(UFO/UAP) Kathleen Marden ”UFO Abduction: The Betty & Barney Hill Case” pt. 1

[00:00:00] This week's mystery is one with immense historical value. I remember reading about the story growing up as foundational to the UFO field and understanding of the phenomenon. I'm referring to the case of Betty and Barney Hill.

[00:00:34] There are a multitude of reasons why so many find this case fascinating. For one, it was the first major documented case of an alleged UFO abduction. Secondly, the time in which it took place predates a lot of what we now know about

[00:00:50] UFOs and UFO abductions, so the alleged victims wouldn't have had prior cases to pull from. Thirdly, it involves an interracial couple who were heavily involved in the civil rights movement and wanted no part of something so controversial that it could potentially have a negative impact on their work.

[00:01:08] And it's really this third reason that makes this case so intriguing. As a black man in America in the 1960s, Barney already had to fight for respect, so why put himself in a position to make that fight all the more difficult by faking a story of this kind?

[00:01:24] We get into all the different aspects of this case that make it one of the most credible and incredible in the history of the subject. To take us through this case is the foremost expert on Betty and Barney Hill, Kathleen

[00:01:36] Martin, who not only wrote the book on it but also just so happens to be the niece of Betty and Barney and witnessed the aftermath of the events that took place on that legendary night.

[00:01:48] Welcome to this week's mystery, UFO Abductions, the Betty and Barney Hill case on From the Void. All right, Kathleen Martin, thank you so much for spending some time with us on the podcast today. My pleasure. Absolutely honored to have you on.

[00:02:16] You are a pillar in the UFO community. Talk a little bit about yourself and sort of the work that you've done over the decades in the field of UFO and UFO experiences. Well, I came into this field in a highly unusual way.

[00:02:34] Betty and Barney Hill were my aunt and uncle. They were the couple who had a close encounter with a craft that hovered only 100 feet above their vehicle. They heard a series of buzzing sounds striking the trunk of the car the next day.

[00:02:51] There was a magnetic field around that area and highly polished spots. I was 13 years old, and Betty called my mother. I arrived home from school and she was on the phone with my mother, who was extraordinarily

[00:03:09] concerned about Betty's and Barney's welfare because the craft had been so close. They worried that they had been contaminated. So they had taken long showers. And my mother said that she would call our neighbor, who was a physicist, to find out what they should do.

[00:03:32] He's the one who told Betty to take the compass out to the car. And that's when she found those spots that hadn't been there the previous day and had the magnetic field around them. So I, being a bright, scholarly 13-year-old very interested in science, was highly curious

[00:03:57] about this. I wanted to go to their house as soon as possible. So within a day or two, my father acquiesced to my wishes, came home from work early, and we drove to Betty's and Barney's house where I was able to hear Betty's story

[00:04:21] and observe the spots on the trunk of the vehicle, see Betty's watch that would no longer work. Barney sat in a quiet corner of the room. I recall that he was still waiting for a phone call back from an Air Force officer.

[00:04:42] He had already, he and Betty had made a report to Pease Air Force Base. My father's friend, who was a police officer, had instructed Betty to call Pease and to make that report. So that's how it all began.

[00:05:01] My father sat quietly and he told me later, much later, that he and Barney had talked about the non-humans that Barney had observed on the craft. He couldn't remember their faces, but they were dressed in black shiny uniforms and he was terrified by their appearance.

[00:05:23] He had the impression that they had a plan for him, that they were going to capture him. And so he tore the binoculars from his eyes, ran back to the car as quickly as And he and Betty drove very, very rapidly down the highway.

[00:05:45] And that's when they began to hear this series of buzzing sounds striking their trunk and it caused the car to vibrate, sort of an electrical tingling sensation to move through their bodies. The next thing they knew, they were about 30, 35 miles down the highway.

[00:06:04] They had some memories of observing what appeared to be a fiery orb sitting on the ground. It was glowing a red-orange color. They found themselves on a dirt road with tall trees all around. They remembered a roadblock. They didn't know where or when it occurred.

