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Speaker 1: Hello and welcome to Unexplained with me, your host, Richard McLean-Smith, where each week we explore another true tale of high strangeness. If you're new here and you're a fan of expertly told atmospheric stories about the strange and unexplained, then you've come to the right place. And please subscribe to the show if you haven't already done so. I've had an amazing time at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival this year. Thank you so much to everyone who's come along to see the show. I'll be here for one more night, finishing with my last show on Saturday, August 29th, if you're up this way and you fancy coming along. I'll be performing at the Space's Surgeon's Hall venue at 10.05pm. You can get tickets at thespaceuk.com forward slash shows forward slash 2026 forward slash unexplained hyphen live. For those watching on YouTube, you can find the link below. With all that out of the way, this is Unexplained, Season 9, Episode 32. The Long and Lonely Road. This is how the story begins. Back in 1956, Eunice Elizabeth Barrett, her friends called her Betty, was 37 and recently divorced. Newly single, Betty had decided to go back to college to complete a degree in social work the one she'd been forced to give up when her ex-husband's wife unexpectedly decided she could no longer look after their children. Since Bob, her ex-husband, of course couldn't possibly do it, it fell to Betty to bring them up instead. So that summer in 1956, Betty had taken a job in Hampton Beach, New Hampshire, to help pay for the course. With her house undergoing renovations at the time, she'd taken a room at a guesthouse belonging to a friend of hers, a short distance from the beach. Then one day, her family arrived on vacation, her husband and wife and their two kids up from Philadelphia. The couple seemed nice, thought Betty, perhaps a little ruefully, thinking about her own marital status, although maybe not. Her ex, Bob, was not a keeper, and though she loved his kids as her own, The fact they never had children together was probably a blessing. It would be nice to meet someone though, she thought. That summer, she'd grab snippets of conversations with the Hills as they each went about their business. The family usually to the beach and Betty down to her job at Rudy's Farm Kitchen. Eventually they went their separate ways, though the Hills asked to stay in touch with a view to maybe renting a room at Betty's own home whenever they next came up. Little could Betty have known that within five years, she'd be married to the father of that very family. Even less could she have known that in that same year, she and her new husband Barney would become the most famous apparent alien abductees in history. You're listening to Unexplained, and I'm Richard McLean Smith. As it happened, Barney and his wife were not as happily married as Betty might have presumed when they first met in Hampden Beach in that summer of 1956. By the end of 1957, in fact, Barney and his then-wife had already separated. At some point, Barney remembered the kind woman he'd met at the guesthouse and decided to get in touch. Four years later, the couple were married. Betty and Barney Hill, as they were now known, built a comfortable life for themselves in the coastal city of Portsmouth in New Hampshire. It wasn't an easy move for Barney, who'd lost custody of his children in his divorce. He had to make do with long trips back to see them in Philadelphia whenever he was able to. But slowly, he and Betty built a new life for themselves. By September of 1961, Betty had graduated near the top of her class and was working in child welfare, while Barney, who was originally from Virginia, worked as a distribution clerk for the postal service down in Boston, a two-hour drive away. Both were well-liked by their colleagues and neighbours and active within their local church. The only unusual thing about them was that they were an interracial couple. at a time when interracial marriage was still illegal across more than half of the United States. Though New Hampshire never criminalized interracial marriage, it wasn't immune to the glaring racial prejudices of the day. A 1958 Gallup poll found that 98% of Americans disapproved of interracial marriage, and though thankfully New Hampshire was relatively immune to the brutal, racially motivated attacks, that blemished so much of the South at that time, it no doubt revealed itself in other, more subtle ways. A landlord not wanting to house a tenant that wasn't white here. A completely arbitrary police stop there. Even some members of Betty's own family found the union uncomfortable. Still, they were fundamentally optimistic people, who were also heavily engaged in the civil rights movement. and firm believers in the idea made famous by Martin Luther King Jr., that the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice. Having married in May 1960, it wasn't until the following year that an opportunity came up to really celebrate it for themselves. Barney had managed to wrangle some days off from work, and in mid-September, after returning home from another shift in Boston, Barney surprised Betty with an impromptu honeymoon. It was to be a short road trip, up to see Niagara Falls, and then into Canada, to spend a few days in Montreal and Toronto. And so, on the morning of September 17th, 1961, they woke up early to pack up their luggage and jumped into the car, accompanied by their dachshund, Delcy. Then together, they set off on their journey. On Tuesday, September 19th, Betty and Barney were en route to Montreal, when Barney took a wrong turn. Eventually the couple found themselves on the outskirts of the city, desperately trying to find anywhere that would take them and their dog, Delcy. Meanwhile, a few hundred miles down the east coast, something ominous was brewing. Hurricane Esther had emerged out of the Cape Verde Islands a few days before and had grown to a Category 5 hurricane by the time it was approaching the east coast of North America. Worried that they might get caught in it, the Hills decided to cut their losses and just drive back to New Hampshire that night. With a seven-hour ride ahead, they wasted little time in getting back out onto the highway. Their route home, took them south along the U.S. Route 3, winding through the dark forests and rugged peaks of New Hampshire's White Mountains. The views were spectacular, and the first few hours of the drive passed quickly. It had just gone 10 p.m. when Betty gazed out of her passenger window and noticed something unusual in the sky, a brilliant point of light hanging low above the horizon. At first, she figured it was just a particularly bright star. But as Betty continued to stare at it, the light began to drift aimlessly across the sky. Then it abruptly changed direction, moving erratically in a kind of zigzag pattern. Betty opened the glove compartment and took out the pair of binoculars she'd brought for birdwatching. She held them up to her eyes to get a better look at the light, but still couldn't make much sense of it. She would later describe