron Manky. This episode was written and host
by Toby Ball and produced by Miranda Hawkins and Josh Thane,
with executive producers Alex Williams, Matt Frederick and Aaron Manky.
(30:08):
Betty Hill was portrayed by Gina Rickike. Barney Hill was
portrayed by Jason Williams. Special thanks to the Miln's Special
Collections and Archives at the University of New Hampshire, John Horrigan,
w y C h A M in Norwich, Connecticut, John White,
and David O'Leary, the executive producer of the History Channel's
(30:30):
dramatic series Project blue Book. Learn more about the show
over at Grimm and Mile dot com. For more podcasts
from iHeart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Strange Arrivals is a production of I Heart Radio and
Grim and Mild from Aaron Mankie. This woman says that
she was abducted by beings from another planet and taken
on board their spaceship, where she experienced the bizarre, unforgetable
Atorney in time and space, and it makes her story credible.
(00:25):
Is the work that a team of Lupo researchers headed
by this man did. The document the incident. Are the
results of their findings I reported in this fascinating book
Beyond Ryerson Affair. Would you please welcome Betty Andreson and
Raymond Foller, whatever macomes very Could you briefly tell us
(00:51):
what happened. I was taken out in state backyard, and
I was taken up board dear craft, and I was
given um extensive examination, but to exchange place and then
returned home to maintain consciousness through all us inspiracy. Yes
I did. Betty and Barney Hill's experience was the first
(01:14):
story of alien abduction to become widely known, and as
the first, it established the elements that subsequent abduction tales
would contain. People such as Betty Andreason would take these
elements and expand on them, creating even more incredible narratives.
I'm Toby Ball and this is strange Arrivals Episode eight,
(01:50):
missing time. Each stage of Betty and Barney Hills September
UFO encounter seems to have a prosaic explanation. But they
arrived home around five in the morning, not two as
they'd expected. What happened during those missing hours. The original
(02:13):
estimate of two am came from a stop they made
at a restaurant in Colebrook, New Hampshire. As they left,
they noticed that a clock on the wall red just
after ten pm. They thought the rest of the trip
should have taken between four and five hours. Last episode,
(02:33):
other Jim McDonald described driving the Hills route, comparing where
in the sky he saw the light on top of
Cannon Mountain to the description of the UFOs movements in
John Fuller's book A Journey Interrupted. He believes that they
were running later than they thought, even before they entered
Franconian Notch. Author Jim McDonald now we know they left
(02:57):
Colebrook around ten pm, and Fuller says that they're at
Twin Mountain, approaching Franconia Notch at eleven. This is just impossible.
It cannot be done in eleven pm. They're only just
a little bit south of Lancaster, still north of Whitefield.
One of the pieces of evidences that their watches had
stopped when they were home the next day. Especially in
(03:20):
the early sixties with the wind up watches, it was
easy enough to break a spring to jam those things.
Watches were delicate. We have no idea when their watches
stopped working, but based on that information, I would say
their watches had already stopped at some time before they
got to Franconia Notch, before the sighting even began. They
(03:42):
were confused about the time. It's sixty two miles on dark,
winding rural roads from Colebrook to Franconian Notch. Today Google
Maps predicts an hour and twenty four minutes for daytime
driving at night in it would have taken longer as
(04:03):
far as how much time they spent. Remember they were
stopping repeatedly to walk the dog to look at their
strange light in the sky. They deliberately drove slowly for
a portion of the trip. They got lost up a
side road, and they spent some time driving around downtown
Conquered looking for an open coffee shop. How many times
(04:24):
they stopped at least a half a dozen. It's easy
to lose two hours doing that. A few months back,
I was down in Lineborough. Now, I'm sure driving around
on a road that was very much like what US
three would have been like in the nineteen sixties. Three
has been expanded and straightened and flattened quite a bit
since then. But even so, there I was driving along
(04:46):
and I thought I was driving fifty five. I looked
down at my spenometer. I was doing thirty. My thought
is that Betty and Barney, when they estimated were doing
fifty to fifty five, know they were doing like thirty
all so we know from Fuller's book. And they crossed
over from Canada at around nine and got to Colebrook
(05:08):
round ten. It's ten miles from the border crossing to Colebrook.
