September 18, 2025 • 31 mins
In September 1961, Betty and Barney Hill were driving through New Hampshire’s White Mountains when a strange light in the sky began to follow them. Hours later, they pulled into their driveway with two hours of missing time — and a story that would become America’s first widely publicized alien abduction.
Torn clothing. Watches that would never tick again. A trembling dog that wouldn’t leave Betty’s side. And under hypnosis, Barney’s voice breaking as he screamed about “the eyes” — eyes he swore were burned into his mind.
Join host Robert B. as State of the Unknown revisits that night on Route 3, unraveling the Hill abduction in vivid detail. From Betty’s recurring dreams of being taken aboard a craft, to Barney’s chilling hypnosis sessions, to the infamous “star map” pointing to Zeta Reticuli, this case laid the foundation for everything we now recognize in modern alien abduction lore.
Was it stress and fractured memory, shaped by dreams and fear? Or the night two ordinary people truly came face-to-face with something not of this Earth?
🎧 Listen now to The Betty and Barney Hill UFO Abduction: America’s First Alien Encounter — and decide for yourself.
How Hacks HappenHacks, scams, cyber crimes, and other shenanigans explored and explained. Presented...
Listen on: Apple Podcasts Spotify
State of the Unknown is a documentary-style podcast tracing the haunted highways, forgotten folklore, and unexplained phenomena across America’s 50 states.
👁️🗨️ New episodes every Tuesday — with full-length stories every other week, and shorter mini tales in between.
📬 Reach out: contact@stateoftheunknown.com
📣 Follow the strange: @stateoftheunknownpodcast on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, & Threads
🔍 Want more? Visit stateoftheunknown.com to explore show notes and submit your own story.
Join the Conversation
Join the conversation! Head to our Facebook group at State of the Unknown Listeners to connect with other listeners, suggest topics, and get behind-the-scenes updates.
Share Your Take
Have a theory about this episode? Message me anytime on Instagram @stateoftheunknownpodcast - I read every DM.
Some stories don’t stay buried.
We go looking anyway.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
Barney Hill is lying back in a chair.
His eyes are closed, his fistsare clenched and, under hypnosis
, he starts to scream.
They're there, the eyes, oh God, the eyes.
They're in my head.
I can't escape them.
His voice cracks, he begs forit to stop, but the images keep
(00:28):
coming A craft, strange figures,a night on a lonely New
Hampshire road.
He can't remember and can'tever forget.
This was 1961.
Betty and Barney Hill, just aregular couple.
He worked for the post office,she was a social worker.
(00:50):
They lived in Portsmouth, newHampshire, with their dog, delcy
.
No history of wild claims, nothirst for the spotlight, just
two people driving home from avacation.
Just two people driving homefrom a vacation.
But that night and everythingthat came after would go on to
become the first widelypublicized alien abduction story
(01:11):
in American history and it laidthe foundation for into a story
(01:44):
that changed the UFOconversation forever.
This is the story of Betty andBarty Hill.
In the night America's firstalien abduction case was born.
This is State of the Unknown.
(02:11):
It's the night of September 19th1961.
Betty and Barney Hill areheaded home from a trip through
Canada, a much-needed break.
They'd driven through Montrealand Niagara Falls, hoping to
unwind, to forget the stress oftheir daily lives.
They were still newlyweds,married for less than two years.
(02:32):
Interracial marriages weren'tjust rare back then, they were
dangerous.
Even in the North, even inliberal towns, people stared,
whispered, judged.
Now, on the long drive home toPortsmouth, new Hampshire, it's
just the two of them and theirdog, delcy.
(02:54):
They take US Route 3, a two-laneroad that winds through the
White Mountains, remote and darkat that hour.
Trees crowd the shoulders, thesky is moonless.
It's sometime after 1030, maybecloser to 11.
They're tired, but not enoughto stop.
If they keep going they'll behome by dawn.
(03:16):
Betty watches the stars.
Through the passenger windowwindow she sees one that seems a
little off, too bright, too low.
It moves At first she thinksmaybe it's a satellite or a
plane, something explainable.
But then it darts upwards,pivots, moves in sharp angular
(03:46):
motions, impossible maneuversfor any known aircraft.
She doesn't say anything rightaway, she just keeps watching,
measuring.
Finally she turns to Barney andsays Do you see that?
He's skeptical?
Always is A rational man,served in the army, Works for
the post office, doesn't go infor science fiction or flying
(04:09):
saucers.
But even he has to admit it'snot behaving like anything he's
seen before they pull off, neara roadside stop called the Old
man of the Mountains, a rockycliff face that from from
certain angles resembles aprofile.
Betty grabs her binoculars fromthe glove box, gets out Through
(04:31):
the lenses.
She sees something strange, adisc-shaped object with lights
red, blue, maybe green.
It hovers, spins.
It hovers, spins, then shiftsposition without turning.
She hands the binoculars toBarney.
Barney steadies them, looks up.
What he sees makes his stomachtwist.
(04:54):
It's not just a light, it's acraft, structured with windows.
And in those windows figures,silhouettes, moving, he says
later.
They reminded him of militarypersonnel, tall, lean, uniformed
, but not quite right.
(05:16):
He can't hear them.
But he feels something.
He gets the overwhelmingsensation that he's being
watched something.
He gets the overwhelmingsensation that he's being
watched, not just observed,studied.
Betty urges him let's go, butBarney, pulled by something
between curiosity and dread,insists they drive a little
(05:49):
farther.
They head towards Indian Head.