how it unsettled her profoundly, in a way that she couldn't quite articulate. Since Barney was far more concerned with the road ahead, he couldn't quite get a proper look at it, but suggested it was probably just a military aircraft of some kind, out on manoeuvres, or a satellite that had gone off course. But Betty wasn't convinced. She told Barney to pull over, partly to let Delcy out for a bathroom break, but more because she wanted to get a better look at the strange object. As Barney walked Delcy toward the bushes, Betty stared again through the binoculars. Up above, as she tried to keep track of it, the light seemed to be growing brighter and more distinct with each passing minute, but still darting across the sky in strange, unpredictable patterns. As the hills resumed their journey, Betty continued to keep her eye on it until something unsettling dawned on her. Mile after mile, the brilliant light appeared to be copying their progress along Route 3, keeping pace with their car through the isolated mountain darkness. Whatever was moving through the night sky, Betty wasn't just tracking it, it was tracking them too. Just before midnight, Barney pulled the car into a scenic picnic area. just south of Lincoln, New Hampshire. Whatever it was had apparently kept pace with them for the last two hours, and Betty could tell it was getting to Barney too, which only shredded her nerves even more. Barney parked up and instinctively thought of the handgun he kept under the driver's mat. But what good would that be? The couple climbed out of the car and into the chilly mountain air. Delcy leapt out after them. Clearly worried for their safety, Barney told Betty to stay behind with Delcy while he tried to get a better view of the object. Betty pulled Delcy back as she tried to follow him and told Barney to be careful. After walking a short distance from the road, Barney held the binoculars up to his eyes and adjusted the focus wheel. But no sooner had he focused on the object, it suddenly darted across the skyline. It took him a while to find it again then it swung out to the west, before stopping completely still in the sky. And as it appeared to hover in place, for the first time, Barney was said to have finally been able to get a clear view of the thing. As he would later describe it, the object was shaped like a flat disc, with what appeared to be some kind of protruding wing-like structures on opposite sides, and it was rimmed with rows of brilliant lights, that glowed like strange eyes. Then it apparently began to drift closer. Barney was certain he could make out a line of windows across its front. And inside those windows, he saw figures, with their forms sharply illuminated by the light from behind. He was almost certain they were looking directly at him. Then he suddenly became aware of just how still the wilderness felt around him. Unnaturally so, as though all the ordinary sounds of the night had just been turned off. He looked again through the binoculars and saw with some surprise that the disc in the sky was getting nearer. Then he realised with horror that it was heading straight toward them. Consumed by a wave of terror, he turned and sprinted back to the car, yelling for Betty to get inside. As Betty scrambled into the back with the now equally terrified Delcy, Barney leapt into the front seat and hurriedly turned the key. Before the front door was even shut, he floored the accelerator. The car's tyres spat gravel as they sped off into the night. Delcy whimpered on Betty's lap. Her ears flattened backwards against her tiny head as she stared up at the sky. Barney drove faster than he ever had along the winding highway, trying desperately to keep track of the object at the same time. The couple then claimed the object disappeared for a moment, only to suddenly reappear right behind the car. Its lights flooded the road ahead until they got so bright that Barney could barely see it. Then came a strange rhythmic buzzing and the bone-rattling realization that the object was right above the car. The sound swelled until it seemed to vibrate through the roof, through the windows, and the entire car quivering around them. Barney gripped onto the steering wheel, Betty frozen beside him, as the buzzing grew louder and sharper, so deafening it seemed to blot out their other senses. A tingling pins-and-needles sensation consumed them both, spreading throughout their bodies, sending them into a kind of daze. And then there was nothing. It's said that Barney awoke first, with the hazy sensation of emerging from a deep sleep he didn't mean to take. His hands were still clenched around the steering wheel. The car stopped on a shoulder of a stretch of highway that he didn't recognise. Beside him, Betty stirred. The buzzing had gone now. and the sky above was empty and dark. It was impossible to tell how much time had passed. The dashboard clock wasn't moving, but Barney couldn't remember if it had even been working before. He looked down at his wristwatch. It too had stopped, the hands frozen to a position just after midnight. Betty's was said to be the same. And so was that tense, fluffy feeling in her head, She asked Barney what had happened, but he couldn't say. He remembered something about a strange floating light pursuing them down the highway, the relentless vibration and the overpowering feeling of dread. But that was it. With the night pressing in around them and no answers waiting for them on that empty highway, Barney simply turned the key and eased the car back onto the road. As they continued on through the night, familiar landmarks of New Hampshire gradually emerged from the darkness, a reassurance of sorts that the normal world still existed. When they finally pulled into the driveway of their home in Portsmouth, the eastern sky was just beginning to lighten, which didn't make any sense to Betty, but when they got inside, the hill's kitchen clock confirmed it. It was just past five o'clock in the morning. By every calculation they'd made before leaving the mountains, they should have arrived by three at the latest. Somehow, they had apparently lost two entire hours of their night. After letting Delcy out into the back garden, Betty stumbled into the kitchen and made a pot of coffee. Then she and Barney sat at their kitchen table in stunned silence. Slowly they began trying to join the pieces together again, but their minds were blank. Could they both have just fallen asleep and shared the same terrible dream they thought? Or zoned out somehow? Lulled into a kind of trance by the monotony of the dark road? Or something poisonous in the air, perhaps? But it was useless. Nothing seemed to make sense. After a few hours of sleep, Barney and Betty claimed to awake to a bright, mild autumn morning. Barney showered and shaved and then headed out to work, determined to shake it all off and ground himself back in his familiar daily routine. But as he walked out into the driveway, he noticed something strange. On the boot of the car, he is said to have seen a cluster of shiny, concentric circular markings that that hadn't been there when they set off for home from Montreal. Then, climbing