[00:06:24] It was the second series of buzzing sounds that returned them to full consciousness and they did not see the craft at this point. As they drove home, they were seeking human contact and they could not find any business open.

[00:06:45] They could not find a police officer to report this to. And so they just drove on home. They anticipated that they'd arrive home between two and three in the morning. When they arrived, it was 5.16.

[00:07:04] I believe that was the time because Betty and Barney discovered their watches no longer worked. They were working fine. They were wind-up watches. They had checked the time at 10 o'clock the previous evening. They had wound their watches. When they returned home, they were broken. They never ran again.

[00:07:25] But Betty, when she discovered that her watch wasn't running, she went into the living room, looked at the clock and then she set the watch for the time that it said on the clock.

[00:07:37] She had already walked her dog, Delcey, who was with them and she was a Duxwand. So I have that watch with, it says 5.16. So I guess that's the time they arrived home. That's really cool.

[00:07:55] So a lot to unpack there because when I look back and read the account of the story, there's really almost like two components to it. There's the initial component of their initial experience.

[00:08:07] So I want to go back a little bit to that and paint a picture for folks who are listening. Betty and Barney Hill were kind of a unique couple to begin with because if

[00:08:16] we look at the time period, we're talking about the early 60s and they were kind of a rare interracial couple. But you listen to interviews, clearly both very intelligent individuals, which is great in terms of sort of the record that they left behind of their encounter.

[00:08:35] They're very detailed. You know, the descriptions that they provided were pretty robust. So in terms of a documented case, this is a really well-documented case, but also unique in the sense that this was not something that was commonly out in the public at the time.

[00:08:54] This is sort of one of the earliest that we know of, sort of documented abduction cases. But as you just described from their perspective, there's that initial first part where they encounter something unusual in the sky on their trip home.

[00:09:11] So and then there's some lost time, as you said, and that kind of comes in later. So describe for people this is what, 1961. They are coming back from a vacation in, I believe, what, Niagara Falls and they're heading back east in New Hampshire.

[00:09:28] Yeah. And so paint the picture for folks because it's late at night. And I believe around a little after 10 p.m. is when they start to encounter something strange in the sky.

[00:09:39] And so they're traveling around this dark road back in the early 60s and they see something that's unusual. So what's sort of the first thing that happens in this series events there? Betty and Barney are driving just south of Lancaster, New Hampshire, northern New Hampshire on Route 3.

[00:10:00] When Betty observes a new light in the sky, she said that it did not move like a falling star, that it moved upward. And she continued to watch it and as it moved in closer and closer. And then she and Barney stopped.

[00:10:22] Barney wanted to continue driving on, but Betty said, well, we have to walk the dog, Delcey. And so they did. And she took the binoculars and she watched this craft in the sky, attempting to identify it. It was moving erratically.

[00:10:40] It was not moving in a conventional manner and it was not lighted in a conventional manner. Barney walked the dog and then he looked at it and he was very dismissive. He said, it's nothing. Get into the car. Let's head south.

[00:11:01] So he was just anxious to arrive home and now he's in familiar territory. So they're heading south and the craft starts closing in on them. They stop again at the Old Man of the Mountain in Franconia Notch.

[00:11:21] This is a mountainous notch with a road that went through it. It was Route 3 at the time, so it was a two-lane road. And they just pulled over to the side of the road because it was hovering next to the Old Man's profile.

[00:11:37] His profile was 48 feet from forehead to chin. And it was just a rock formation that looked like an old man. It was New Hampshire State symbol. It fell off the mountain in 2003, unfortunately into the lake below.

[00:11:54] But to get back to what they observed, this craft was at least one and a half times the length of the Old Man's 48 foot profile. It appeared to be rotating. It appeared to be lighted on only one side. They looked at it through binoculars.

[00:12:15] They then returned to the vehicle. At that point, it looked cigar shaped. And so they're driving along and Betty's observing its flight pattern. So in the original report that she wrote to the National Investigations Committee on aerial phenomena back on September 26, 1961,

[00:12:43] she made this kind of stair step kind of pattern where it went over and down and over and down instead of flying in a straight line. And Barney also noted how it seemed to bounce back and forth in the sky.

