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This article first appeared in “The Conspiracy Journal.” The website is: www.conspiracyjournal.com

The Niece Of Famed UFO Abductee Betty Hill Continues Her . . .

“Interrupted Journey”!

By Sean Casteel

            There is no disputing the fact that the Betty and Barney Hill abduction event was the first documented case of the capture, examination and release of human subjects by the alien occupants of a landed UFO. The Hills’ 1961 encounter was thoroughly investigated, mostly in regressive hypnosis sessions conducted by a leading Boston psychiatrist named Dr. Benjamin Simon. In 1966, a best-selling book on the Hills’ abduction, John Fuller’s “The Interrupted Journey,” was published to a curious audience ready to take its bizarre contents seriously.

            Until recently, “The Interrupted Journey” was basically considered to be the last word on the subject of what happened to the Hills. It was said that Fuller’s conservatism of approach helped the book to stand the test of time. Since he made no outrageous, untested claims, his book could not be said to be burdened by any significant errors in fact that required subsequent revision.

            But as it turns out, there remained a goodly portion of the Hills’ story left untold. Betty’s niece, Kathleen Marden, together with veteran UFO researcher Stanton Friedman, has recently published a new book that offers a mountain of later research into the Hills’ encounter: “Captured! The Betty and Barney Hill UFO Experience.”

            We asked Kathleen what had motivated her to write the book.

            “I decided to write ‘Captured!’ initially,” she said, “because I wanted to write my Aunt Betty Hill’s biography. This was in the early 1990s. And before I could do that, I asked her to mentor me in everything that she knew about UFOs. In the course of nearly 15 years, she opened all her files up to me, including all of the letters that she had received from various researchers and scientists. She also gave me her hypnosis tapes, which I transcribed for comparative analysis. It turned into a UFO book because the information that I found was just so fascinating. I thought that the truth needed to be told and that there was a great deal of misinformation about the case.”

            After Kathleen had written about 65,000 words, she decided to ask Stanton Friedman to help out with putting together the final product.

            “I realized that I needed to have a physical scientist assist me with the book,” Kathleen said. “And since Stanton is an outstanding scientific Ufologist as well as a nuclear physicist, I asked him to join me.”

            Betty and Barney Hill were a mixed race couple, something very unusual in their home state of New Hampshire back in 1961. Barney, a black man, worked for the post office, and Betty, a white woman, was a social worker. Both were dedicated political activists, with Barney being appointed to serve as Legal Redress for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, as well as on the U.S. Civil Rights Commission. Being so well established both professionally and politically, neither Betty nor Barney welcomed the publicity that followed in the wake of their encounter with the occupants of a UFO. They even consulted a lawyer at one point, in the hope of blocking a series of articles set to run in a Boston newspaper.

            And just what had happened to the Hills? What had led to this firestorm of controversy?

Kathleen was 13-years-old when her mother, Betty Hill’s younger sister, received a phone call from Betty on September 20, 1961, in which Betty told her about the strange events of the previous night that had transpired as she and Barney drove through New Hampshire’s White Mountains.

The story began when Betty sighted an odd-looking light just below the moon as the couple was returning from a hastily planned weekend excursion in Canada . The light descended to within 80 to 100 feet of their car. Barney left the car and observed beings aboard what now appeared to be a kind of craft. The couple both saw a double row of windows on the disk. When Barney fled the field where he was viewing the UFO, the UFO moved to a point just above their vehicle. The UFO next emitted a series of beeping sounds that seemed to bounce off the trunk of their car. They decided to drive on.

“About 30 to 35 miles south of that field,” Kathleen said, “the UFO seemed to approach them again. They saw a bright red-orange fiery ball in the road, silhouetted against the trees. Then they heard a second series of beeping or buzzing sounds. When they arrived home, Betty and Barney noticed that things weren’t quite right. Immediately they realized that they were home later than they had anticipated, even allowing for this period of observation of the UFO and the stops they made.”