Another scenic pull-off and stopagain.
This time he gets out of thecar.
He walks into a nearby fieldalone.
There it is, hovering justabove the trees, maybe 80 to 100
feet in the air.
Is the object?
Silent, silver-gray, round,like a flattened disc.
Porthole.
Windows line the front like aship's bridge.
Red lights pulse along thesides and in those windows,
(06:13):
eight to eleven beings Thin,pale, almost gray, their heads
too large for their bodies,their eyes too big, too black.
One steps forward and that'swhen it hits him.
Barney says he feels a wave ofsomething, like his thoughts are
no longer private, that amessage enters his mind, not a
(06:37):
voice, a command Stay where youare, keep looking, stay where
you are, keep looking.
He's frozen, terrified, andthen instinct just takes over.
He runs, he bolts back to thecar, shouting they're going to
capture us.
They slam the doors, peel offdown the road.
(07:04):
Then the sound.
It's not coming from thedashboard, not from the radio,
it's coming from the car itself,or maybe from inside them.
And then nothing, just silence.
When they come to they're 35miles south, near Ashland, it's
(07:25):
nearly dawn.
They remember nothing of thedrive.
No turns, no towns, justmissing time, an hour, maybe two
gone.
They make it home.
Delcy, their dog, is quiet,unusually so, and both Betty and
Barney feel wrong, likesomething happened, like
(07:50):
something was taken, and thatnight in the White Mountains was
only the beginning.
They make it home just aftersunrise.
The trip should have been over.
Just a drive, just a vacation.
But something followed themhome.
Betty's first instinct is tobring the luggage inside, but
(08:12):
then she stops Without quiteknowing why.
She leaves the bags at the backdoor.
Something feels wrong, like thecar or the clothes or the road
itself carried something theyshouldn't bring inside.
She doesn't even let Delcy inright away.
The dog, usually hyper tailwagging, just stands there
(08:33):
shaking.
She won't move from Betty'sside.
And that's when they notice theother things.
Barney's shoes scuffed badlyacross the tops, as if he'd been
dragged or sprinting acrossgravel.
The strap on his binoculars isbroken clean through.
He doesn't remember it snapping.
(08:53):
Betty's dress is torn along thehem, the zipper she doesn't
know how or when that happened.
And then there's something elsea strange pink powder dusting
the fabric.
It won't come out, no matterhow many times she tries to
clean it.
She ends up tossing the dressin the closet, but something
(09:15):
tells her not to throw it away.
And then they check theirwatches.
Both have stopped Same time.
They try winding them, nothing.
They'll never work again.
They're exhausted, but sleepdoesn't come, not real sleep.
It's like their bodies knowthey're supposed to rest, but
(09:38):
their minds won't let them.
And that night Betty starts todream.
And that night Betty starts todream, not just one strange
(10:00):
dream, the same dream over andover again, five nights in a row
.
She's walking in the woods.
She sees the craft.
She's led down a narrow hallwayMetal walls, bright lights.
There's a room, a table, beingswith oversized heads, thin
limbs and black, glassy eyes.
She's placed on the table,examined, prodded.
(10:22):
They speak, but not with theirmouths mouths, she hears them
inside her own head.
They insert a long needle intoher stomach, into her navel, and
she screams in pain.
But then one of them makes amotion with his hand in front of
her face and the paindisappears.
Just like that.
(10:42):
And the pain disappears, justlike that.
She says.
They seem fascinated by herteeth.
She wore dentures and thebeings didn't understand.
They took them out, studied herjaw and in one dream she's
shown something else A book,strange symbols, like a manual.
She doesn't recognize thelanguage, but she understands
(11:04):
the feeling.
It's important.
One of the beings tells her shecan keep it, but later another
one takes it away.
They don't want you to remember, he says.
She wakes up drenched in sweat,heart pounding, and each time
she writes it all down, word forword, sketches the beings, the
(11:27):
room, the layout, even the book.
Barney doesn't have those dreams, but he's changing too.
He starts pacing the house atnight, peeking out windows,
locking doors and then checkingthem again.
He avoids eye contact, becomesquiet, withdrawn, and then one
(11:49):
night he tells her.
When he closes his eyes he seesthem, the eyes, huge, staring,
watching him from inside his ownmind.
He can't escape them.
They're just there.
Something happened that night,something real, but they don't
(12:11):
know what it was.
They're left with torn clothes,broken watches and hours they
can't remember.
And they're left with silence,and silence sometimes is worse
than fear.
That's when they decide to seekhelp, and what they find under
hypnosis will change everything.
(12:35):
By the time fall turns to winter, the hills are unraveling.
Betty can't sleep.
The dreams haven't stopped.
They come every night likeclockwork the table, the lights,
the long needles.
Barney's not dreaming, but thatmight be worse.
He's tense, on edge, startschecking the locks more than
(12:59):
once before bed.
At work he stares offmid-conversation like he's
somewhere else entirely.
He's losing weight, waking upin cold sweats.
And there's something he hasn'ttold Betty yet he's seeing the
eyes, not in dreams, but in thedark.
Every time he closes his own,large black, watching him from
(13:23):
inside his mind.
He tries to brush it off, tellshimself it's nothing, but it
doesn't go away and finally hecracks.
He tells betty, she listens,quiet, and when he finishes she
just says we need help.
That's how they end up in theoffice of Dr Benjamin Simon.
(13:46):
He's a psychiatrist in Boston,respected conservative, not some
fringe UFO guy, in fact.
When they first come to him hedoesn't even believe in aliens,
but he does believe in trauma.
