The Abduction of Betty and Barney Hill

On a rural highway in New Hampshire on September 19, 1961, Betty and Barney Hill, a social worker and postman, respectively, saw a UFO and were abducted by aliens. Their detailed descriptions, photographs, drawings, transcriptions of hypnotism and medical examinations of the encounter have served as the primary template for ufologists and innumerable creators of fiction ever since. Now comes a new examination of the Hills placed in context with the era’s breakdown of American society. The Abduction of Betty and Barney Hill: Alien Encounters, Civil Rights, and the New Age in America is written by scholar Matthew Bowman, Howard W. Hunter Chair of Mormon Studies and associate professor of history and religion at Claremont Graduate University. 

The HIlls were also an interracial couple, involved in civil rights reforms, and active Unitarians. The public’s reaction to their story of an extraterrestrial encounter tells as much about a society in a period of dramatic transition as it does a description of small gray creatures with very large eyes. (The Yale University Press book arrives August 29, 2023.)