[00:13:01] He compared it to a yo-yo where the yo-yo goes out and then it comes back. So it reminds me of the latest military reports of a ping pong ball. I think it was probably that kind of action.

[00:13:18] So they continued to watch it as Barney drove through the remainder of Franconia Notch. They exited in Lincoln on Route 3, and this is where the cabins were in that time, the overnight cabins. The craft remained with them. And suddenly, Betty's becoming excited because the craft is closing in.

[00:13:46] And all of this is in the original reports from September and October 1961. This was not revealed for the first time through hypnosis. I want to make that clear. So Betty wants Barney to pull over to the side of the road to get another look at this.

[00:14:04] And he doesn't believe that this is even possible. He's a confirmed skeptic. And so finally, they're coming along. The craft swoops down and stops just beside the highway. It's now about 200 feet overhead.

[00:14:23] Barney pulls to the middle of the road, straddling the center lane so he won't be underneath this thing. And he stops the car, leaves the lights on, the motor running. He steps out of the vehicle and he has his binoculars.

[00:14:40] He looks up at this craft and he can see a lighted row of windows. And he can now see that it's not a cigar shaped vehicle, that it looks like a giant pancake, he says. And so he steps back for a better view.

[00:15:02] And because the cars, you know, shaking those old cars used to shake a bit. And when he stepped back, the craft moved across the highway to an adjacent field that would be to his east. And it came even lower.

[00:15:21] It was now about 100 feet overhead and about 50 feet away from him, sort of in the air. And so he put the binoculars to his eyes and he could see these figures that in his first letter to Nycap were described as being dressed in shiny black uniforms.

[00:15:48] And something about them was so terrifying to Barney that he pulled the binoculars down away from his eyes. This is after something started to drop down out of the bottom of the craft.

[00:16:02] And this entity was looking at him through the window as if he had a plan for him. The others had gone to a wall or a panel, their arms had moved up in the air and things sort of red, little red lights on fin-like structures were sliding out.

[00:16:21] Barney pulled the binoculars from his eyes so forcefully that he broke the leather strap. He went dashing back to the car, screaming to Betty that they had to get out of there or they were going to be captured.

[00:16:36] That is the title of my case study on their incident. I had all the records and I did my own very extensive investigation. It's called Captured the Betty and Barney Hill UFO Experience. And Stanton T. Friedman, nuclear physicist who specialized in the star map and the debunkers,

[00:16:58] wrote a couple of chapters in that book as well. So anyway, they're speeding down the highway now because as Barney is entering the car, he sees the craft moving in his direction. Then he and Betty hear code-like buzzing sounds striking their trunk. The car is vibrating.

[00:17:23] They're feeling this tingling sensation. They then find themselves 35 miles down the road with vague memories of finding themselves on a dirt road, no longer on the highway. I already talked about that.

[00:17:41] The light, the big red-orange orb that appeared to be sitting on the ground, the roadblock, all of that. They hear a second series of buzzing sounds. They don't see the craft this time. They drive on home. And I told you what happened when they arrived. Barney was tired.

[00:18:04] He didn't take the suitcases out of the trunk of the car at that point. He went in. They both sat down. They drew what they remembered. They ate breakfast. They took long showers because they feared they'd been contaminated. And then they took a nap.

[00:18:22] And when they woke up, Betty called my mother. Wow. And so again, to point out to folks listening, this is all information that they were able to recall from the incident prior to the eventual hypnosis or the hypnotic regression.

[00:18:40] And so again, a lot of really fascinating detail that they were able to recall. And so again, that's sort of the first part. And then the second part is sort of what happens after.

[00:18:52] So before we get to that part, though, talk a little bit about some of the because I know people are going to want to hear about any of the physical evidence.

[00:18:59] And I know as someone involved with MUFON for a very long time, that's one of the very important components of the organization is collecting as much detail and as much physical evidence as possible.