They weren't driving any They were drawing closer to twenty,
which give him what this road looked like then. Very reasonable,
UFO investigator Robert Schaefer. They talked about driving so slowly,
you know, at one point Barney said later that he
(05:29):
was only driving along at five miles an hour. Looking
at this thing, Well, if you're driving a lot of
five miles an hour. You know at first year you're
going to get home late. Suddenly the missing hours have
become more understandable. Their watches stopped working, so their timing
was off. Before the encounter began, they drove very slowly
(05:50):
for portions of the trip. They stopped on several occasions
for various lengths of time. They took a detour through
conquered add in that they had been on the road
for so long and must have been fatigued and possibly
not driving as fast as they thought they were. The
missing time seems to have eroded away, and with this explained,
(06:14):
there's nothing left except for a strange story compelling. Lee told,
there's no evidence you can point to and say, see,
here's the proof. This is not to say that Betty
and Barney Hill were lying or deceptive. No one I
talked to believes this. They were in a confusing, stressful
(06:36):
situation and misinterpreted what they saw. They later underwent hypnosis
and told a story based on Betty's dreams that we
know can't be taken literally. Tragically, Barney died in nineteen
sixty nine at age forty six of a cerebral hemorrhage.
(06:57):
In the years that followed, Betty became a celebrity in
the UFO world, but her credibility suffered. After Barney's death,
Betty's claims about her interactions with UFOs and aliens became
more and more outlandish. She kept a journal titled Strange Events.
In it, she typed out things that supposedly had either
(07:19):
happened to her or that she had heard about. Here's
an example, taken more or less at random from February
five on one of weight As I was going down
the hill, I saw a UFO behind the trees over
the trailer. As I came closer, it moved from behind
(07:42):
the trees, crossed the trailer yard and headed towards me.
It began to descend, and here the road is higher
than the field. It was very close and large and
level with the road, about twenty ft across the law
large bright white lights and a small red one. Two
(08:04):
cars came and it turned away from me towards the field,
moving slowly. I immediately parked to watch it. It had
three lights on the back, and I began a panic.
It was less than fifty feet from me, and I
thought it was going to crash. I heard a faint
humming sound, and then it traveled just above the ground
(08:28):
and went towards the ocean. I headed for home at
the one on one bypass an Exeter. It suddenly reappeared
stopped the other side of the traffic light. I did
not see it before I went through the light. Suddenly
this UFO dropped down close to the road. I stopped
my car. All cars screeched to a hall and sat there.
(08:51):
UFO rose and began to move across the highway and disappeared,
traveling from the left to the right. Skeptoid host Bryan
n she was a lifelong UFO obsessive to a point
that was practically a psychological illness. In the letter to
a friend, she wrote, Barney and I go out frequently
(09:12):
at night for one reason or another. Since last October,
we have seen our friends in quotes on the average
of eight or nine times out of every ten trips.
She would believe that she saw UFOs everywhere she went.
She was part of UFO groups, and other people in
the group's kind of I don't want to say, laughed
(09:33):
at her, mocked her, but they knew her to be
someone who saw in the UFO and everything she looked at.
Here's a story where they were looking at a street
light and she was saying, no, it's a UFO. Standing
on a tripod, Betty took strange, out of focus photos
of what she claimed were flying saucers. Here she is
(09:53):
showing slides of her photos at a UFO conference. In
the image is she presents are blurred and impossible to identify.
This is a carrier. The bottom opens up and the
disc dropped down. Next, now they are and here we
(10:16):
have the same flight pal, same position as we had
before with the seven flying in V formation. Here this
atable next. Okay, here we have a disk in a boomerang. Next,
this one is absolutely huge. It filled up the whole field.
(10:39):
And I went back with my car and drove along
the edge of the field and it's over a quarter
of a mile. And this one was tremendous roaring sound.
It's sounded like ten jets. And that's only part of it.
I don't have it all on the slide, but they
have red light at the very ends. Next that he
(11:04):
back up to the previous question about communication. You have
had communication in the form of blinking your headlights at them.