into the driver's seat, his foot nudged against something hard by the pedals. Reaching down, he discovered the binoculars. The strap had been cut in half. Back inside the house, Betty got ready for the day too. Taking off the dress she'd worn the previous night, She later claimed to have found rips in the hem and the lining, and damage to the zipper. Looking closer, she also found a peculiar pink powdery substance all over the fabric. It's said that Betty and Barney agonised over what to do next, with Betty insisting that they tell the authorities about what they'd seen. But Barney was more reluctant, apparently concerned that any version of their story would just make them both sound crazy. In the end, Betty's anxiety won out. Later that day, she called the number for the 100th bomb wing at Peace Air Force Base in Newington, New Hampshire. When the officer on duty picked up, she hesitated for a moment, before telling him simply that she and her husband had witnessed something peculiar in the sky over the mountains of New Hampshire in the early hours of that morning. She described it as best she could from her apparently patchy memory. Its disc-like shape, the protruding wings, and all the unusual lights around the edge of it. She didn't mention how it had seemed to chase them for miles along the highway. She didn't mention the strange figures that Barney had supposedly seen in the aircraft's windows, or the violent buzzing that had surrounded them. And she didn't mention the fact that they were both missing two hours of time. To her surprise, Rather than laugh at her, the officer was oddly reassuring. He promised to pass on the details to his superiors and told her to expect a call later that day. Sure enough, sometime in the afternoon, the Hills received a call from a Major Paul Henderson. who was eager to know more about the peculiar object that Betty and Barney had apparently seen. Betty told him exactly what she'd told the first officer. Then Major Henderson asked if Barney was willing to speak too. At first, Barney was reluctant, but eventually agreed to talk to the Major. It was a few days later that Major Henderson submitted his report to Project Blue Book, the now notorious U.S. Air Force UFO Investigation Program, writing on Air Force Form 112, number 100-1-61, on the night of 19th to the 20th of September, between 20.00 hours and 20.00 hours, Mr. and Mrs. Hills were traveling south on Route 3 near Lincoln, New Hampshire, when they observed through their windshield of their car a strange object in the sky. They noticed it because of its shape and the intensity of its lighting as compared to the stars in the sky. The weather and the sky were clear at the time. Betty is sitting in a moving car, staring out at the windscreen at what she recognises vaguely as Route 3. Betty has the sense of Barney being with her in the car, but at the same time he seems distant, not quite aware of her. She stares out at the centre lines in the road as they come and go hypnotically, one after the other. Then suddenly the car makes a left turn, and the engine cuts out. Now standing in the middle of the road ahead, are what appear to be eleven men. The men approach the car and open the door, motioning for Betty to get out. Barney follows too. The surface of the highway seems to dissolve around her, giving way to a gaseous darkness in which she floats weightlessly. Then suddenly, Betty is inside somewhere bright, alone and cut off from Barney, Now the men are speaking to her, but they aren't men in the regular sense. They seem shorter than average, with larger chests and noses. Their hair and eyes are black, their skin a pale grey in hue. The figures tell her that she won't remember anything of this experience, and then Betty is awake, bolting up from her bed and desperately gasping for air in the pitch black night. Night after night, Betty claimed to be haunted by similar dreams. Sometimes the figures spoke to her, other times she found herself lying on some kind of gurney under a bright fluorescent light as the figures appeared to be doing something to her. Each time Betty awoke in terror, she told Barney what she'd seen in her dreams. Barney did his best to reassure her that they were just nightmares and urged her to try not to worry about it but Betty wasn't so sure. With each passing experience, it felt less like a dream space and more like her actual memories. In late September, Betty paid a visit to her local library, where she stumbled upon a book written by Major Donald Kehoe called The Flying Saucer Conspiracy. Kehoe was a former naval aviator who in the 1950s became one of the first US military employees to to urge the US government to investigate the growing number of apparent UFO sightings occurring throughout the United States. Betty was riveted by the book's fascinating accounts of apparent real-life flying saucer encounters that Kehoe was convinced had been covered up by the US government. At the back of the book, she found an address for the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena, or NICAP, which Kehoe was the director of at the time, which invited readers to contact them if they had any sightings of their own to share. The following day, Betty sent them a letter. On October 21st, a month after the incident, Betty and Barney were interviewed by Walter Webb on behalf of NICAP for more than six hours, both separately and together, The couple recounted the details of what they remembered, and Betty also described the harrowing abduction nightmares she'd experienced afterwards. Webb found the couple sincere and credible, and concluded that ultimately they were telling the truth, at least, the truth as they remembered it. By now, Betty's nightmares had faded, but something inside of her had changed. She felt permanently on edge, never able to fully relax. She found herself reluctant to leave the house, preferring to stay indoors where her environment was predictable, and had become easily startled. A far cry from the strong and confident social worker, who'd not only brought up someone else's children more or less single-handedly, but had also put herself through college afterwards as a mature student. For his part, Barney appeared to be coping better, but privately... the gaps in his memory were beginning to unsettle him. Over the next few months, his physical health began to decline. In the summer of 1962, he was diagnosed with high blood pressure and ulcers, both conditions which his doctor attributed to high stress. Perhaps sensing an underlying and unresolved psychological issue, Barney's doctor referred him to a therapist to see if that could help with his stress. Eventually, the therapist convinced Barney to open up about what was eating away at him. Over the course of several sessions, Barney detailed the strange incident that he and Betty had seemingly experienced, what he could remember of it at least. But what disturbed him the most about it all was that he couldn't remember almost two hours of that night. Not entirely sure what he was dealing with, Barney's therapist recommended that he visit his acquaintance, Dr. Benjamin Simon, a psychiatrist