Barney tells him about theanxiety, the insomnia, the panic
(14:12):
attacks.
Betty talks about the dreams,the missing time, the fear that
something happened and they justcan't remember it.
Dr Simon suggests hypnotherapy.
It's not a memory retrievaltechnique, he says, not exactly,
but it's helped veterans dealwith war trauma.
Maybe he can help them too.
Over the course of severalmonths he hypnotizes them
(14:35):
Separately, different days,different sessions, no way for
them to influence each other'smemories.
And what comes out of thosesessions?
Barney's voice, calm at first,shifts quickly.
He's walking.
He sees the craft.
It's huge, silent, above thetrees.
(14:57):
Then he says something'stelling him Not speaking, but
telling To walk up the ramp.
He doesn't want to, but he does.
He describes being taken into abright room, being told to
undress.
He doesn't remember beingforced, but he can't remember
saying yes either.
He just obeys.
(15:19):
They place a cup-like deviceover his groin.
He doesn't know what it does,but he thinks they took a sperm
sample.
His voice shakes, he starts tocry and then he screams.
Oh my God, the eyes, they're inmy head, I can't get them out.
(15:39):
Dr Simon stops the session,gives him a break, but it
happens again and again.
Then there's Betty's account.
Under hypnosis she describesbeing separated from Barney.
She's frightened not of painbut of being alone.
She's frightened not of painbut of being alone.
She says the beings are small,maybe four feet tall, with large
(16:03):
, bald heads, grayish skin anddark eyes, no noses, thin slits
for mouths.
She says they don't speak, butshe understands them.
The words just arrive in hermind.
She's placed on a table,examined.
They insert a long needle intoher navel, deep.
(16:25):
It hurts.
But when she cries out, one ofthem waves a hand in front of
her face and the pain stops.
She says they seemed confused.
By her teeth she wore denturesand they actually took them out
to study how her jaw worked.
And then the map.
At one point Betty says sheasked one of the beings where
(16:47):
are you from and the being whoseemed to be in charge pulls
down something like a screen.
On it is a pattern of stars,some connected with solid lines,
others with dotted lines.
Betty gets the impression thesolid lines are trade routes,
the dotted ones Exploratorypaths.
(17:08):
She memorizes the star map, theshapes, the layout.
Later, awake, she draws it frommemory Years later.
An amateur astronomer comparesher drawing to known star
systems and he says it closelyresembles Zeta Reticuli, a
(17:28):
binary star system 39light-years away.
Here's the thing In 1961, zetaReticuli wasn't even well known
to astronomers, let alone thepublic.
It wasn't in books, it wasn'tin sci-fi.
And yet her map matches.
(17:50):
Dr Simon finishes the sessionswith more questions than answers
.
He doesn't believe they wereabducted he never says that but
he does believe they experiencedsomething traumatic, something
real to them.
And here's the part that sticks.
They weren't making it up, theyweren't even looking for
(18:12):
attention.
They were scared and theirstories matched in too many
details to ignore.
Whatever happened that night inthe White Mountains, it stayed
with them inside their dreams,inside their bodies and, maybe,
worst of all, inside their minds.
(19:15):
At first they keep it quiet.
Just a few close friends, aminister at their church.
What are two people they trust.
Betty's the one who shares more.
She writes letters, she wantsanswers, she contacts UFO
organizations trying to figureout if anyone's seen what they
saw.
Barney he pulls back, he's wary, he doesn't like attention.
(19:41):
And this, all of it is startingto eat at him.
They're still shaken, stillprocessing, and they never plan
to go public.
But secrets have a way ofslipping out.
In 1965, a reporter named JohnLuttrell gets wind of the story.
He works for the BostonTraveler and somehow he gets his
(20:06):
hands on parts of the hypnosistapes.
The next morning the headlinestretches across the front page
Couple abducted by aliens in NewHampshire.
And just like that the worldknows.
In the hills they become themost famous abductees in America
.
Radio stations call, newspapersrun columns, ufo groups invite
(20:30):
them to conferences, producersask for interviews.
Authors want to write books?
They're flown out.
Want to write books?
They're flown out.
Photographed, questioned,debated.
Their faces are now publicproperty.
Betty leans into it, not out ofvanity but out of conviction.
She says people need to knowthat it happened and they have
(20:53):
the right to tell their truth.
Barney, he wants none of it.
The spotlight terrifies him.
He's already dealing withanxiety and now he's a national
headline, he begins to spiralphysically, emotionally, ulcers,
migraines, sleepless nights.
The trauma is catching up withhim.
(21:14):
And it's not just strangersjudging them, it's the people
around them too.
Here's something you can'tignore Betty was white, barney
was black In 1961, that wasn'tjust unusual, it was
controversial.
In some places it was outrightdangerous.
(21:35):
Their interracial marriagealready made them targets.
People stared, people talked,and now, on top of that, they
were claiming they'd beenabducted by aliens.
For many, that was all theexcuse they needed to dismiss
them or worse, ridicule them.
People called them unstableattention seekers, delusional
(22:00):
Not because of the story, butbecause of who they were,
because in the eyes of thepublic, especially back then,
they didn't fit the mold of acredible witness.
But here's what makes it soremarkable they didn't back down
.
Betty continued to speak, shetraveled, she answered questions
(22:21):
, she kept records, she keptlooking at the stars.
Barney tried to move on, butthe wounds lingered and they ran
deep.
He died young, just eight yearsafter the incident, at age 46.
