Friday, April 24, 2009

Musings About a Museum




Betty and Barney Hill were a biracial couple living in Durham, New Hampshire. Barney Hill was a postman and a civil rights activist for the NAACP (The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People). Betty, who was a graduate of UNH, did some social work. On the morning of September 20, 1961 while returning from a vacation in Niagra Falls, NY and Montreal on US Route 3 through the White Mountains, Betty had said she spotted an illuminated object zooming through the sky. Just South of the Franconia Notch in New Hampshire, the disc started to descend, and according to Barney, it hovered 100 feet above their car. They apparently remembered Barney leaving the car to have a look at some sort of humanoid creature, getting back in to the car, and driving home, scared and confused. But this memory maybe wasn't all they thought it was, for the couple noticed that Betty's dress from the other night was torn and their watches had stopped. They even found that their car trunk was marked with concentric circles that made their compass needle spin.
The Hills told their story to their families and to the military officers at the Pease Air Force Base, but didn't tell their tale to anybody else, for they were afraid that they might scoff and mark them as lunatics or that they were raving. Before long, Betty started to have a reocurring dream of the aliens taking them into their ship and doing all sorts of physical tests, and even putting a needle into her abdomen. She also dreamt of seeing the star map that the aliens had brought. Later, in 1964, the Hills went through a series of hypnosis sessions, and told everything that had happened.
Well, Kathy Marden, who pegs herself as a UFOlogist, believed her aunt's (Betty) story. "They were honest, stable, regular people," Marden told the Boston Globe. She also decided to put some of the famed Hill alien abduction artifacts on display, such as Betty's torn dress, the tapes of the hypnosis sessions, a paper mache bust made based on Betty's descriptions of the head alien (who Betty's named Junior), and other items as well. These artifacts can be found at the University of New Hampshire museum.

1 comment:

cryptidude said...

This is a very cool story. Where did you learn about it?