who specialized in hypnosis to help people process traumatic events, particularly soldiers experiencing traumatic amnesia as a result of PTSD. At the very least, if the whole UFO story was just a facade for some other underlying emotional distress from Barney's past, Dr. Simon might help unearth it. And so, on the morning of Saturday, December 14th, the Hills met with Dr. Simon at his clinic in Boston. As they had done with everyone else they'd spoken to up to that point, the Hills told Dr. Simon everything they could remember of the night of the apparent incident, including the details of Betty's recurring nightmares. It was immediately clear that Dr. Simon was had little time for apparent UFO encounters, but he was equally certain that the hills were not there to waste his time. Something terrifying had happened to them, and he was determined to figure out what it was without judgement. Over the next few months, Dr Simon worked with Betty and Barney, to recover whatever memories they believed they had lost. They began with a three-week conditioning process. Using different cues and keywords, Dr. Simon began to effectively trick Betty and Barney's brains into entering a deep trance state, from which she was able to extract information, while they effectively remained unaware of the conversation. And then, finally, the proper sessions could begin. Lying down in Dr. Simon's office one morning, Barney quickly entered the hypnotic trance and appeared for all intents and purposes to simply be fast asleep. Then Dr. Simon asked him to take him back to the night in question. When he was out there on Route 3, driving through the night with Betty, then Barney began to speak. He was in his car on a deserted highway. Then there was a brilliant, eerie light, and several figures appeared that were coming closer and closer toward him. He felt weak and helpless. Then an unnatural calm descended over him. Now he was lying on board some kind of craft. Strange figures were watching him. They had enormous foreheads, pointed chins, and long, slanting eyes. that seemed to wrap around the side of their heads. Then Barney became restless. The eyes, he said. They seemed to be trying to speak to him through the eyes. Stay with it, urged Dr. Brown. Then Barney began to toss and turn. The eyes. he screamed in terror they're in my brain dr brown tried his best to soothe him and urged him to calm down and eventually the moment passed then barney explained how he was now on a table in what resembled a hospital room the figures were examining him He said he was trying to stay motionless throughout so they wouldn't hurt him. Then suddenly he was back in the car next to Betty. He felt strangely giddy as they watched the aircraft take off into the sky, becoming a shapeless ball of light before vanishing. And then he woke up. After also being hypnotized by Dr. Simon, Betty gave a very similar account to what Barney had apparently experienced. Supposedly taken aboard separately from Barney, she was examined by a figure dressed in a white coat, who scraped her arms and inspected her ears and mouth. She became frightened when a long needle was inserted into her navel, but recalled the alien figure calming her and somehow making the pain disappear. Afterwards, the apparent alien's leader showed her a map of outer space, which looked completely unfamiliar, the planets all different from those she knew. He also showed her a book, written in a language she'd never seen before. She begged to keep the book as proof, and at first he seemed to agree, but then he abruptly withdrew the offer. He warned her that it would be better if she forgot everything. Once they emerged from their hypnosis, The Hills' amnesia is said to have returned, but when Dr. Simon played them the recordings of their sessions, the memories seemingly came back to them. At this time, they stuck. It was a liberating moment for the couple, who claimed to finally have some explanation for the terror and confusion that had haunted them. Dr. Simon, however, remained unconvinced by it all, at least the UFO abduction story. though he had no doubt there was some kind of underlying trauma fuelling it all. He thought it was most likely that Barney was merely mimicking what had occurred in Betty's dreams, which she had already shared with him before he went under hypnosis. Either way, it was impossible to know if these were his own experiences, or simply the bleeding of Betty's story into his own imagination. But the question remained. Had the Hills recovered real buried memories? or constructed an extraordinary explanation for something they couldn't bring themselves to face. In the years since the Hills' story became public, various explanations have been proposed for what happened. For skeptics, the simplest explanation was that the Hills encountered something ordinary, a bright planet or just a regular aircraft, and thanks to a combination of sleep deprivation and darkness, interpreted it as something otherworldly. The officials at Project Blue Book concluded that the object they'd seen might have been Jupiter. It's also possible that they may have experienced the psychosis known as folie a deux, where a delusion is transmitted from one person to another within a close relationship, as Dr. Benjamin Simon supposed. Some historians have suggested that Betty and Barney's experiences of prejudice and persecution as an interracial couple could have made them more vulnerable to a psychological episode like this. Their alleged encounter involved being watched, pursued, seized by an unfamiliar authority, and subjected to an invasive examination, all of which are all too familiar experiences for many black Americans. And there is also the possibility, too, that Betty and Barney had in fact endured some kind of horrific assault that night that had left their minds unwilling to remember it. For their part, Betty and Barney always maintained that they had encountered something genuinely otherworldly. Only eight years after the incident, Barney died suddenly from a cerebral hemorrhage at just 46 years old. Betty would live for another 35 years. She never remarried and became increasingly prominent within UFO circles. speaking publicly about the encounter and maintaining her belief in extraterrestrial visitors for the rest of her life until the day she died in 2004, her account never wavered and neither did her conviction. Whatever it was that she and Barney encountered on that lonely New Hampshire road back in September of 1961 defied all rational explanation. This episode was written by Emma Dibden and Richard McLean-Smith. Please remember to like and subscribe if you've enjoyed the show. Unexplained is an AV Club Productions podcast created by me, Richard McLean-Smith. All other elements of the podcast, including the music, are also produced by me. Unexplained, the book and audiobook, is now available to buy worldwide. You can purchase from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Waterstones and other bookstores. Be sure to follow us on Instagram, TikTok and Facebook at Unexplained Podcast and on X and Blue Sky at Unexplained Pod. Until next time, stay strange and dissonant.