Betty lived into her 80s andthrough all the years, all the
(22:41):
questions, all the interviews,she never changed her story, not
once.
So what do we make of that?
A couple who never asked for.
The spotlight became theblueprint, not for fame, not for
fortune, but for somethingstranger, because after Betty
(23:02):
and Barney Hill, alienabductions would never be the
same.
If you've ever heard a storyabout aliens, you've heard
echoes of the hills, missingtime, silent craft, black
unblinking eyes, medicalexperiments, messages sent
(23:24):
through thoughts.
Before Betty and Barney Hill,none of that was standard.
There were no gray aliens, nocultural template for what an
abduction looked like.
They didn't borrow it, theybuilt it.
And that's what makes this caseso unsettling, because if they
(23:48):
made it up, they didn't justtell a story, they predicted the
entire shape of alien loredecades before it became
mainstream.
Think about it.
It wasn't until the late 70sand 80s that pop culture started
to flood with those tropes thearchetypes, the eyes, the lights
, movies like Close Encounters,stories of missing time, cold
tables, telepathy.
But the Hills?
(24:10):
They were talking about all ofthat in 1961.
No guidebooks, no internet, nosci-fi conventions, just memory
or trauma or something else.
Over the years, betty stayedvocal.
She claimed to see UFOs again,not once, but several times.
(24:32):
Some said she was chasing thehigh, that after the attention
she couldn't let it go.
Others believed she'd simplybecome more aware that once you
see something you can't unsee it.
Skeptics were never far behind.
Some pointed to Betty's dreams.
They argued her abductionmemories came later, after the
(24:56):
dreams, and then, maybe underhypnosis, her mind filled in the
blanks using those images.
Others said Barney was underenormous stress, that being a
black man in a deeply segregatedAmerica married to a white
woman brought pressure no onecould see and maybe that
(25:16):
pressure cracked something open.
But if that's all it was stressand dreams and fear, then how
do you explain the tapes?
When you listen to thosehypnosis sessions really listen
you hear something raw.
Barney's voice breaks, hescreams, he pleads, not like
(25:38):
someone putting on a show, likesomeone reliving something.
The eyes I can't get away fromthe eyes.
There's a kind of terror thatcan't be faked, not for a
therapist, not for a recorderand not across decades.
And then there's the star map.
Not across decades.
And then there's the star map.
(26:00):
Remember what Betty described?
A chart Stars connected bylines, trade routes, exploration
routes.
She drew it and years later anamateur astronomer looked at
that sketch and saw anear-perfect match to Zeta
Reticuli.
And saw a near-perfect match toZeta Reticuli, a binary star
system 39 light-years away.
(26:22):
The dots, the layout theproportions.
And here's the strange partBack in 1961, zeta Reticuli
wasn't on any common star charts.
It wasn't the kind of thing youjust know, not unless you were
an astronomer, not unlesssomeone showed it to you.
(26:49):
So how does she draw it?
Coincidence or contact?
That's the riddle at the centerof it all.
Did Betty and Barney Hillaccidentally dream up the future
of UFO culture, or did thefuture shape itself around the
truth they told?
Because once their story gotout, nothing in the sky ever
looked the same again.
(27:10):
Okay, let me step out of thestory for a minute, not as your
narrator, but as a person whosat with this case longer than I
probably should have.
I've read the transcripts, I'velistened to the hypnosis tapes
and I'll be honest with you,this one kind of gets to me.
It's not just the craft or themissing time or the map.
It's Barney's voice, the way itbreaks when he talks about the
(27:33):
eyes, that raw, shaking fear.
That's not the sound of someonepretending, that's someone
falling apart in real time, andI can't shake that.
Even as I record that part, Iget chills.
I don't think they made it up.
They didn't want fame.
(27:54):
They weren't chasing cameras,they weren't pushing a book deal
or trying to start a movement.
In fact, Barney hated thespotlight.
It made him sick, literally,and yet he still sat down and
told that story over and overagain, even when it hurt.
So no, I don't believe this wassome long con or fantasy, but do
(28:19):
I believe every detail?
That they were taken aboard aship, that Betty saw a manual in
a star map, that one of themoffered her a book then took it
away?
I'm not sure.
I think maybe some of what theyremembered under hypnosis came
from the dreams.
Maybe some of it wasreconstructed or reshaped the
(28:41):
way memory does sometimes.
But here's what does stick withme they weren't working from a
script, there was no playbookfor what an abduction was
supposed to be, and yet somehowthey described the very thing
that would become the blueprintfor the next 60 years the lights
, the loss of control, thebeings, the fear.
(29:03):
They were the first.
So let me ask you something Ifthis happened to you, would you
tell anyone?
Would you risk your job, yourreputation, your sanity, just to
say something took us.
I think that kind of confessiononly comes from one of two
(29:24):
places an incredible lie or anincredible truth, and the more I
sit with this one, the more Ithink it's the latter.
This has been State of theUnknown.
The story of Betty and BarneyHill lingers, not because it
(29:45):
offers answers, but because itleaves us with questions.
Were they really taken aboard acraft that night in 1961?
Or were their minds just tryingto make sense of something
stranger Stress, fear or ashared moment beyond explanation
?
What we do know is this theiraccount became the blueprint for
(30:08):
everything that came afterMissing time, hypnosis, the
beings with black, unblinkingeyes.
It all begins here, and that'swhy their story still unsettles
me, because even if you don'tbelieve in abductions, you can't
deny what it meant to them orhow deeply it shaped the way
(30:29):
that we talk about what might beout there.
