The Abduction of Barney and Betty
August 27, 2014
Barney and Betty HIll
ALAN writes:
Thank you for your essay about the White Mountains.
One night in 1961, the White Mountains became the setting for one of the most colorful stories in the annals of Flying Saucerology. A married couple who were driving through those mountains in the darkness of night saw a light in the sky that they could not identify and believed was following their car. The story that unfolded was that they stopped at some point, were taken aboard a Flying Saucer by alien creatures, and then released unharmed and continued on their way home to Portsmouth.
This became a celebrated “case” among Saucer believers and enthusiasts. It was the subject of John G. Fuller’s book The Interrupted Journey: Two Lost Hours ‘Aboard a Flying Saucer’ (The Dial Press, 1966 ).
Unfortunately for the believers, there was and is no evidence that any such extraordinary event took place that night or that Saucer Aliens have ever visited the White Mountains. (Everyone knows that they crash their Saucers in New Mexico.)
But this story was also not a hoax. The married couple were completely sincere and in earnest. There were indeed lights to be seen in those mountains after dark.
The solution to this apparent mystery lies in the fact that their experience can be accounted for quite adequately by factors having nothing to do with Saucer Aliens.
The couple had never before driven through the White Mountains and were thus not familiar with the territory. And there are many good reasons to believe that they fooled themselves—entire unwittingly—into believing that a bright planet and a light or lights on mountainsides or mountaintops were a single, seemingly-mysterious object that appeared to be following their car. That impression could easily be reinforced by autokinetic illusions, line-of-sight illusions, and the motion of their car. Such illusions have prompted countless people to report stars and planets as mysterious objects in the night sky.
The best presentation of this hypothesis is offered by New Hampshire resident Jim MacDonald, who actually drove along the same route that the married couple had followed in 1961.
He offers a richly-detailed account of his reconstruction of this event, and it is well worth reading for anyone who wishes to understand how easy it is for people not to recognize man-made light sources or stars and planets in the night sky—and then to tell others about the “mysterious” UFO they saw—and then for a professional writer to expand that into a book—and then for that book to be made into a Hollywood movie. This is how fables are manufactured, without anyone involved in the process necessarily intending to deceive anyone.
The beauty and majesty of the White Mountains are real. But the Flying Saucers and UFO Aliens exist only in the realm of modern mythology.
— Comments —
Laura writes:
Thank you. That’s an interesting story.
I just recently witnessed an enormous fireball flashing across the sky near Mount Washington in the White Mountains. It was spectacular. I have never seen anything like it because it was so bright and appeared to be so close. My husband immediately reported it to the American Meteor Society.
I don’t want to alarm you, but it is possible my family and I were subsequently taken aboard a spaceship. … I have a strange bruise on my right knee.
By the way, it’s worth noting that Barney and Betty Hill were an interracial couple (at a time when that was relatively rare) and civil rights activists.
According to Wikipedia, one psychiatrist who concluded that their story was an hallucination attributed it to the stress of being an interracial couple.
Thomas F. Bertonneau writes:
Laura writes:
That would explain a lot.
Douglas writes:
I often experience missing time while driving long distances especially at night. I don’t recall seeing any strange lights. I call this phenomenon napping while driving.
Laura writes:
After carefully studying Barney and Betty’s story, I have come to one conclusion.
They were both nuts.
Thomas F. Bertonneau writes:
You wrote: “After carefully studying Barney and Betty’s story, I have come to one conclusion,” namely that “they were both nuts.”
Yes, but let’s give them this: They were infinitely more interesting, and at least as meaningful, as any postmodern professor.
Paul writes:
Let’s not forget the hilarious, nationally-known 1973 “alien abduction” of two fishermen in Pascagoula, Mississippi. It is still an active subject by people we perhaps should describe politely as hobbyists. My friend, a wit, and I had a good laugh about it at the time on one of our trips through Pascagoula on the way to Daytona Beach on old, two-lane U.S. Highway 90. This stuff is stranger than fiction.