Speaker 1: Hello and welcome to Unexplained with me, your host, Richard McLean-Smith, where each week we explore another true tale of high strangeness. If you're new here and you're a fan of expertly told atmospheric stories about the strange and unexplained, then you've come to the right place. And please subscribe to the show if you haven't already done so. I've had an amazing time at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival this year. Thank you so much to everyone who's come along to see the show. I'll be here for one more night, finishing with my last show on Saturday, August 29th, if you're up this way and you fancy coming along. I'll be performing at the Space's Surgeon's Hall venue at 10.05pm. You can get tickets at thespaceuk.com forward slash shows forward slash 2026 forward slash unexplained hyphen live. For those watching on YouTube, you can find the link below. With all that out of the way, this is Unexplained, Season 9, Episode 32. The Long and Lonely Road. This is how the story begins. Back in 1956, Eunice Elizabeth Barrett, her friends called her Betty, was 37 and recently divorced. Newly single, Betty had decided to go back to college to complete a degree in social work the one she'd been forced to give up when her ex-husband's wife unexpectedly decided she could no longer look after their children. Since Bob, her ex-husband, of course couldn't possibly do it, it fell to Betty to bring them up instead. So that summer in 1956, Betty had taken a job in Hampton Beach, New Hampshire, to help pay for the course. With her house undergoing renovations at the time, she'd taken a room at a guesthouse belonging to a friend of hers, a short distance from the beach. Then one day, her family arrived on vacation, her husband and wife and their two kids up from Philadelphia. The couple seemed nice, thought Betty, perhaps a little ruefully, thinking about her own marital status, although maybe not. Her ex, Bob, was not a keeper, and though she loved his kids as her own, The fact they never had children together was probably a blessing. It would be nice to meet someone though, she thought. That summer, she'd grab snippets of conversations with the Hills as they each went about their business. The family usually to the beach and Betty down to her job at Rudy's Farm Kitchen. Eventually they went their separate ways, though the Hills asked to stay in touch with a view to maybe renting a room at Betty's own home whenever they next came up. Little could Betty have known that within five years, she'd be married to the father of that very family. Even less could she have known that in that same year, she and her new husband Barney would become the most famous apparent alien abductees in history. You're listening to Unexplained, and I'm Richard McLean Smith. As it happened, Barney and his wife were not as happily married as Betty might have presumed when they first met in Hampden Beach in that summer of 1956. By the end of 1957, in fact, Barney and his then-wife had already separated. At some point, Barney remembered the kind woman he'd met at the guesthouse and decided to get in touch. Four years later, the couple were married. Betty and Barney Hill, as they were now known, built a comfortable life for themselves in the coastal city of Portsmouth in New Hampshire. It wasn't an easy move for Barney, who'd lost custody of his children in his divorce. He had to make do with long trips back to see them in Philadelphia whenever he was able to. But slowly, he and Betty built a new life for themselves. By September of 1961, Betty had graduated near the top of her class and was working in child welfare, while Barney, who was originally from Virginia, worked as a distribution clerk for the postal service down in Boston, a two-hour drive away. Both were well-liked by their colleagues and neighbours and active within their local church. The only unusual thing about them was that they were an interracial couple. at a time when interracial marriage was still illegal across more than half of the United States. Though New Hampshire never criminalized interracial marriage, it wasn't immune to the glaring racial prejudices of the day. A 1958 Gallup poll found that 98% of Americans disapproved of interracial marriage, and though thankfully New Hampshire was relatively immune to the brutal, racially motivated attacks, that blemished so much of the South at that time, it no doubt revealed itself in other, more subtle ways. A landlord not wanting to house a tenant that wasn't white here. A completely arbitrary police stop there. Even some members of Betty's own family found the union uncomfortable. Still, they were fundamentally optimistic people, who were also heavily engaged in the civil rights movement. and firm believers in the idea made famous by Martin Luther King Jr., that the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice. Having married in May 1960, it wasn't until the following year that an opportunity came up to really celebrate it for themselves. Barney had managed to wrangle some days off from work, and in mid-September, after returning home from another shift in Boston, Barney surprised Betty with an impromptu honeymoon. It was to be a short road trip, up to see Niagara Falls, and then into Canada, to spend a few days in Montreal and Toronto. And so, on the morning of September 17th, 1961, they woke up early to pack up their luggage and jumped into the car, accompanied by their dachshund, Delcy. Then together, they set off on their journey. On Tuesday, September 19th, Betty and Barney were en route to Montreal, when Barney took a wrong turn. Eventually the couple found themselves on the outskirts of the city, desperately trying to find anywhere that would take them and their dog, Delcy. Meanwhile, a few hundred miles down the east coast, something ominous was brewing. Hurricane Esther had emerged out of the Cape Verde Islands a few days before and had grown to a Category 5 hurricane by the time it was approaching the east coast of North America. Worried that they might get caught in it, the Hills decided to cut their losses and just drive back to New Hampshire that night. With a seven-hour ride ahead, they wasted little time in getting back out onto the highway. Their route home, took them south along the U.S. Route 3, winding through the dark forests and rugged peaks of New Hampshire's White Mountains. The views were spectacular, and the first few hours of the drive passed quickly. It had just gone 10 p.m. when Betty gazed out of her passenger window and noticed something unusual in the sky, a brilliant point of light hanging low above the horizon. At first, she figured it was just a particularly bright star. But as Betty continued to stare at it, the light began to drift aimlessly across the sky. Then it abruptly changed direction, moving erratically in a kind of zigzag pattern. Betty opened the glove compartment and took out the pair of binoculars she'd brought for birdwatching. She held them up to her eyes to get a better look at the light, but still couldn't make much sense of it. She would later describe how it unsettled her