New Hampshire UFO Chiller, The Mysterious Case of Betty and Barney Hill
Betty and Barney Hill
April 19, 2025
’ve been interested in UFOs and aliens my whole life. I wrote an emotional and chilling novel that explores that mystery called The Taking. The Taking is a suspenseful story with paranormal elements about a girl and her father who must confront the unknown. The universe is so vast and teeming with planets that It’s hard to imagine there aren’t intelligent extraterrestrial life forms out there. I had my own experience once, when I was a young kid, and the object I saw may have been a real UFO spacecraft.
Could there be an actual phenomenon with UFOs and “extraterrestrial biological beings” visiting the earth? It sounds so strange, except for the compelling accounts of the witnesses to the incidents and the physical evidence that supports their versions of what happened.
The UFO incident with Betty and Barney Hill is one of the most credible and famous alien abduction cases ever recorded. Here’s what happened. The Hills were traveling through the White Mountain National Forest in New Hampshire, in September 1961, when Betty saw what looked like a shooting star in the night sky. Soon after, the same object started following them, sometimes flying at the level and pace of their car, and then above them shining an intensely bright light down on them.
The diagram Barney Hill drew of the craft
There was a point during this time when Betty and Barney didn’t remember what happened to them after that. They were driving and the object was chasing them. They decided to pull over, and Barney looked at it through binoculars and saw “people” in the windows. He heard them communicating with him telepathically—telling him to stay where he was, don’t be afraid. Barney felt sure they were about to be captured. Panicked, he hollered at Betty to get back in the car, and they fled down the road.
It was daylight by the time they got home to Portsmouth, New Hampshire. There were two hours during the night that they couldn’t account for, and there was also physical evidence that something had happened to them. They remembered nothing.
In the months that followed, they both had the same reoccurring nightmares. The dreams were extremely upsetting, full of terrifying images that they didn’t understand. Eventually, it was too hard for them to go on as if nothing was wrong. They sought help from the psychiatrist Dr. Benjamin Simon.
Dr. Simon used hypnosis to uncover the causes of their anxiety and other distressing emotions over many sessions. The recordings of their sessions with Dr. Simon still exist. I’ve read some of the transcripts, and they’re very frightening. The Hills were hypnotized separately, and they described the same events. They said they were forcibly taken on board a spaceship by four small, bipedal nonhuman “people,” where extensive physical examinations were performed on them.
“Alien” painted by David G. Baker from the descriptions the Hills gave of their abductors
Under hypnosis, Betty recalled conversations she had with some of the entities. Based on their roles, she gave them pseudonyms, e.g., doctor, leader. She asked them where they came from, and they produced a holographic star map to show her the area in space where their planet was.
Betty asked them to give her the map, so she’d have proof her encounter with them had been real, but they refused. They told her they were going to make her forget it had happened, but Betty insisted that she would remember it and that they couldn’t take the memory away from her.
Prior to their abduction, the Hills knew almost nothing about flying saucers, let alone believed in them. Their lives had revolved around normal earthly concerns: Barney’s work for the postal service, Betty’s job as a social work, their family, their friends, and their civil rights activism in the NAACP.
The Hills only told family members and a few close friends about their experience, but it was leaked to the media, and when that happened, they decided they needed to be the ones to tell their story and started doing interviews. Thereafter, the abduction consumed a major part of their lives and gave them fame and notoriety, which was hard on them.
Barney spent the rest of his life trying to put the events of the night of September 19, 1961 behind them. Betty dealt with it differently. She talked openly about it with many people, and she never stopped pursuing answers and trying to make contact with the beings she’d encountered again
Sadly, Barney’s health deteriorated, and in 1969, he passed away from a cerebral hemorrhage. Betty died in 2004. She left behind hundreds of letters she received from people, including scientists, UFO investigators, members of the military, and authors. Her papers along with actual artifacts from the case are permanently housed at the Dimond Library at the University of New Hampshire.
The Taking isn’t about the Hills, but it’s an archetype for the ideas in my book, along with other stories with similar events. It also explores the monumental impact it might have on someone who experiences them, with chilling realism and suspense.
I always think about Betty and Barney with fondness. They were respected and well-liked members of their community. No one has ever explained away the most compelling evidence that something strange happened that night to the Hills. For some people, it was a case of misidentification of a star or an aircraft. For others it’s still a mystery, and for others it’s proof that UFOs and alien abductions are real.
The Taking
A novel by Dona Masi
Roundfire Books
Publication Date: January 1, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-80341-550-5
Original Trade Paperback
Price: $16.95 | Pages: 264
The Taking
A novel by Dona Masi
Roundfire Books
Publication Date: December 10, 2024
ISBN: 978-1-80341-643-4
Ebook
Price: $9.99 | Pages: 264