Barney’s best dress shoes were mysteriously scuffed, and Betty’s dress was torn. Both of their watches had stopped at the same time.

When Betty spoke to Kathleen’s mother by phone, Betty told her younger sister that there were now strange circular spots about the size of a silver dollar on the trunk of the Hills’ car. Kathleen’s mother spoke to a physicist who lived in her neighborhood, and he advised the bewildered sisters to hold a compass over the spots to see what would happen.

“When Betty placed the compass directly over these spots,” Kathleen said, “the needle would spin and spin. But when she moved it to other areas of the car, the compass would drop down. Barney also observed this, as well as their upstairs tenants. Within probably two to three days from the time Betty called my mother, we all went down to Betty and Barney’s house, which was about a 20-mile drive from where I lived, where I grew up, and we saw the spots and heard their story.”

The story the Hills had to tell is covered in great detail in “Captured!” and will enthrall both newcomers to the case as well as readers already familiar with much of what was recovered through hypnosis of the missing hours between the two sets of beeping sounds. But what was it like for Kathleen herself?

“After the initial sighting took place,” Kathleen recalled, “I was very excited about this. But at the same time, I also found it frightening. I became fearful of the dark. I was afraid to be out at night alone. My heart would pound when I went to bed. I became very fearful, because of the experience that Betty and Barney had.”

By the time the Hills’ story was confirmed by Dr. Simon’s hypnosis sessions with the couple and John Fuller’s widely read book had made their fantastic story even more credible, Kathleen had reached high school age. She found that her fears increased even more as she went through adolescence.

“Look Magazine” sent a photographer to her high school graduation ceremony and the party that followed, intending the photos to be included in an article for the magazine written by the ever-present John Fuller. The photos were never published, but the incident was a difficult one for Kathleen to put behind her.

“Most of my classmates in high school,” Kathleen said, “didn’t realize what was going on. And when I entered college, people who I told sometimes would tease me. It seems to be okay to tease somebody who has had this kind of experience. I found that to be very uncomfortable, because I certainly thought it was real. I had no reason not to believe my aunt and uncle. I think it was probably out of ignorance that this teasing was done. Many people, many of my friends, took it seriously and were very interested in it. But after I left college and I began a professional career, I tended not to let that information be known. Throughout my career, very, very few people knew that Betty and Barney Hill were my aunt and uncle.”

After college, Kathleen worked for many years in Ohio and Colorado . When she returned to live in New Hampshire , she resumed her close relationship with her Aunt Betty.

“In her old age,” Kathleen said, “I often went to her house, two to three times a week, to assist her with her needs. This was also when a lot of the interviews took place. I played the devils’ advocate for the most part, and attempted to refute what she was saying, usually unsuccessfully. But I was able to clear up a lot of my questions and a lot of the misconceptions I had about the case.

“We often took trips,” Kathleen added, “up to the area in New Hampshire where she and my uncle had their close encounter.”

Transcribing the tape recordings of the Hills’ sessions with Dr. Simon was fascinating, Kathleen said, though the extremes of painful emotion her aunt and uncle endured were sometimes hard to listen to. She has also presented what has been called a “warts and all” biography of her late Aunt Betty.

“Some parts of it were difficult for me to write,” she said, “because sometimes I wondered if I compromised them in some way or revealed information they wouldn’t want revealed. But I felt it was extremely important to put all of the facts on the table and to do it honestly. So that’s what I did. I wanted the whole story to be told.”

[“Captured! The Betty and Barney Hill UFO Experience” by Stanton Friedman and Kathleen Marden is available for purchase in this edition of “The Conspiracy Journal.” We rarely offer UFO-related books from other publishers, but we are so enthused about “Captured!” that we are making an exception.

Also, visit Sean Casteel’s website at www.seancasteel.com  Casteel is the author of “UFOs, Prophecy and the End of Time,” “Signs and Symbols of the Second Coming,” and “The Excluded Books of the Bible,” all available from Global Communications/Inner Light.]

THE END