profoundly, in a way that she couldn't quite articulate. Since Barney was far more concerned with the road ahead, he couldn't quite get a proper look at it, but suggested it was probably just a military aircraft of some kind, out on manoeuvres, or a satellite that had gone off course. But Betty wasn't convinced. She told Barney to pull over, partly to let Delcy out for a bathroom break, but more because she wanted to get a better look at the strange object. As Barney walked Delcy toward the bushes, Betty stared again through the binoculars. Up above, as she tried to keep track of it, the light seemed to be growing brighter and more distinct with each passing minute, but still darting across the sky in strange, unpredictable patterns. As the hills resumed their journey, Betty continued to keep her eye on it until something unsettling dawned on her. Mile after mile, the brilliant light appeared to be copying their progress along Route 3, keeping pace with their car through the isolated mountain darkness. Whatever was moving through the night sky, Betty wasn't just tracking it, it was tracking them too. Just before midnight, Barney pulled the car into a scenic picnic area. just south of Lincoln, New Hampshire. Whatever it was had apparently kept pace with them for the last two hours, and Betty could tell it was getting to Barney too, which only shredded her nerves even more. Barney parked up and instinctively thought of the handgun he kept under the driver's mat. But what good would that be? The couple climbed out of the car and into the chilly mountain air. Delcy leapt out after them. Clearly worried for their safety, Barney told Betty to stay behind with Delcy while he tried to get a better view of the object. Betty pulled Delcy back as she tried to follow him and told Barney to be careful. After walking a short distance from the road, Barney held the binoculars up to his eyes and adjusted the focus wheel. But no sooner had he focused on the object, it suddenly darted across the skyline. It took him a while to find it again then it swung out to the west, before stopping completely still in the sky. And as it appeared to hover in place, for the first time, Barney was said to have finally been able to get a clear view of the thing. As he would later describe it, the object was shaped like a flat disc, with what appeared to be some kind of protruding wing-like structures on opposite sides, and it was rimmed with rows of brilliant lights, that glowed like strange eyes. Then it apparently began to drift closer. Barney was certain he could make out a line of windows across its front. And inside those windows, he saw figures, with their forms sharply illuminated by the light from behind. He was almost certain they were looking directly at him. Then he suddenly became aware of just how still the wilderness felt around him. Unnaturally so, as though all the ordinary sounds of the night had just been turned off. He looked again through the binoculars and saw with some surprise that the disc in the sky was getting nearer. Then he realised with horror that it was heading straight toward them. Consumed by a wave of terror, he turned and sprinted back to the car, yelling for Betty to get inside. As Betty scrambled into the back with the now equally terrified Delcy, Barney leapt into the front seat and hurriedly turned the key. Before the front door was even shut, he floored the accelerator. The car's tyres spat gravel as they sped off into the night. Delcy whimpered on Betty's lap. Her ears flattened backwards against her tiny head as she stared up at the sky. Barney drove faster than he ever had along the winding highway, trying desperately to keep track of the object at the same time. The couple then claimed the object disappeared for a moment, only to suddenly reappear right behind the car. Its lights flooded the road ahead until they got so bright that Barney could barely see it. Then came a strange rhythmic buzzing and the bone-rattling realization that the object was right above the car. The sound swelled until it seemed to vibrate through the roof, through the windows, and the entire car quivering around them. Barney gripped onto the steering wheel, Betty frozen beside him, as the buzzing grew louder and sharper, so deafening it seemed to blot out their other senses. A tingling pins-and-needles sensation consumed them both, spreading throughout their bodies, sending them into a kind of daze. And then there was nothing. It's said that Barney awoke first, with the hazy sensation of emerging from a deep sleep he didn't mean to take. His hands were still clenched around the steering wheel. The car stopped on a shoulder of a stretch of highway that he didn't recognise. Beside him, Betty stirred. The buzzing had gone now. and the sky above was empty and dark. It was impossible to tell how much time had passed. The dashboard clock wasn't moving, but Barney couldn't remember if it had even been working before. He looked down at his wristwatch. It too had stopped, the hands frozen to a position just after midnight. Betty's was said to be the same. And so was that tense, fluffy feeling in her head, She asked Barney what had happened, but he couldn't say. He remembered something about a strange floating light pursuing them down the highway, the relentless vibration and the overpowering feeling of dread. But that was it. With the night pressing in around them and no answers waiting for them on that empty highway, Barney simply turned the key and eased the car back onto the road. As they continued on through the night, familiar landmarks of New Hampshire gradually emerged from the darkness, a reassurance of sorts that the normal world still existed. When they finally pulled into the driveway of their home in Portsmouth, the eastern sky was just beginning to lighten, which didn't make any sense to Betty, but when they got inside, the hill's kitchen clock confirmed it. It was just past five o'clock in the morning. By every calculation they'd made before leaving the mountains, they should have arrived by three at the latest. Somehow, they had apparently lost two entire hours of their night. After letting Delcy out into the back garden, Betty stumbled into the kitchen and made a pot of coffee. Then she and Barney sat at their kitchen table in stunned silence. Slowly they began trying to join the pieces together again, but their minds were blank. Could they both have just fallen asleep and shared the same terrible dream they thought? Or zoned out somehow? Lulled into a kind of trance by the monotony of the dark road? Or something poisonous in the air, perhaps? But it was useless. Nothing seemed to make sense. After a few hours of sleep, Barney and Betty claimed to awake to a bright, mild autumn morning. Barney showered and shaved and then headed out to work, determined to shake it all off and ground himself back in his familiar daily routine. But as he walked out into the driveway, he noticed something strange. On the boot of the car, he is said to have seen a cluster of shiny, concentric circular markings that that hadn't been there when they set off for home from Montreal. Then, climbing into the driver's