Betty and Barney Hill Abduction - Skeptical Arguments

Skeptical Arguments

• Psychiatrists reportedly later suggested that the supposed abduction was a hallucination brought on by the stress of being an interracial couple in early 1960s United States. Betty discounted this suggestion, noting her relationship with Barney was happy, and their interracial marriage caused no notable problems with their friends or family. As noted in The Interrupted Journey, Dr. Simon thought that the Hills' marital status had nothing to do with the UFO encounter.
• Paranormal investigator Brian Dunning reports that the hypnosis sessions occurred over two years after the reported abductions, plenty of time for the couple to discuss their encounter. In a 2008 article, Dunning calls their story "merely an inventive tale from the mind of a lifelong UFO fanatic.. is unsupported by any useful evidence, and is perfectly consistent with the purely natural explanation." Dunning's statements, however, are not supported by factual information. Betty was not a lifelong UFO enthusiast. According to Barney's 1961 letter to Major Donald Keyhoe and early investigative reports, she had not read even one book about UFOs before her close encounter on September 19, 1961, nor had he.

In his 1990 article "Entirely Unpredisposed", Martin Kottmeyer suggested that Barney's memories revealed under hypnosis might have been influenced by an episode of the science fiction television show The Outer Limits titled "The Bellero Shield", which was broadcast about two weeks before Barney's first hypnotic session. The episode featured an extraterrestrial with large eyes who says, "In all the universes, in all the unities beyond the universes, all who have eyes have eyes that speak." The report from the regression featured a scenario that was in some respects similar to the television show. In part, Kottmeyer wrote:

"Wraparound eyes are an extreme rarity in science fiction films. I know of only one instance. They appeared on the alien of an episode of an old TV series The Outer Limits entitled "The Bellero Shield". A person familiar with Barney's sketch in "The Interrupted Journey" and the sketch done in collaboration with the artist David Baker will find a "frisson" of "déjà vu" creeping up his spine when seeing this episode. The resemblance is much abetted by an absence of ears, hair, and nose on both aliens. Could it be by chance? Consider this: Barney first described and drew the wraparound eyes during the hypnosis session dated 22 February 1964. "The Bellero Shield" was first broadcast on "10 February 1964. Only twelve days separate the two instances. If the identification is admitted, the commonness of wraparound eyes in the abduction literature falls to cultural forces."

When a different researcher asked Betty about The Outer Limits, she insisted she had "never heard of it". Kottmeyer also pointed out that some motifs in the Hills' account were present in the 1953 film, Invaders from Mars. A careful analysis of Barney's description of the non-human entities that he observed reveals significant differences between the "Bifrost Man" and Barney's descriptive details. One must also take into account Barney's conscious recall of the entities he observed on the hovering craft. They were dressed in black, shiny uniforms and were "somehow not human".

• Jim Macdonald, a resident of the area in which the Hills claimed to have been abducted, has produced a detailed analysis of their journey which concludes that the episode was in fact provoked by their misperceiving an aircraft warning beacon on Cannon Mountain as a UFO. Macdonald notes that from the road the Hills took the beacon appears and disappears at exactly the same time the Hills describe the UFO as appearing and disappearing. The remainder of the experience is ascribed to stress, sleep deprivation, and false memories 'recovered' under hypnosis. UFO expert Robert Sheaffer writes after reading Macdonald's recreation that the Hills are the "poster children" for not driving when sleep deprived. Macdonald's article focuses primarily on the Hill's observations of the light in the sky and the timing of the journey, discounting the Hill's accounts of close encounters south of Cannon Mountain as recovered memories.

• Sheaffer reports that Betty Hill as late as 1977 would still go on UFO vigils three times a week. During one evening she was joined by UFO enthusiast, John Oswald. When asked about Betty's continuing UFO observations, Oswald stated, she is not really seeing UFO's but she is calling them that. On the night they went out together "Mrs. Hill was unable to 'distinguish between a landed UFO and a streetlight'". In a later interview, Sheaffer recounts that Betty Hill writes "'UFO's are a new science... and our science cannot explain them'".