Betty and Barney Hill stood bytheir truth until the end of
their lives and through it all,their dog, delcy, was right
there with them, trembling inthe backseat, sensing what they
could not explain, a reminderthat whatever happened that
night, it was real enough toshake them all.
(30:51):
If you've been enjoying Stateof the Unknown, follow rate and
leave a quick review.
It helps more than you know.
And if you know someone wholoves paranormal stories,
haunted history or legends thatshouldn't exist.
Share the show with them,because the hills never forgot
(31:13):
that night on Route 3.
And if their story is true,then somewhere out there in the
dark, above the trees, the eyesare still watching.
Barney Hill is lying back in a chair.
His eyes are closed, his fistsare clenched and, under hypnosis
, he starts to scream.
They're there, the eyes, oh God, the eyes.
They're in my head.
I can't escape them.
His voice cracks, he begs forit to stop, but the images keep
(00:28):
coming A craft, strange figures,a night on a lonely New
Hampshire road.
He can't remember and can'tever forget.
This was 1961.
Betty and Barney Hill, just aregular couple.
He worked for the post office,she was a social worker.
(00:50):
They lived in Portsmouth, newHampshire, with their dog, delcy
.
No history of wild claims, nothirst for the spotlight, just
two people driving home from avacation.
Just two people driving homefrom a vacation.
But that night and everythingthat came after would go on to
become the first widelypublicized alien abduction story
(01:11):
in American history and it laidthe foundation for into a story
(01:44):
that changed the UFOconversation forever.
This is the story of Betty andBarty Hill.
In the night America's firstalien abduction case was born.
This is State of the Unknown.
(02:11):
It's the night of September 19th1961.
Betty and Barney Hill areheaded home from a trip through
Canada, a much-needed break.
They'd driven through Montrealand Niagara Falls, hoping to
unwind, to forget the stress oftheir daily lives.
They were still newlyweds,married for less than two years.
(02:32):
Interracial marriages weren'tjust rare back then, they were
dangerous.
Even in the North, even inliberal towns, people stared,
whispered, judged.
Now, on the long drive home toPortsmouth, new Hampshire, it's
just the two of them and theirdog, delcy.
(02:54):
They take US Route 3, a two-laneroad that winds through the
White Mountains, remote and darkat that hour.
Trees crowd the shoulders, thesky is moonless.
It's sometime after 1030, maybecloser to 11.
They're tired, but not enoughto stop.
If they keep going they'll behome by dawn.
(03:16):
Betty watches the stars.
Through the passenger windowwindow she sees one that seems a
little off, too bright, too low.
It moves At first she thinksmaybe it's a satellite or a
plane, something explainable.
But then it darts upwards,pivots, moves in sharp angular
(03:46):
motions, impossible maneuversfor any known aircraft.
She doesn't say anything rightaway, she just keeps watching,
measuring.
Finally she turns to Barney andsays Do you see that?
He's skeptical?
Always is A rational man,served in the army, Works for
the post office, doesn't go infor science fiction or flying
(04:09):
saucers.
But even he has to admit it'snot behaving like anything he's
seen before they pull off, neara roadside stop called the Old
man of the Mountains, a rockycliff face that from from
certain angles resembles aprofile.
Betty grabs her binoculars fromthe glove box, gets out Through
(04:31):
the lenses.
She sees something strange, adisc-shaped object with lights
red, blue, maybe green.
It hovers, spins.
It hovers, spins, then shiftsposition without turning.
She hands the binoculars toBarney.
Barney steadies them, looks up.
What he sees makes his stomachtwist.
(04:54):
It's not just a light, it's acraft, structured with windows.
And in those windows figures,silhouettes, moving, he says
later.
They reminded him of militarypersonnel, tall, lean, uniformed
, but not quite right.
(05:16):
He can't hear them.
But he feels something.
He gets the overwhelmingsensation that he's being
watched something.
He gets the overwhelmingsensation that he's being
watched, not just observed,studied.
Betty urges him let's go, butBarney, pulled by something
between curiosity and dread,insists they drive a little
(05:49):
farther.
They head towards Indian Head.
Another scenic pull-off and stopagain.
This time he gets out of thecar.
He walks into a nearby fieldalone.
There it is, hovering justabove the trees, maybe 80 to 100
feet in the air.
Is the object?
Silent, silver-gray, round,like a flattened disc.
Porthole.
Windows line the front like aship's bridge.
Red lights pulse along thesides and in those windows,
(06:13):
eight to eleven beings Thin,pale, almost gray, their heads
too large for their bodies,their eyes too big, too black.
One steps forward and that'swhen it hits him.
Barney says he feels a wave ofsomething, like his thoughts are
no longer private, that amessage enters his mind, not a
(06:37):
voice, a command Stay where youare, keep looking, stay where
you are, keep looking.
He's frozen, terrified, andthen instinct just takes over.
He runs, he bolts back to thecar, shouting they're going to
capture us.
They slam the doors, peel offdown the road.
(07:04):
Then the sound.
It's not coming from thedashboard, not from the radio,
it's coming from the car itself,or maybe from inside them.
And then nothing, just silence.
When they come to they're 35miles south, near Ashland, it's
(07:25):
nearly dawn.
They remember nothing of thedrive.
No turns, no towns, justmissing time, an hour, maybe two
gone.
They make it home.
Delcy, their dog, is quiet,unusually so, and both Betty and
Barney feel wrong, likesomething happened, like
(07:50):
something was taken, and thatnight in the White Mountains was
only the beginning.
They make it home just aftersunrise.