seat, his foot nudged against something hard by the pedals. Reaching down, he discovered the binoculars. The strap had been cut in half. Back inside the house, Betty got ready for the day too. Taking off the dress she'd worn the previous night, She later claimed to have found rips in the hem and the lining, and damage to the zipper. Looking closer, she also found a peculiar pink powdery substance all over the fabric. It's said that Betty and Barney agonised over what to do next, with Betty insisting that they tell the authorities about what they'd seen. But Barney was more reluctant, apparently concerned that any version of their story would just make them both sound crazy. In the end, Betty's anxiety won out. Later that day, she called the number for the 100th bomb wing at Peace Air Force Base in Newington, New Hampshire. When the officer on duty picked up, she hesitated for a moment, before telling him simply that she and her husband had witnessed something peculiar in the sky over the mountains of New Hampshire in the early hours of that morning. She described it as best she could from her apparently patchy memory. Its disc-like shape, the protruding wings, and all the unusual lights around the edge of it. She didn't mention how it had seemed to chase them for miles along the highway. She didn't mention the strange figures that Barney had supposedly seen in the aircraft's windows, or the violent buzzing that had surrounded them. And she didn't mention the fact that they were both missing two hours of time. To her surprise, Rather than laugh at her, the officer was oddly reassuring. He promised to pass on the details to his superiors and told her to expect a call later that day. Sure enough, sometime in the afternoon, the Hills received a call from a Major Paul Henderson. who was eager to know more about the peculiar object that Betty and Barney had apparently seen. Betty told him exactly what she'd told the first officer. Then Major Henderson asked if Barney was willing to speak too. At first, Barney was reluctant, but eventually agreed to talk to the Major. It was a few days later that Major Henderson submitted his report to Project Blue Book, the now notorious U.S. Air Force UFO Investigation Program, writing on Air Force Form 112, number 100-1-61, on the night of 19th to the 20th of September, between 20.00 hours and 20.00 hours, Mr. and Mrs. Hills were traveling south on Route 3 near Lincoln, New Hampshire, when they observed through their windshield of their car a strange object in the sky. They noticed it because of its shape and the intensity of its lighting as compared to the stars in the sky. The weather and the sky were clear at the time. Betty is sitting in a moving car, staring out at the windscreen at what she recognises vaguely as Route 3. Betty has the sense of Barney being with her in the car, but at the same time he seems distant, not quite aware of her. She stares out at the centre lines in the road as they come and go hypnotically, one after the other. Then suddenly the car makes a left turn, and the engine cuts out. Now standing in the middle of the road ahead, are what appear to be eleven men. The men approach the car and open the door, motioning for Betty to get out. Barney follows too. The surface of the highway seems to dissolve around her, giving way to a gaseous darkness in which she floats weightlessly. Then suddenly, Betty is inside somewhere bright, alone and cut off from Barney, Now the men are speaking to her, but they aren't men in the regular sense. They seem shorter than average, with larger chests and noses. Their hair and eyes are black, their skin a pale grey in hue. The figures tell her that she won't remember anything of this experience, and then Betty is awake, bolting up from her bed and desperately gasping for air in the pitch black night. Night after night, Betty claimed to be haunted by similar dreams. Sometimes the figures spoke to her, other times she found herself lying on some kind of gurney under a bright fluorescent light as the figures appeared to be doing something to her. Each time Betty awoke in terror, she told Barney what she'd seen in her dreams. Barney did his best to reassure her that they were just nightmares and urged her to try not to worry about it but Betty wasn't so sure. With each passing experience, it felt less like a dream space and more like her actual memories. In late September, Betty paid a visit to her local library, where she stumbled upon a book written by Major Donald Kehoe called The Flying Saucer Conspiracy. Kehoe was a former naval aviator who in the 1950s became one of the first US military employees to to urge the US government to investigate the growing number of apparent UFO sightings occurring throughout the United States. Betty was riveted by the book's fascinating accounts of apparent real-life flying saucer encounters that Kehoe was convinced had been covered up by the US government. At the back of the book, she found an address for the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena, or NICAP, which Kehoe was the director of at the time, which invited readers to contact them if they had any sightings of their own to share. The following day, Betty sent them a letter. On October 21st, a month after the incident, Betty and Barney were interviewed by Walter Webb on behalf of NICAP for more than six hours, both separately and together, The couple recounted the details of what they remembered, and Betty also described the harrowing abduction nightmares she'd experienced afterwards. Webb found the couple sincere and credible, and concluded that ultimately they were telling the truth, at least, the truth as they remembered it. By now, Betty's nightmares had faded, but something inside of her had changed. She felt permanently on edge, never able to fully relax. She found herself reluctant to leave the house, preferring to stay indoors where her environment was predictable, and had become easily startled. A far cry from the strong and confident social worker, who'd not only brought up someone else's children more or less single-handedly, but had also put herself through college afterwards as a mature student. For his part, Barney appeared to be coping better, but privately... the gaps in his memory were beginning to unsettle him. Over the next few months, his physical health began to decline. In the summer of 1962, he was diagnosed with high blood pressure and ulcers, both conditions which his doctor attributed to high stress. Perhaps sensing an underlying and unresolved psychological issue, Barney's doctor referred him to a therapist to see if that could help with his stress. Eventually, the therapist convinced Barney to open up about what was eating away at him. Over the course of several sessions, Barney detailed the strange incident that he and Betty had seemingly experienced, what he could remember of it at least. But what disturbed him the most about it all was that he couldn't remember almost two hours of that night. Not entirely sure what he was dealing with, Barney's therapist recommended that he visit his acquaintance, Dr. Benjamin Simon, a psychiatrist who specialized in