Advertisement

No One Helped The First Credible Victims Of Alien Abduction

Erin Marquis
·2 min read
Barney and Betty Hill were an American couple, allegedly abducted by extra-terrestrials, in a rural portion of New Hampshire from September 19 to 20, 1961.
Barney and Betty Hill were an American couple, allegedly abducted by extra-terrestrials, in a rural portion of New Hampshire from September 19 to 20, 1961.


Barney and Betty Hill were an American couple, allegedly abducted by extra-terrestrials, in a rural portion of New Hampshire from September 19 to 20, 1961.

Nothing ends an optimistic faith in the goodness of government quite like an alien encounter. Our own Navy pilots have been terrified of losing their jobs for decades about coming forward about strange things in the sky, so why would anyone believe an average couple from New Hampshire?

Of course, Betty and Barney Hill were anything but average. A new book, The Abduction of Betty and Barney Hill: Alien Encounters, Civil Rights, and the New Age in America by Matthew Bowman, dives into the people they were and they America they lived in when they experienced what’s considered the first credible alien abduction.

ADVERTISEMENT

Read more

For Bowman, understanding the Hills begins with understanding them as a product of New Deal liberalism. Betty was raised by liberals in a nearly all-white New Hampshire; her mother was a union organizer, and after her first marriage ended, she went back to school to become a social worker. Barney grew up in a prosperous Black neighborhood in Philadelphia, and from an early age was steeped in the respectability politics of the era. By the time they met, both were firm believers in the idea that the country was on a forward trajectory, and that through work, reason, and sensible policy, a healthier, happy America was possible.

The Hill’s story became iconic for what American’s think of as alien abduction scenarios. The two were traveling down a lonesome highway on a road trip in Quebec, when they noticed a bright light in the sky. They later found themselves at home at 5 a.m., when the trip should have only taken them until 2 a.m. at the latest. Both experienced nightmares after the events and Betty eventually convinced Barney to seek the help of a psychologist to help recover their memories. It’s from this retelling that we get the popular image of tiny gray aliens with large eyes and large heads forcing medical experiments on human beings of a reproductive nature.

After being dismissed by both their government and the medical establishment, Betty began to drift into the only community that supported them—the fringe UFO community. The breakdown of the book is as fascinating as the even itself, and you can read more about it here.

More from Jalopnik

Sign up for Jalopnik's Newsletter. For the latest news, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

Click here to read the full article.