Betty Hill

Eunice Elizabeth Barrett was born on 28 June 1919 in Newton, New Hampshire. She graduated from the University of New Hampshire and worked as a social worker in Portsmouth, specialising in child welfare. She was married first to Robert Stewart of Kittery, Maine, with whom she had three children: Rose Marie, Constance, and Kenneth. The marriage ended in divorce.

In 1960 she married Barney Hill, a postal worker from Philadelphia who had settled in Portsmouth. Betty and Barney were members of the NAACP, the Seacoast Council on Race and Religion, and a Unitarian church in Portsmouth. Barney sat on a local board of the United States Civil Rights Commission and investigated discrimination cases for the local NAACP chapter.

Barney died of a cerebral haemorrhage on 25 February 1969, aged 46. Betty never remarried. She continued to travel and speak publicly about the encounter until her retirement from public life in 1991. She died of lung cancer on 17 October 2004 at her home in Portsmouth, aged 85. She was buried at Greenwood Cemetery in Kingston, New Hampshire. Her niece Kathleen Marden donated the Betty and Barney Hill Papers to the University of New Hampshire in November 2006.

On the night of 19 September 1961, Betty and Barney Hill were driving south on US Route 3, returning from a holiday in Montreal and Niagara Falls. At approximately 10:30 p.m., south of Lancaster, New Hampshire, they observed a bright object moving erratically in the sky. The sighting intensified near Indian Head, south of Franconia Notch, where Barney stopped the car and observed the object at close range through binoculars. The couple experienced approximately two hours of unaccounted time. They arrived at their home in Portsmouth near dawn on 20 September, unable to recall the final portion of the drive. They filed a report with Pease Air Force Base that day. The base had recorded an anomalous radar contact for the same night.

Betty began experiencing vivid, recurring dreams approximately ten days after the encounter. The dreams continued for five consecutive nights, then stopped. She wrote them down in November 1961. Walter Webb, a Boston astronomer and member of the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena, interviewed the Hills on 21 October 1961 for six hours and concluded they were telling the truth.

In 1964 Betty and Barney began hypnosis sessions with Dr Benjamin Simon, a Boston psychiatrist. Under separate hypnosis, each described overlapping accounts of being taken from their car and examined aboard the object. Betty described being shown a star map by one of the figures she encountered. Simon remained publicly neutral on whether the experience represented a real event or a shared psychological phenomenon, but confirmed the Hills were not fabricating their accounts. John Fuller's The Interrupted Journey: Two Lost Hours Aboard a Flying Saucer (Dial Press, 1966) was based on the hypnosis transcripts with the Hills' permission. Look magazine published a two-part excerpt before the book's release.

In 1968 Marjorie Fish, an Ohio school teacher and amateur astronomer, began analysing Betty's star map using a three-dimensional model constructed from the 1969 Gliese Star Catalogue. Fish identified the pattern as consistent with the view from the Zeta Reticuli system, approximately 39 light-years from Earth. She sent her analysis to Walter Webb, who forwarded it to Terence Dickinson, editor of Astronomy magazine. The journal published Fish's analysis in its December 1974 issue, the first time it had engaged with a UFO report. Carl Sagan and Steven Soter published a rebuttal in the same journal arguing that the match was statistically insignificant. The identification remains contested in the astronomical literature.

• 1919, Born 28 June, Newton, New Hampshire.
• University of New Hampshire. Graduate work in social work.
• Social worker, Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Specialised in child welfare.
• First marriage to Robert Stewart, Kittery, Maine. Three children. Divorced.
• 1960, Married Barney Hill, Portsmouth, New Hampshire.
• 19 to 20 September 1961, Encounter on US Route 3, New Hampshire.
• 20 September 1961, Filed report with Pease Air Force Base.
• 21 October 1961, Interviewed by Walter Webb, NICAP, for six hours.
• November 1961, Wrote down her recurring post-encounter dreams.
• 1964, Began hypnosis sessions with Dr Benjamin Simon, Boston.
• 1966, John Fuller published The Interrupted Journey (Dial Press). Look magazine published a two-part excerpt.
• 25 February 1969, Barney Hill died of a cerebral haemorrhage, aged 46.
• December 1974, Marjorie Fish's star map analysis published in Astronomy magazine.
• 1991, Retired from public life.
• 17 October 2004, Died of lung cancer, Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Buried at Greenwood Cemetery, Kingston.
• November 2006, Betty and Barney Hill Papers donated to the University of New Hampshire by Kathleen Marden.

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 was donated by Kathleen Marden in November 2006 and is open for research. It includes correspondence, Betty's dream journal, hypnosis session documentation, NICAP investigation materials, and press clippings.

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 with the Hills' permission.

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

The Pease Air Force Base intelligence report for the night of 19 to 20 September 1961 documented an anomalous radar contact. A New Hampshire state historical marker at Indian Head commemorates the encounter.

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