hypnosis to help people process traumatic events, particularly soldiers experiencing traumatic amnesia as a result of PTSD. At the very least, if the whole UFO story was just a facade for some other underlying emotional distress from Barney's past, Dr. Simon might help unearth it. And so, on the morning of Saturday, December 14th, the Hills met with Dr. Simon at his clinic in Boston. As they had done with everyone else they'd spoken to up to that point, the Hills told Dr. Simon everything they could remember of the night of the apparent incident, including the details of Betty's recurring nightmares. It was immediately clear that Dr. Simon was had little time for apparent UFO encounters, but he was equally certain that the hills were not there to waste his time. Something terrifying had happened to them, and he was determined to figure out what it was without judgement. Over the next few months, Dr Simon worked with Betty and Barney, to recover whatever memories they believed they had lost. They began with a three-week conditioning process. Using different cues and keywords, Dr. Simon began to effectively trick Betty and Barney's brains into entering a deep trance state, from which she was able to extract information, while they effectively remained unaware of the conversation. And then, finally, the proper sessions could begin. Lying down in Dr. Simon's office one morning, Barney quickly entered the hypnotic trance and appeared for all intents and purposes to simply be fast asleep. Then Dr. Simon asked him to take him back to the night in question. When he was out there on Route 3, driving through the night with Betty, then Barney began to speak. He was in his car on a deserted highway. Then there was a brilliant, eerie light, and several figures appeared that were coming closer and closer toward him. He felt weak and helpless. Then an unnatural calm descended over him. Now he was lying on board some kind of craft. Strange figures were watching him. They had enormous foreheads, pointed chins, and long, slanting eyes. that seemed to wrap around the side of their heads. Then Barney became restless. The eyes, he said. They seemed to be trying to speak to him through the eyes. Stay with it, urged Dr. Brown. Then Barney began to toss and turn. The eyes. he screamed in terror they're in my brain dr brown tried his best to soothe him and urged him to calm down and eventually the moment passed then barney explained how he was now on a table in what resembled a hospital room the figures were examining him He said he was trying to stay motionless throughout so they wouldn't hurt him. Then suddenly he was back in the car next to Betty. He felt strangely giddy as they watched the aircraft take off into the sky, becoming a shapeless ball of light before vanishing. And then he woke up. After also being hypnotized by Dr. Simon, Betty gave a very similar account to what Barney had apparently experienced. Supposedly taken aboard separately from Barney, she was examined by a figure dressed in a white coat, who scraped her arms and inspected her ears and mouth. She became frightened when a long needle was inserted into her navel, but recalled the alien figure calming her and somehow making the pain disappear. Afterwards, the apparent alien's leader showed her a map of outer space, which looked completely unfamiliar, the planets all different from those she knew. He also showed her a book, written in a language she'd never seen before. She begged to keep the book as proof, and at first he seemed to agree, but then he abruptly withdrew the offer. He warned her that it would be better if she forgot everything. Once they emerged from their hypnosis, The Hills' amnesia is said to have returned, but when Dr. Simon played them the recordings of their sessions, the memories seemingly came back to them. At this time, they stuck. It was a liberating moment for the couple, who claimed to finally have some explanation for the terror and confusion that had haunted them. Dr. Simon, however, remained unconvinced by it all, at least the UFO abduction story. though he had no doubt there was some kind of underlying trauma fuelling it all. He thought it was most likely that Barney was merely mimicking what had occurred in Betty's dreams, which she had already shared with him before he went under hypnosis. Either way, it was impossible to know if these were his own experiences, or simply the bleeding of Betty's story into his own imagination. But the question remained. Had the Hills recovered real buried memories? or constructed an extraordinary explanation for something they couldn't bring themselves to face. In the years since the Hills' story became public, various explanations have been proposed for what happened. For skeptics, the simplest explanation was that the Hills encountered something ordinary, a bright planet or just a regular aircraft, and thanks to a combination of sleep deprivation and darkness, interpreted it as something otherworldly. The officials at Project Blue Book concluded that the object they'd seen might have been Jupiter. It's also possible that they may have experienced the psychosis known as folie a deux, where a delusion is transmitted from one person to another within a close relationship, as Dr. Benjamin Simon supposed. Some historians have suggested that Betty and Barney's experiences of prejudice and persecution as an interracial couple could have made them more vulnerable to a psychological episode like this. Their alleged encounter involved being watched, pursued, seized by an unfamiliar authority, and subjected to an invasive examination, all of which are all too familiar experiences for many black Americans. And there is also the possibility, too, that Betty and Barney had in fact endured some kind of horrific assault that night that had left their minds unwilling to remember it. For their part, Betty and Barney always maintained that they had encountered something genuinely otherworldly. Only eight years after the incident, Barney died suddenly from a cerebral hemorrhage at just 46 years old. Betty would live for another 35 years. She never remarried and became increasingly prominent within UFO circles. speaking publicly about the encounter and maintaining her belief in extraterrestrial visitors for the rest of her life until the day she died in 2004, her account never wavered and neither did her conviction. Whatever it was that she and Barney encountered on that lonely New Hampshire road back in September of 1961 defied all rational explanation. This episode was written by Emma Dibden and Richard McLean-Smith. Please remember to like and subscribe if you've enjoyed the show. Unexplained is an AV Club Productions podcast created by me, Richard McLean-Smith. All other elements of the podcast, including the music, are also produced by me. Unexplained, the book and audiobook, is now available to buy worldwide. You can purchase from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Waterstones and other bookstores. Be sure to follow us on Instagram, TikTok and Facebook at Unexplained Podcast and on X and Blue Sky at Unexplained Pod. Until next time, stay strange and dissonant.