Is that correct. Oh, yeah, that I'd say indirect communication. Um,
you know, as I was saying, they don't leave the crap,
they don't speak. But like we've done things like allowed
to emplay Christmas carols and then have a UFO fly
(11:27):
over playing back the same Christmas carols. This story is
an example of how she undermined her own credibility with
tales that seem clearly fanciful. It is important, though, to
remember that this is almost twenty five years after her
hypnosis sessions again Robert Schaefer. Betty actually wrote a self
(11:51):
published book, I think, and it was called Common Sense
about UFOs by Betty Hill. If you read that book,
utterly amazing. She'd be standing like near the mouth of
a river and she would see entire fleets of hundreds
of UFOs would come in off the ocean and would
fly up the river. I suspect she was saying some
(12:12):
birds and in her imagination of birds were UFOs, or
maybe she just made the whole thing up. In Kathleen
Martin's book captured the Betty and Barney Hill UFO experience,
Kathleen acknowledges the credibility problem caused by Betty's later years
(12:33):
Betty's fall from grace ultimately transpired because she surrounded herself
with UFO enthusiasts who looked to her for guidance. Many
were not trained observers or UFO investigators, but friends who
supported her belief that they were observing extraterrestrial craft, even
when they were misidentifying conventional aircraft. Some of their descriptions
(12:54):
seemed to support the conjecture that at least a few
of their observations were anomalous. Addition, some of these observations
were made by trained military observers and UFO investigators who
confirmed that they had observed unconventional craft. Betty publicized this
information because she thought she was contributing valuable information to
the scientific community. What we must remember, though, is Betty
(13:18):
was not a scientist or a trained observer. After Barney's death,
she turned away from careful objective evaluation and, with subjective enthusiasm,
began to identify any lights in the sky as UFOs.
In the end, it destroyed her credibility, not because she
didn't observe a photograph UFOs, but because she failed to
heed John Fuller's warnings. Fuller, the author of an Interrupted Journey,
(13:44):
wrote letters to Betty, warning that she would undermine her
credibility if she promoted questionable sightings. Betty's fantastical claims later
in life are not proof that she misidentified what she
saw in nine six one, but in my mind they
reflect a kind of openness to drawing incredible conclusions based
(14:05):
on fairly ordinary circumstances. Remember, she pegged a light in
the sky as a UFO pretty much right away, regardless
of what actually happened that September night. The Hill story
had a cultural impact that resonates today, UFO researcher Alejandro Rojas.
(14:26):
It was the first kind of in the media alleged
alien abduction experience. The whole idea about these beings from
Zetta Reticulate coming here comes from this. So for the
mythos of it all, it's been very significant. And it's
not just the concept of alien abduction that began with
the Hills. Their story of their time aboard the craft
(14:50):
became the template for subsequent alien abduction stories. It was
a template that prevailed very much from nineteen six to
really right up until the nineteen eighties. The Hill story
provided the basic framework for future alien abduction stories, but
(15:10):
it wouldn't be enough to tell a variation of their narrative.
The news stories would have to be more incredible. After
the break, strange arrivals will return in a moment. A
(15:40):
Journey Interrupted was published in nineteen sixty six. Just months later,
in January of another abduction allegedly occurred. This was the
abduction of Betty Andreasen, who was taken from her home
in Ashburnham, Massachusetts. Her story was told in the nine
(16:01):
book De Andreason Affair by Raymond Fowler, a former colleague
of John Fuller's. Betty Andreason was a fundamentalist Christian who
was taken aboard of flying Saucer by two very friendly aliens.
The names of the two aliens, as I recall, were
Quasgaw and jew Hop. This is author Terry Matheson. I'm
(16:28):
a retired English professor taught at the University of Saskatchewan
for many years, and I wrote a book back in
the nineties called Alien Abductions Creating a Modern Phenomenon, where
I analyzed a number of books about the alien abduction phenomenon.
They were all best sellers, or most of them were
(16:49):
sold very well and reach a wide swath of the public.
And I was interested in how the narratives developed. The
Bit Andreason story showed how the Hill narrative could be
used and expanded upon. Betty Andreason was a homemaker with
seven children who was allegedly taken from her home on
(17:12):
a night when her husband was in the hospital and
her parents were visiting here. Author Raymond Fowler described the
beginning of the encounter during a nineteen seventy nine radio interview.
It's how about explaining to the listeners and to me too,
for that matter, what exactly happened to Betty and Becky
Andreas And on January on that particularly evening, about six pm,
(17:36):
uh there was an intimittent power failure. Simultaneously that there
was a flashing orange light which king through the kitchen window,
which overlooks a huge field. The children was scared Mrs
Andreas and shoot her seven children into the living room.
Her father ran to the kitchen window and looked out
and claimed he saw what looked like children dressed in
(17:58):
strange Halloween cost On second luck, though, he saw that
they weren't walking, but they were moving, floating with a
hopping motion. All you can remember after that is in
somehow getting in the house. They did enter the house
Mrs Andreas and communicated with him through mental telepathy. Other
members of the family seemed to have just frozen in motion.