The trip should have been over.
Just a drive, just a vacation.
But something followed themhome.
Betty's first instinct is tobring the luggage inside, but
(08:12):
then she stops Without quiteknowing why.
She leaves the bags at the backdoor.
Something feels wrong, like thecar or the clothes or the road
itself carried something theyshouldn't bring inside.
She doesn't even let Delcy inright away.
The dog, usually hyper tailwagging, just stands there
(08:33):
shaking.
She won't move from Betty'sside.
And that's when they notice theother things.
Barney's shoes scuffed badlyacross the tops, as if he'd been
dragged or sprinting acrossgravel.
The strap on his binoculars isbroken clean through.
He doesn't remember it snapping.
(08:53):
Betty's dress is torn along thehem, the zipper she doesn't
know how or when that happened.
And then there's something elsea strange pink powder dusting
the fabric.
It won't come out, no matterhow many times she tries to
clean it.
She ends up tossing the dressin the closet, but something
(09:15):
tells her not to throw it away.
And then they check theirwatches.
Both have stopped Same time.
They try winding them, nothing.
They'll never work again.
They're exhausted, but sleepdoesn't come, not real sleep.
It's like their bodies knowthey're supposed to rest, but
(09:38):
their minds won't let them.
And that night Betty starts todream.
And that night Betty starts todream, not just one strange
(10:00):
dream, the same dream over andover again, five nights in a row
.
She's walking in the woods.
She sees the craft.
She's led down a narrow hallwayMetal walls, bright lights.
There's a room, a table, beingswith oversized heads, thin
limbs and black, glassy eyes.
She's placed on the table,examined, prodded.
(10:22):
They speak, but not with theirmouths mouths, she hears them
inside her own head.
They insert a long needle intoher stomach, into her navel, and
she screams in pain.
But then one of them makes amotion with his hand in front of
her face and the paindisappears.
Just like that.
(10:42):
And the pain disappears, justlike that.
She says.
They seem fascinated by herteeth.
She wore dentures and thebeings didn't understand.
They took them out, studied herjaw and in one dream she's
shown something else A book,strange symbols, like a manual.
She doesn't recognize thelanguage, but she understands
(11:04):
the feeling.
It's important.
One of the beings tells her shecan keep it, but later another
one takes it away.
They don't want you to remember, he says.
She wakes up drenched in sweat,heart pounding, and each time
she writes it all down, word forword, sketches the beings, the
(11:27):
room, the layout, even the book.
Barney doesn't have those dreams, but he's changing too.
He starts pacing the house atnight, peeking out windows,
locking doors and then checkingthem again.
He avoids eye contact, becomesquiet, withdrawn, and then one
(11:49):
night he tells her.
When he closes his eyes he seesthem, the eyes, huge, staring,
watching him from inside his ownmind.
He can't escape them.
They're just there.
Something happened that night,something real, but they don't
(12:11):
know what it was.
They're left with torn clothes,broken watches and hours they
can't remember.
And they're left with silence,and silence sometimes is worse
than fear.
That's when they decide to seekhelp, and what they find under
hypnosis will change everything.
(12:35):
By the time fall turns to winter, the hills are unraveling.
Betty can't sleep.
The dreams haven't stopped.
They come every night likeclockwork the table, the lights,
the long needles.
Barney's not dreaming, but thatmight be worse.
He's tense, on edge, startschecking the locks more than
(12:59):
once before bed.
At work he stares offmid-conversation like he's
somewhere else entirely.
He's losing weight, waking upin cold sweats.
And there's something he hasn'ttold Betty yet he's seeing the
eyes, not in dreams, but in thedark.
Every time he closes his own,large black, watching him from
(13:23):
inside his mind.
He tries to brush it off, tellshimself it's nothing, but it
doesn't go away and finally hecracks.
He tells betty, she listens,quiet, and when he finishes she
just says we need help.
That's how they end up in theoffice of Dr Benjamin Simon.
(13:46):
He's a psychiatrist in Boston,respected conservative, not some
fringe UFO guy, in fact.
When they first come to him hedoesn't even believe in aliens,
but he does believe in trauma.
Barney tells him about theanxiety, the insomnia, the panic
(14:12):
attacks.
Betty talks about the dreams,the missing time, the fear that
something happened and they justcan't remember it.
Dr Simon suggests hypnotherapy.
It's not a memory retrievaltechnique, he says, not exactly,
but it's helped veterans dealwith war trauma.
Maybe he can help them too.
Over the course of severalmonths he hypnotizes them
(14:35):
Separately, different days,different sessions, no way for
them to influence each other'smemories.
And what comes out of thosesessions?
Barney's voice, calm at first,shifts quickly.
He's walking.
He sees the craft.
It's huge, silent, above thetrees.
(14:57):
Then he says something'stelling him Not speaking, but
telling To walk up the ramp.
He doesn't want to, but he does.
He describes being taken into abright room, being told to
undress.
He doesn't remember beingforced, but he can't remember
saying yes either.
He just obeys.
(15:19):
They place a cup-like deviceover his groin.
He doesn't know what it does,but he thinks they took a sperm
sample.
His voice shakes, he starts tocry and then he screams.
Oh my God, the eyes, they're inmy head, I can't get them out.
(15:39):
Dr Simon stops the session,gives him a break, but it
happens again and again.
Then there's Betty's account.
Under hypnosis she describesbeing separated from Barney.
She's frightened not of painbut of being alone.
She's frightened not of painbut of being alone.