[00:19:11] So there are some unique you talked about the watches, but there are also some interesting things that that they identified like Betty's dress, for example, after the fact.

[00:19:21] So talk a little bit about the strange sort of physical things that they identified in the spots on the trunk and things of that nature. Yes. Well, let me say first that all of this was to remain confidential. Betty and Barney never wanted this information released.

[00:19:37] She was a social worker for the state. He worked for the post office. They were both involved in politics and civil rights, that sort of thing. So anyway, in my investigation of the case, Phyllis Budinger, who was is actually still she's still alive. A analytical chemist.

[00:20:01] She worked for BP Amoco, formerly Standard Oil for 35 years, master's degree in chemistry, analytical chemists. So she was not the first person to analyze the Betty's dress. But she did an extensive analysis.

[00:20:22] And because let me give the listeners a little background on the dress in case they don't know this. When Betty arrived home, the zipper at the back of her dress was torn. The thick zipper fabric had a tear and the stitching was torn out.

[00:20:43] The hem was down on one side and the dress was torn on the lining from hem to waistline. Betty put it into her closet. The next time she took it out, it was coated with a pink powdery substance. Not on all of it.

[00:21:01] There was more pink up around the upper bodice of the dress, around the sleeves and more around the hem. The waist area of the dress had the original blue color of the dress. So Betty and I went to Mouffan's symposium, I believe it was in 2001.

[00:21:25] And that's Betty was a speaker. And that is when we met with Phyllis Budinger and she looked the dress all over. And then we cut samples, fabric samples from the lining and from the exterior of the dress for Phyllis to preserve and take back to the laboratory.

[00:21:49] She did a very extensive analysis. And she suspected that the pink powdery substance was some kind of a fungus that had deposited on the areas of the dress, perhaps from these entities hands.

[00:22:11] And perhaps from the floor of the craft when her dress was removed, breaking the zipper in the process and it dropped to the floor. So that's why it would be most around the hemline and the upper bodice.

[00:22:26] The sleeves would be from the entities hands where they escorted her. So she said in, you know, she couldn't identify this. There were no visible spores, just the discoloration. But it was consistent with Betty's statements about what had occurred.

[00:22:48] The first chemical analysis was done at the University of Cincinnati back in the 70s. And it was they could not find any prosaic explanation for what was on that dress. They did very, very extensive analysis. There have been many more analyses done.

[00:23:10] There have been there has recently been a DNA analysis. I was at the University of New Hampshire to do a television show. It was Ben Hanson's show. Yes, I've talked to Ben. He's been on the show before. Yeah. Great guy. He is a great guy.

[00:23:29] And I had set up the Hills collection at the University of New Hampshire, their civil rights collection and their UFO collection as well. And so I was there and we were looking the dress all over and looking for a place where we might take a sample.

[00:23:49] And Ben suggested we turn it inside out. Now, I had already given Phyllis a sample of the back stain on the back of the dress, and it was only spider blood.

[00:24:00] But then so Ben noticed that the stain on the front of the dress just below the area where her navel would be a little bit to the side. Also, there were three stains there, I believe. And he said they looked like blood.

[00:24:19] And so he put a black light on it and to get a better look, it was fluorescing a little bit. And then so we took samples, a sample from that. And I since I'm the trustee, the executor, I'm in charge of this.

[00:24:40] So I sent these samples and a sample of Betty's blood on a disk that I had dating way back to 2001 to Mufan's laboratory, biological laboratory. And the scientists did a DNA analysis on it.

[00:25:02] What we found is, well, first of all, let me state that this stain came from the inside from Betty's body. It did not penetrate through to the exterior of the dress. So Betty didn't drool on her dress.

[00:25:17] Betty didn't spill anything on her dress that leaked through to the lining. This came from her body. The DNA analysis showed that it was fluid from her body on the dress.

[00:25:31] They could not determine if it was blood because both samples were so degraded, it was no longer possible to determine that. It looked like blood to Ben.