For want of a better term, we called it. We
(18:19):
called it suspended animation. Mrs Andreason was very concerned about
her family, and they allowed Becky Andreas, and she was
a loving years all at the time, to come out
of this state of suspended animation, to assure Mrs Andreas
and that she was all right, uh, And then to
make a long story shot. They convinced Betty Andreas and
(18:39):
to follow them to a craft which was out in
the back yard. She felt that she had free will,
but and looking back hindsight, felt that they had complete
control over everything that she did. So you can see
where there are some of the elements of the hell story,
the abduction, the control the aliens have over her. But
(19:01):
she has already added elements the suspended animation and the
aliens themselves, two of whom, as Terry Mathieson mentioned earlier,
were named Quasga and jew hop. Betty Andreason was a
bit of an artist. She grew pictures of Clasgow and
Jew and they were sort of tow little beings. You
(19:21):
can find the images that she drew on the Internet.
They're of whimsical creatures, not the strange, ambiguous, though ultimately
friendly aliens described by Betty Hill. In another parallel with
the Hill case, Betty Andreason's experience on the alien spacecraft
(19:42):
was recovered through regression hypnosis years after the fact. Her
sessions were conducted by Harold Edelstein, who at the time
was the director of the New England Institute of Hypnosis.
Her story begins with obvious similarities to Betty Hills again
and Raymond Fowler. The craft is very small. They stayed
(20:04):
in their craft for Philly long time. She felt heaviness
and so forth, and then it stopped, and she felt
that she was taking aboard Aliga craft where she was
subjected to the effects of a number of very very
strange instruments. Fowler had brought portions of Andreason's hypnosis session
tapes with him to this radio interview. If you would
(20:27):
give us background so we can lead up to what
I understand is going to be a pretty startling piece
of audio tape that we're going to be listening to.
All Right, the audio tape that you're going to be
hearing excerpts from comes from one of fourteen hypnotic regression sessions,
and it concerns Betty Andreason, who allegedly was abducted by
uf All occupants and given, among many other things, a
(20:50):
physical examination. What you're about to hear is a small
segment of that physical examination. And I think that you
will be able to relive with her of the trauma
and the hay uh and the emotion that she experienced
reliving this experience under hypnosis. And she is under hypnosis
and recounting, reliving, not recounting, and really living. Okay, there
(21:13):
listening up, it's breaking like it, Oh, it's hanging. And
(21:40):
here is where her story diverges significantly from the Hill narrative.
After Betty Hill's examination, she talked with the leader and
was shown a map of the alien's domain. Betty Andreason,
on the other hand, was actually taken to see distant worlds,
and the worlds are pretty clearly a reflection of her
(22:03):
religious beliefs. This is Betty Andreason from an interview on
the Transitions radio show in nine Well after they had
examined me, they took me back to the cubicle where
they told me to change into my regular clothes, and
from there I was escorted into this room that appeared
(22:24):
like a quantt uh hot type from half cylindrical, and
within it were eight glass like chairs, and they sat
me down in the one of the chairs to the right,
and this hood, glass like hood came down. I could
hear it clicker on me, and then I felt very cold,
as if I was breezing. They had her switched chairs
(22:44):
and again sealed her up. They put tubes in her
nose and another in her mouth and told her to
keep her eyes closed. They gave me this reddish color
liquid to take, and it tasted very sweet, and I
felt very relaxed from it. And meanwhile this gray liquid
fell down, you know, was falling on my head, and
it was building up in the bottom of the chair,
(23:07):
and when it was filled and vibrated like a whirlpool
around about me. And from there they drained that out
to the breathing tubes out and set me on this
track where one being was in front of me and
one being was in back of me. Her captors put
black hoods over their heads and led her to a
very dark tunnel. I was taken through this tunnel and
(23:30):
we came. We were coming up to a mirror, and
I thought we were going to crash right through the mirror,
and instead we passed just like we passed through the
wood in my home. And we came into this red atmosphere. First,
She's brought to a desolate, red place with weird creatures hell.
And in this red atmosphere there was no vegetation. There
(23:51):
were just large buildings with square windows, and there were
the strange creature like beings having like two stocks for
a head, was very large eyes on the end of it,
and they were crawling all over the walls and in
and out the windows and all over the place. And
we passed through this area into a green atmosphere and
then the fantastically beautiful green area heaven. That was beautiful.
(24:16):
It was just fantastically beautiful. They were things there I
can't even described today, you know, nothing that I could
relate to in this and planet Earth. And so I
saw different things there. A dome city. This was obviously
the poorful. No, this was not their planet. They told
me that this was the high place. Betty Andreason has
(24:38):
taken the Hill story and made it more spectacular. The
religious imagery continued as the story went on, and I
came up to some crystals that were just hanging in
mid air, and I did become fearful. I wanted to
go back at that point because it was awesome, and
they just wouldn't go along with my request, and we
(25:00):
on going until we came to this area where this
large bird stood, and the beings just got off the
track and I was left there along where this huge
bird was, and it was alive, and there was light
and back of it just radiating, kept on radiating, and
I kept getting hotter and hotter and hotter, and these
blocks of gold were flying around in front of me,
and I felt like I was being consumed by fire.