She says the beings are small,maybe four feet tall, with large
(16:03):
, bald heads, grayish skin anddark eyes, no noses, thin slits
for mouths.
She says they don't speak, butshe understands them.
The words just arrive in hermind.
She's placed on a table,examined.
They insert a long needle intoher navel, deep.
(16:25):
It hurts.
But when she cries out, one ofthem waves a hand in front of
her face and the pain stops.
She says they seemed confused.
By her teeth she wore denturesand they actually took them out
to study how her jaw worked.
And then the map.
At one point Betty says sheasked one of the beings where
(16:47):
are you from and the being whoseemed to be in charge pulls
down something like a screen.
On it is a pattern of stars,some connected with solid lines,
others with dotted lines.
Betty gets the impression thesolid lines are trade routes,
the dotted ones Exploratorypaths.
(17:08):
She memorizes the star map, theshapes, the layout.
Later, awake, she draws it frommemory Years later.
An amateur astronomer comparesher drawing to known star
systems and he says it closelyresembles Zeta Reticuli, a
(17:28):
binary star system 39light-years away.
Here's the thing In 1961, zetaReticuli wasn't even well known
to astronomers, let alone thepublic.
It wasn't in books, it wasn'tin sci-fi.
And yet her map matches.
(17:50):
Dr Simon finishes the sessionswith more questions than answers
.
He doesn't believe they wereabducted he never says that but
he does believe they experiencedsomething traumatic, something
real to them.
And here's the part that sticks.
They weren't making it up, theyweren't even looking for
(18:12):
attention.
They were scared and theirstories matched in too many
details to ignore.
Whatever happened that night inthe White Mountains, it stayed
with them inside their dreams,inside their bodies and, maybe,
worst of all, inside their minds.
(19:15):
At first they keep it quiet.
Just a few close friends, aminister at their church.
What are two people they trust.
Betty's the one who shares more.
She writes letters, she wantsanswers, she contacts UFO
organizations trying to figureout if anyone's seen what they
saw.
Barney he pulls back, he's wary, he doesn't like attention.
(19:41):
And this, all of it is startingto eat at him.
They're still shaken, stillprocessing, and they never plan
to go public.
But secrets have a way ofslipping out.
In 1965, a reporter named JohnLuttrell gets wind of the story.
He works for the BostonTraveler and somehow he gets his
(20:06):
hands on parts of the hypnosistapes.
The next morning the headlinestretches across the front page
Couple abducted by aliens in NewHampshire.
And just like that the worldknows.
In the hills they become themost famous abductees in America
.
Radio stations call, newspapersrun columns, ufo groups invite
(20:30):
them to conferences, producersask for interviews.
Authors want to write books?
They're flown out.
Want to write books?
They're flown out.
Photographed, questioned,debated.
Their faces are now publicproperty.
Betty leans into it, not out ofvanity but out of conviction.
She says people need to knowthat it happened and they have
(20:53):
the right to tell their truth.
Barney, he wants none of it.
The spotlight terrifies him.
He's already dealing withanxiety and now he's a national
headline, he begins to spiralphysically, emotionally, ulcers,
migraines, sleepless nights.
The trauma is catching up withhim.
(21:14):
And it's not just strangersjudging them, it's the people
around them too.
Here's something you can'tignore Betty was white, barney
was black In 1961, that wasn'tjust unusual, it was
controversial.
In some places it was outrightdangerous.
(21:35):
Their interracial marriagealready made them targets.
People stared, people talked,and now, on top of that, they
were claiming they'd beenabducted by aliens.
For many, that was all theexcuse they needed to dismiss
them or worse, ridicule them.
People called them unstableattention seekers, delusional
(22:00):
Not because of the story, butbecause of who they were,
because in the eyes of thepublic, especially back then,
they didn't fit the mold of acredible witness.
But here's what makes it soremarkable they didn't back down
.
Betty continued to speak, shetraveled, she answered questions
(22:21):
, she kept records, she keptlooking at the stars.
Barney tried to move on, butthe wounds lingered and they ran
deep.
He died young, just eight yearsafter the incident, at age 46.
Betty lived into her 80s andthrough all the years, all the
(22:41):
questions, all the interviews,she never changed her story, not
once.
So what do we make of that?
A couple who never asked for.
The spotlight became theblueprint, not for fame, not for
fortune, but for somethingstranger, because after Betty
(23:02):
and Barney Hill, alienabductions would never be the
same.
If you've ever heard a storyabout aliens, you've heard
echoes of the hills, missingtime, silent craft, black
unblinking eyes, medicalexperiments, messages sent
(23:24):
through thoughts.
Before Betty and Barney Hill,none of that was standard.
There were no gray aliens, nocultural template for what an
abduction looked like.
They didn't borrow it, theybuilt it.
And that's what makes this caseso unsettling, because if they
(23:48):
made it up, they didn't justtell a story, they predicted the
entire shape of alien loredecades before it became
mainstream.
Think about it.
It wasn't until the late 70sand 80s that pop culture started
to flood with those tropes thearchetypes, the eyes, the lights
, movies like Close Encounters,stories of missing time, cold
tables, telepathy.
But the Hills?
(24:10):
They were talking about all ofthat in 1961.
No guidebooks, no internet, nosci-fi conventions, just memory
or trauma or something else.
Over the years, betty stayedvocal.
She claimed to see UFOs again,not once, but several times.
(24:32):
Some said she was chasing thehigh, that after the attention
she couldn't let it go.
Others believed she'd simplybecome more aware that once you
see something you can't unsee it.
Skeptics were never far behind.