[00:25:43] But we do know for certain that it was fluid from Betty's dress in the area of her navel where she recalled under hypnosis, having had a long needle inserted into her navel causing great pain. So, you know, maybe it means that this was real.

[00:26:03] That's just one. I mean, there are so many pieces of evidence. There was another test that was done on Betty's dress. This was in a chemical laboratory at a major university by headed by a Ph.D. tenured professor with 35 years experience.

[00:26:29] He his student and another professor who had a great deal, 30, another 35 years or so experience and that specialized knowledge of a particular test they wanted to do. Worked with a student doing that test.

[00:26:47] What they discovered is there were three metals on that dress that should not have been there. Now, one of them was poisonous and was used back in the 1950s. So that could possibly have been in the dye of Betty's dress.

[00:27:07] And they just didn't know it was posy, poisonous in that time frame. There were two other elements on that dress. One was tellurium. Now, tellurium is very rare in the Earth's crust, very expensive and but abundant in the universe.

[00:27:28] Then there was rhodium and rhodium too is a very rare metal. And I believe that this is the one with a very high melting point as well. So the scientists were amazed to find this.

[00:27:45] So, I mean, the more technologically advanced we become, the greater the scientific knowledge about Betty's dress. And, you know, is this a smoking gun or just one of many smoking guns?

[00:28:07] But I find it so gratifying, I have to tell you, after entering this investigation as a skeptic about the abduction, not about the close encounter itself. That was on two Air Force radar arrays. There were witnesses to that craft that night, 12 to 14.

[00:28:39] Well, more than that now because there were 15 at least because people have contacted me. So anyway, this is so gratifying to finally have worked this long. I've done a comparative analysis of Betty's and Barney's statements under hypnosis.

[00:29:06] I lined them up to discover during the abduction memory part where the entities each said the entities were standing at a certain point. What was communicated, that sort of thing.

[00:29:24] And what I discovered is that there was a dream hypothesis that claims that Betty had a series of dreams and that Barney had absorbed the information from her dreams. And under hypnosis, he just relived her dreams. That has been refuted.

[00:29:46] And I have an article on my website that I just posted on why it is outdated. My website is Kathleen-Marden. So you can go there and read that report.

[00:30:01] But it is just so gratifying to see that after all of these years and years of work that I did in my comparative analysis, it shows and it's all in the report that their statements are consistent but inconsistent with Betty's dreams in many areas.

[00:30:27] Including their memories of what these non-human entities looked like. Yeah, it's absolutely fascinating. It's interesting because this story is not the only one where as time has passed and as you mentioned technology has advanced,

[00:30:44] where certain things have been confirmed along the way that seemed really out there back in those days and kind of hard to confirm. But again, as technology evolves and we have even more sensitive tests that we can run and it seems to confirm.

[00:31:01] And also just in general, when we're trying to have the debate whether or not this was completely nonsense and some sort of hoax, if so, it's maybe one of the most elaborate hoaxes of all time because who thinks to put fungus powder on a dress in certain areas

[00:31:23] the links to which they would have had to have gone is just absurd when you start piling up the evidence. And as you said, I was going to ask you about that.

[00:31:35] There are multiple witnesses that also cited the craft and kind of relayed the same sort of information. So talk a little bit about though because I think the second part is where it really gets interesting is as you mentioned,

[00:31:50] they anticipate getting home around 2 a.m. and so there is a huge gap of time that we refer to now in the UFO field as missing time, where there's kind of a missing piece of the story that they can't recollect.

