Encounter Atlas
Late on September 19, 1961, Betty and Barney Hill were driving home to Portsmouth from a holiday in Canada along US Route 3 when Betty noticed a bright light that seemed to move across the sky. They stopped several times to watch it through binoculars. South of Indian Head, they said, the object came down close to their car. Barney walked toward it and said he saw eight to eleven figures in dark uniforms looking out of its windows, one of whom seemed to tell him to stay where he was. Terrified, he ran back to the car and they drove off.
The Hills said they then heard beeping sounds and felt drowsy, and that their memories of the next 35 miles or so of road were patchy. They reached home hours later than expected. Over the following weeks Betty had vivid dreams of being taken aboard a craft, and the couple talked with investigators from the civilian group NICAP. In 1964 they underwent hypnosis with Boston psychiatrist Benjamin Simon, during which both described being taken aboard and examined by short grey beings with large eyes. Simon later wrote that he regarded the case as a singular psychological aberration rather than a literal abduction.
The Hills reported the sighting to Pease Air Force Base, and Project Blue Book has a file under Lincoln, New Hampshire, for that night. Its record card says the visual and radar reports were probably caused by a strong temperature inversion and that the light had the characteristics of an advertising searchlight, and gives no firm identification. Local researcher Jim Macdonald has argued the light was the aircraft warning beacon on Cannon Mountain, with the abduction account shaped by stress, fatigue and hypnosis. Writer Martin Kottmeyer noted that Barney first described the large-eyed beings about two weeks after a similar large-eyed alien appeared on the TV series The Outer Limits.
The Hills' story was published in John G. Fuller's 1966 book The Interrupted Journey and filmed as NBC's 1975 TV movie The UFO Incident. It became the template for later abduction reports. The couple's papers, including the dress Betty wore that night, are held by the University of New Hampshire, and a state historical marker was placed near the site in 2011.