Some pointed to Betty's dreams.
They argued her abductionmemories came later, after the
(24:56):
dreams, and then, maybe underhypnosis, her mind filled in the
blanks using those images.
Others said Barney was underenormous stress, that being a
black man in a deeply segregatedAmerica married to a white
woman brought pressure no onecould see and maybe that
(25:16):
pressure cracked something open.
But if that's all it was stressand dreams and fear, then how
do you explain the tapes?
When you listen to thosehypnosis sessions really listen
you hear something raw.
Barney's voice breaks, hescreams, he pleads, not like
(25:38):
someone putting on a show, likesomeone reliving something.
The eyes I can't get away fromthe eyes.
There's a kind of terror thatcan't be faked, not for a
therapist, not for a recorderand not across decades.
And then there's the star map.
Not across decades.
And then there's the star map.
(26:00):
Remember what Betty described?
A chart Stars connected bylines, trade routes, exploration
routes.
She drew it and years later anamateur astronomer looked at
that sketch and saw anear-perfect match to Zeta
Reticuli.
And saw a near-perfect match toZeta Reticuli, a binary star
system 39 light-years away.
(26:22):
The dots, the layout theproportions.
And here's the strange partBack in 1961, zeta Reticuli
wasn't on any common star charts.
It wasn't the kind of thing youjust know, not unless you were
an astronomer, not unlesssomeone showed it to you.
(26:49):
So how does she draw it?
Coincidence or contact?
That's the riddle at the centerof it all.
Did Betty and Barney Hillaccidentally dream up the future
of UFO culture, or did thefuture shape itself around the
truth they told?
Because once their story gotout, nothing in the sky ever
looked the same again.
(27:10):
Okay, let me step out of thestory for a minute, not as your
narrator, but as a person whosat with this case longer than I
probably should have.
I've read the transcripts, I'velistened to the hypnosis tapes
and I'll be honest with you,this one kind of gets to me.
It's not just the craft or themissing time or the map.
It's Barney's voice, the way itbreaks when he talks about the
(27:33):
eyes, that raw, shaking fear.
That's not the sound of someonepretending, that's someone
falling apart in real time, andI can't shake that.
Even as I record that part, Iget chills.
I don't think they made it up.
They didn't want fame.
(27:54):
They weren't chasing cameras,they weren't pushing a book deal
or trying to start a movement.
In fact, Barney hated thespotlight.
It made him sick, literally,and yet he still sat down and
told that story over and overagain, even when it hurt.
So no, I don't believe this wassome long con or fantasy, but do
(28:19):
I believe every detail?
That they were taken aboard aship, that Betty saw a manual in
a star map, that one of themoffered her a book then took it
away?
I'm not sure.
I think maybe some of what theyremembered under hypnosis came
from the dreams.
Maybe some of it wasreconstructed or reshaped the
(28:41):
way memory does sometimes.
But here's what does stick withme they weren't working from a
script, there was no playbookfor what an abduction was
supposed to be, and yet somehowthey described the very thing
that would become the blueprintfor the next 60 years the lights
, the loss of control, thebeings, the fear.
(29:03):
They were the first.
So let me ask you something Ifthis happened to you, would you
tell anyone?
Would you risk your job, yourreputation, your sanity, just to
say something took us.
I think that kind of confessiononly comes from one of two
(29:24):
places an incredible lie or anincredible truth, and the more I
sit with this one, the more Ithink it's the latter.
This has been State of theUnknown.
The story of Betty and BarneyHill lingers, not because it
(29:45):
offers answers, but because itleaves us with questions.
Were they really taken aboard acraft that night in 1961?
Or were their minds just tryingto make sense of something
stranger Stress, fear or ashared moment beyond explanation
?
What we do know is this theiraccount became the blueprint for
(30:08):
everything that came afterMissing time, hypnosis, the
beings with black, unblinkingeyes.
It all begins here, and that'swhy their story still unsettles
me, because even if you don'tbelieve in abductions, you can't
deny what it meant to them orhow deeply it shaped the way
(30:29):
that we talk about what might beout there.
Betty and Barney Hill stood bytheir truth until the end of
their lives and through it all,their dog, delcy, was right
there with them, trembling inthe backseat, sensing what they
could not explain, a reminderthat whatever happened that
night, it was real enough toshake them all.
(30:51):
If you've been enjoying Stateof the Unknown, follow rate and
leave a quick review.
It helps more than you know.
And if you know someone wholoves paranormal stories,
haunted history or legends thatshouldn't exist.
Share the show with them,because the hills never forgot
(31:13):
that night on Route 3.
And if their story is true,then somewhere out there in the
dark, above the trees, the eyesare still watching.
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Betrayal: Weekly
Betrayal Weekly is back for a brand new season. Every Thursday, Betrayal Weekly shares first-hand accounts of broken trust, shocking deceptions, and the trail of destruction they leave behind. Hosted by Andrea Gunning, this weekly ongoing series digs into real-life stories of betrayal and the aftermath. From stories of double lives to dark discoveries, these are cautionary tales and accounts of resilience against all odds. From the producers of the critically acclaimed Betrayal series, Betrayal Weekly drops new episodes every Thursday. Please join our Substack for additional exclusive content, curated book recommendations and community discussions. Sign up FREE by clicking this link Beyond Betrayal Substack. Join our community dedicated to truth, resilience and healing. Your voice matters! Be a part of our Betrayal journey on Substack. And make sure to check out Seasons 1-4 of Betrayal, along with Betrayal Weekly Season 1.