[00:32:04] And so talk about who they initially talked to in trying to make sense of this and then ultimately what links they went to try to recover those missing memories. Initially, Betty and Barney spoke with the Air Force, P's Air Force base,

[00:32:24] Sergeant Paul or I can't remember what he was, his rank maybe but it was Paul Henderson, maybe Colonel, and he took their report. He called them back. He said that the time that they mentioned was unusual because there was something seen on radar

[00:32:54] at P's Air Force base in that same timeframe. And so they looked at that. They claim they did not see the craft, but the Air Force covers up so much I don't know what they actually saw. In my book, two Air Force officers

[00:33:15] later were working on a graduate school project together on Project Blue Book, Should it be Reopened? And they discussed the Hill case and they discussed the falsification of information by the Air Force in that. So it's all in Capture the Betty and Barney

[00:33:34] Hill UFO experience, which I updated for the 60th anniversary. So that was really important. So gosh, there's just so much. Soterios Johnson Yeah, that's absolutely fascinating. And again, sort of more things that sort of point in the direction of this being a legitimate

[00:34:01] experience. And again, you mentioned at the top that this was not a couple who were out there every weekend going to science fiction movies and were like UFO enthusiasts. And of course, this is also the early days too. And so there's not as much in the

[00:34:17] public form in terms of things that they could pull from. And so I think for a long time, this is why this has been such a fascinating case for a lot of people. Again, we're

[00:34:28] talking about early 60s where we don't have nearly the much in terms of media that we have today to kind of pull from in the public consciousness. So talk a little bit about, so how did they come

[00:34:42] to the place where they decided to attempt hypnotic regression? Who first suggested that, I guess? Soterios Johnson In Betty's first letter to the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena, September 26, 1961, she said that they were looking for a psychiatrist

[00:35:05] who used hypnosis. But they looked and they looked. They finally found one in Massachusetts. And he did not want to hypnotize them right away. He said that to give it time that they would eventually remember more. And they did remember more.

[00:35:28] Then this troubled Barney terribly. Betty was highly curious. She wanted to know more about it. In fact, she checked the first book she'd ever read on the topic out of the library just after this happened. But Barney wanted to forget about it. He said no good could come

[00:35:47] of it. It bothered him terribly. He ended up with high blood pressure, bleeding ulcers. He was hospitalized with these bleeding ulcers, life-threatening condition. And they would not recede with traditional medical treatment because this was psychogenically induced. It was the trauma of this event. He was the one who

[00:36:14] actually saw these entities not only through binoculars, but he could see them with the naked eye as he stood in that field looking up toward that craft. And he's the one who felt so threatened. So anyway, he ended up being referred to Dr. Benjamin Simon, who was a

[00:36:36] neuropsychiatrist in Boston. Dr. Simon during World War II was a lieutenant colonel, and he had set up the psychiatric clinic at the Mason General Hospital on Long Island. He devised a new kind of hypnosis to work with people who were returning from the war front who were

[00:37:03] terribly disabled but without a physiological cause. And he treated them highly effectively using deep trans-hypnosis. In fact, he starred in the movie Let There Be Light. It was a John Houston propaganda movie during World War II. Dr. Simon was highly successful. He was in

[00:37:27] who's who among medical profession in this country. He had once owned his own private psychiatric hospital. He taught at Harvard. He taught, I believe it was at Yale, might have been Princeton. So he was at the top of his field. Let me put it that way.

[00:37:52] He retired in 1963. Well, I'm saying 1963. Maybe it was 1973 because Betty and Barney saw him for the first time in December of 63, and he saw them in his office from January through the end of June in 1964. He hypnotized them separately. He reinstated amnesia at the

[00:38:27] end of each session so they couldn't contaminate one another's information. There was bombastic music playing in the waiting room so they couldn't hear one another, and he saw them just about every Saturday during that time frame. Betty and Barney paid for this.

[00:38:50] It was at great expense. He was not an inexpensive neuropsychiatrist. Eventually, their insurance paid for it because he was treating them for the anxiety they experienced after they had observed a UFO. Thanks for listening to this week's

[00:39:16] episode of From the Void. If you enjoyed this or any of the previous episodes, please consider rating, reviewing, subscribing and sharing with a friend. We're a completely grassroots independent podcast and it helps us to get seen and heard. We'll be back next week with the

[00:39:32] conclusion to the Betty and Barney Hill case. Until then, if you happen to be driving on a lonely dark road late at night, maybe keep one eye on the sky. We'll see you next week. You've been listening to From the Void.