(25:22):
And at that point I must have passed out of something,
because the next time I looked that the bird was
gone and there was a pile of ashes there, and
out of these pile of ashes, a large gray worm appeared.
And then from the side of a voice spoke to
me very loud voice and called my name twice and said,
you have seen and you have heard. You understand And
I said, I I don't know, I don't understand. I
(25:44):
don't even know why I was there. And then the
voice talked with me and reassured me that everything was
all right, that some of the pain that I experienced
was because of my fear, and I just felt better.
I felt elated, enjoy filled me. I felt very happy
at that. To get a point in the Andreason affair,
(26:06):
Betty goes into a great deal of detail about her
interactions with Quasga and jew Hop, who served as friendly
guides on her Uncanny journey. They also advanced the religious
tone of Betty's story. The aliens behave in a way
that reflects the belief systems of the abducte. Betty Andreason
(26:29):
was a very devout Christian Krasgown. Jew Hopper constantly saying
little passages, the epigrams and stuff that sound profound and
and spiritual. They don't make much sense when you analyze them,
but they're an extension of Betty's beliefs. Betty reports jew
Hop saying things like, because man has separated himself, he
(26:53):
has become dual separation, duality a love, there is no separation.
Quasca also talks cryptically. Many riddles will be given. Those
that are wise will understand, those that seek will find.
They must be hidden in this way because of the
(27:14):
corruption the corruption that is upon the earth. If they
are revealed outright, man would use it. Fowler eventually wrote
three books about Betty Andreasen and her previous and subsequent
dealings with aliens, but this is the crux of the
(27:34):
initial story. In addition to the religious themes, Terry Matheson
also found that her descriptions of the imagery from her
journey were often influenced by popular culture. In fact, a
lot of vys events in her account, together with the
pictures that she drew of her experiences, are taken lights
(27:56):
from science fiction and fantasy movies from the nine in fifties,
and I was able to trace most of them. Is
not all of them. I know. There's one picture she
drew of herself in a very sort of attractive party dress,
and I thought I've seen that before. And then I
went downstairs and found an old movie of Cinderella. And
(28:19):
remember when the very Godmother was apped her magic wand
and Cinderella puts on this beautiful dress and she whirls around. Well,
Betty's picture of herself is almost identical. And there are
other scenes too. She talks about being in a flying sauce,
and I mean put in some kind of pressure chambers,
and that I found immediately from a very well known
(28:39):
science fiction movie from that period, from the fifties called
This Island Earth. The two of you beginning a strange journey,
a journey that no Earth people have evern have taken before.
Now with you, consider me at devil or a saint
is unimportant. What is important is that you're here on
this spaceship. And also from another famous movie that I'm
(29:01):
sure Betty may well have seen, called Forbidden Planet. This
is no offense, but you are. That is correct for
your convenience. I am monitored to respond to the name Robbie,
Betty Andreason's story was the first step in what became
(29:24):
a succession of ever more incredible abduction stories. Each next
step had to top the previous tale. But as with
narratives of any sort, there comes a point where incredulity
is strained and the genre falls apart under its own weight.
How far did Ailien abduction stories go before they reached
(29:46):
the breaking point? Next time on Strange Arrivals. Strange Arrivals
is a production of I Heart Radio and Grim and
Mild from Aaron Manky. This episode was written and host
by Toby Ball and produced by Miranda Hawkins and Josh Thane,
with executive producers Alex Williams, Matt Frederick and Aaron Manky.
(30:08):
Betty Hill was portrayed by Gina Rickike. Barney Hill was
portrayed by Jason Williams. Special thanks to the Miln's Special
Collections and Archives at the University of New Hampshire, John Horrigan,
w y C h A M in Norwich, Connecticut, John White,
and David O'Leary, the executive producer of the History Channel's
(30:30):
dramatic series Project blue Book. Learn more about the show
over at Grimm and Mile dot com. For more podcasts
from iHeart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Popular Podcasts
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.
Ridiculous History
History is beautiful, brutal and, often, ridiculous. Join Ben Bowlin and Noel Brown as they dive into some of the weirdest stories from across the span of human civilization in Ridiculous History, a podcast by iHeartRadio.