Barney Hill

Barney Hill Jr. was born on 20 July 1922 in Newport News, Virginia, the youngest of four children. His father worked at a local shipyard. The family later moved to Philadelphia, where Barney attended Temple University. He served in the United States Army during the Second World War.

After the war he married Ruby Horn. They had two children. The marriage ended in divorce. Barney moved to Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and took a position with the United States Postal Service. On 12 May 1960 he married Betty Barrett, a social worker. Betty was white; Barney was Black. They were an interracial couple in early-1960s New Hampshire. Both were members of the NAACP, the Seacoast Council on Race and Religion, and a Unitarian church in Portsmouth. Barney served as a legal officer for the local NAACP chapter, sat on a local board of the United States Civil Rights Commission, and participated in the Rockingham County Community Action Program.

He died suddenly of a cerebral haemorrhage on 25 February 1969 in Portsmouth, aged 46. His death came three years after the publication of John Fuller's The Interrupted Journey and five years after the hypnosis sessions with Dr Benjamin Simon that had documented his and Betty's accounts of the encounter.

At Indian Head, south of Franconia Notch in New Hampshire, on the night of 19 September 1961, Barney stopped the car he and Betty were driving south on US Route 3 and walked toward an object hovering above the tree line. Through binoculars he observed a large disc-shaped craft with a double row of windows. Behind the windows he saw figures wearing what he described as military caps and shiny outfits. He experienced a compulsion to approach and an inability to lower the binoculars.

He broke free, ran back to the car, and drove south. The couple arrived home in Portsmouth near dawn with approximately two hours unaccounted for.

In 1964 the Hills began separate hypnosis sessions with Dr Benjamin Simon, a Boston psychiatrist. Barney's account overlapped with Betty's on the sequence of events but differed in specific details, a pattern Simon noted was consistent with independent recall rather than coordinated fabrication. Barney described being taken from the car, led aboard the object, and examined. His sessions were marked by sustained emotional distress. The racial dimension of his experience surfaced throughout the transcripts. His description of being stared at in a restaurant in Coaticook, Quebec, during the same holiday trip placed the encounter within a broader experience of vulnerability that preceded the sighting on Route 3.

Barney died before the case reached its widest audience. The NBC television film The UFO Incident, directed by Richard A. Colla, aired on 20 October 1975, six years after his death. James Earl Jones played Barney; Estelle Parsons played Betty; Barnard Hughes played Dr Simon. J. Dennis Robinson, a New Hampshire journalist who listened to the original hypnosis tapes, observed that Jones "did a good job of sounding like Barney." Kathleen Marden and Stanton Friedman's Captured! (Career Press, 2007), drawing on the hypnosis transcripts and family records, documented both accounts in full.

• 1922, Born 20 July, Newport News, Virginia.
• Attended Temple University, Philadelphia.
• Second World War, United States Army.
• First marriage to Ruby Horn. Two children. Divorced.
• Moved to Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Employed by the United States Postal Service.
• 12 May 1960, Married Betty Barrett, Portsmouth.
• Active in the NAACP (legal officer), United States Civil Rights Commission (local board), Rockingham County Community Action Program, Seacoast Council on Race and Religion.
• 19 to 20 September 1961, Encounter on US Route 3, New Hampshire.
• 1964, Hypnosis sessions with Dr Benjamin Simon, Boston.
• 1966, John Fuller published The Interrupted Journey (Dial Press).
• 25 February 1969, Died of a cerebral haemorrhage, Portsmouth, aged 46.
• 20 October 1975, NBC television film The UFO Incident aired. James Earl Jones as Barney Hill.

The Betty and Barney Hill Papers are held at the University of New Hampshire's Milne Special Collections and Archives (MC 197), Durham, New Hampshire. The collection includes the hypnosis session documentation, correspondence, and press clippings. Donated by Kathleen Marden in November 2006.

John G. Fuller, The Interrupted Journey: Two Lost Hours Aboard a Flying Saucer (New York: Dial Press, 1966), is the primary published account, based on the Simon hypnosis transcripts.

Stanton T. Friedman and Kathleen Marden, Captured! The Betty and Barney Hill UFO Experience (Franklin Lakes, NJ: Career Press, 2007), reproduces extended excerpts from the hypnosis transcripts and provides family context through Marden's access to Betty's personal records.

The UFO Incident (NBC, 20 October 1975), directed by Richard A. Colla, is the primary dramatisation of the case. Released on Blu-ray by Kino Lorber Studio Classics in 2022.

• The Betty and Barney Hill Abduction, 1961, the case exhibition.
• Betty Hill, wife and co-experiencer.
• Stanton Friedman, co-author with Kathleen Marden of Captured! (2007).
• United States country profile.