Betty and Barney Hill abduction
Betty and Barney Hill, a couple from Portsmouth, New Hampshire, said aliens abducted them in the White Mountains in September 1961. The New York Times credits their story with a national fixation on alien abduction.
The University of New Hampshire's Milne Special Collections, which holds the couple's papers, describes Betty Hill (1919-2004) as a social worker who had graduated from that university and Barney Hill (1923-1969) as a postal worker. The Hills said that in September 1961 aliens took them in the White Mountains. Time magazine, reviewing the book The Interrupted Journey in 1966, set the scene: on the night of September 19, 1961, the couple were driving back to Portsmouth from a holiday in Montreal when a light they took for a star came down close enough that they saw it was something else.
The story went public in 1965. According to Wikipedia, the Boston Traveler ran it on its front page on October 25, 1965. Reporter John H. Luttrell had been given a tape of a talk the Hills gave in Quincy Center in late 1963, learned they had been hypnotised, by someone Wikipedia calls Simon, and got notes of private interviews they had given UFO investigators. United Press International picked up the story the next day and the Hills became known around the world.
The New York Times, reporting Betty Hill's death at her Portsmouth home in 2004 at 85, said her account set off a national fixation on alien abduction that stayed part of American popular culture. The skeptic Martin Kottmeyer, writing in Skeptical Briefs in 1994, compared the aliens' wraparound eyes with a television episode, "The Bellero Shield", first shown on February 10, 1964. He noted the Hills' encounter came in the early hours of September 20, 1961, and that the earliest account in The Interrupted Journey leaves out the wraparound eyes.
"On October 25, 1965, a front page story in the Boston Traveler asked "UFO Chiller: Did THEY Seize Couple?"[31] Reporter John H. Luttrell of the Traveler had allegedly been given an audio tape recording of the lecture the Hills had made in Quincy Center in late 1963. Luttrell learned that the Hills had undergone hypnosis with Simon; he also obtained notes from confidential interviews the Hills had given to UFO investigators. On October 26, United Press International (UPI) picked up Luttrell's story, and the Hills earned international attention.[citation needed]"
- Betty and Barney Hill (collection guide), Milne Special Collections, University of New Hampshire Library (archived 2009)
- Testament for Believers (review of The Interrupted Journey), Time (18 Nov 1966)
- Betty Hill, 85, Figure in Alien Abduction Case, Dies, Margalit Fox, The New York Times (2004)
- The Eyes that Spoke, Martin Kottmeyer, Skeptical Briefs 4.3 (1994)