Speaker 1: Strange Arrivals is a production of I Heart Radio and
Speaker 1: Grim and Mild from Aaron mankey Major Keyhole, as author
Speaker 1: of the book Flying Saucers Are Real. What is your
Speaker 1: opinion of these new sightings of unidentified objects? With a
Speaker 1: little due respect to the Air Force, I believe that
Speaker 1: some of them will prove to be of interplanetary origin.
Speaker 1: During a three year investigation, I found that many police
Speaker 1: have described objects of substance and high speed. One case, Polished,
Speaker 1: reported their plane was buffeted by an object which pest
Speaker 1: them at five miles an hour. Obviously this was a
Speaker 1: solid object, and I believe it was from outer space.
Speaker 1: On the night of September Ninette Betty and Barney Hill,
Speaker 1: a married couple from Portsmouth, New Hampshire, journeyed home from Montreal.
Speaker 1: As they passed through New Hampshire's White Mountains, they had
Speaker 1: a UFO sighting that began with a light in the
Speaker 1: sky and edded with a close up encounter in a
Speaker 1: field near a tourist area known as Indian Head. But
Speaker 1: was there more to this story? They arrived home at
Speaker 1: least two hours later than they had expected. What had
Speaker 1: happened during that time? I'm Toby Ball and This is
Speaker 1: Strange Arrivals Episode two Men in the Road. Shortly after
Speaker 1: the uf encounter, on the night of September, searching for answers,
Speaker 1: Betty Hill went to the Portsmouth Public Library, where she
Speaker 1: checked out a book titled The Flying Saucer Conspiracy by
Speaker 1: Major Donald E. Keyhoe. That was Major Keyhoe speaking at
Speaker 1: a press conference at the beginning of this episode. He
Speaker 1: was an Air Force major and the co founder of
Speaker 1: the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena or NIECAP, a
Speaker 1: prominent UFO investigation organization in the nineteen fifties and sixties.
Speaker 1: We'll look at NIECAP later in this episode. The Flying
Speaker 1: Saucer Conspiracy was published in nineteen fifty three. The basic
Speaker 1: story is that Major Keyho investigates UFO encounters and the
Speaker 1: government's knowledge of them. The government, of course, tries to
Speaker 1: thwart his investigation as a piece of Cold War paranoia.
Speaker 1: It's fascinating. As a work of nonfiction, it doesn't hold
Speaker 1: up very well. This excerpt gives you a taste of
Speaker 1: what the book is like. The moon could have been
Speaker 1: inhabited long ago, been abandoned as conditions changed. It's creatures
Speaker 1: could have reached Mars and established a civilization there to
Speaker 1: return home only at frequent intervals. For perhaps they used
Speaker 1: the Moon as a space base for travel to other planets,
Speaker 1: or there may never have been a Moon race at all.
Speaker 1: The lunar sphere could have been occupied by outsiders from Mars,
Speaker 1: for example, or from a planet beyond our Solar System. Gradually,
Speaker 1: a base could have been built up, most of it
Speaker 1: underground to avoid meteor falls. The intermittent use of the
Speaker 1: Moon is a space base would explain the strange lights
Speaker 1: of the past two centuries, as well as the mysterious
Speaker 1: radial cracks or lines which might be caused by intense
Speaker 1: heat from blast offs. This unknown race might have regarded
Speaker 1: with increasing interest our own world. They too, may fear
Speaker 1: Our explorations. There was another possible answer. The creatures on
Speaker 1: the Moon might be a combination of several races from
Speaker 1: other planets. We might never know until we reached the Moon,
Speaker 1: unless one of their spaceships landed on Earth. You have
Speaker 1: to keep in mind that when this book was written,
Speaker 1: near space was a real mystery. Our window on the
Speaker 1: planets was the lens of a telescope. We didn't have
Speaker 1: any satellites orbiting the Earth. We hadn't put a man
Speaker 1: in space, much less on the Moon. Our knowledge of
Speaker 1: our Solar system was much more in keeping with what
Speaker 1: we knew in eighteen hundred than what we know now.
Speaker 1: You could populate the planets with whatever your imagination conceived.
Speaker 1: Eight years later, in nineteen sixty one, when Betty and
Speaker 1: Barney had their encounter, there were fewer than ten satellites
Speaker 1: in orbit. Right now we have more than forty six hundred.
Speaker 1: Near space was a far more mysterious place sixty years ago.
Speaker 1: The culture surrounding UFOs was also different. Popular interest in
Speaker 1: UFOs dates back to June, when a pilot named Kenneth
Speaker 1: Arnold saw nine metallic flying discs traveling at high speeds
Speaker 1: near Mount Rainier. His story hit the newspapers two days later.
Speaker 1: The Chicago Sun, for instance, ran a two page story
Speaker 1: headlined Supersonic flying Saucers cited by Idaho pilot speed estimated
Speaker 1: at twelve hundred miles an hour when seeing ten thousand
Speaker 1: feet up near Mount Rainier. Two weeks later, in New Mexico,
Speaker 1: the public information officer at Roswell Army Air Force Base
Speaker 1: issued a press release stating that the five hundred and
Speaker 1: ninth Operations Group had recovered a flying disc that had
Speaker 1: crashed on ranch land. The modern UFO era was underway.
Speaker 1: There's only fourteen years between those events, and Betty and
Speaker 1: Barney's experience upology was just finding its legs. Two different
Speaker 1: types of UFO stories emerged during the nineteen fifties. Part
Speaker 1: of what makes the Hills account so compelling is how
Speaker 1: drastically it differed from both of them. The first narrative
Speaker 1: involves so called contact e s, people who claim to
Speaker 1: have met and communicated with aliens. The most famous of
Speaker 1: the contacts was an eccentric Polish born American named George
Speaker 1: adam Ski. I talked to Aaron Gullias about adam Ski
Speaker 1: and the UFO scene of the nineteen fifties. I am
Speaker 1: Aaron Gullias. I'm a history professor and writer and host
Speaker 1: of the podcast The Saucer Life, where I look at
Speaker 1: Flying Saucerer history and lore in all its various forms.
Speaker 1: George Adamski was an interesting figure because he started off
Speaker 1: not as a flying saucer contact, but as sort of
Speaker 1: a spiritualist guru back in the nineteen twenties and thirties
Speaker 1: in California, with an organization called the Royal Order of Tibet,
Speaker 1: and he developed something he called the Cosmic Philosophy. The
Speaker 1: Cosmic philosophy was a not very remarkable mix of Eastern
Speaker 1: philosophy and idiosyncratic Christianity. More interestingly, during Prohibition, adam Ski
Speaker 1: got permission for the Royal Order of Tibet to make
Speaker 1: wine for religious purposes. He made enough, he said, for
Speaker 1: all of southern California, and he made quite a bit
Speaker 1: of money. But prohibition ended, and with it Adamski's winemaking.
Speaker 1: Then he in the nineteen forties, as the Flying Saucer
Speaker 1: Craze begins, writes a science fiction novel called Pioneers of Space,
Speaker 1: which has a crew of people in a rocket ship
Speaker 1: going to various planets in the Solar System and meeting
Speaker 1: Martians on Mars, and Venusians on Venus and Moon, and
Speaker 1: nights on the Moon, and all of these people in
Speaker 1: all these different civilizations have societies that are far in
Speaker 1: advanced of what we have here on the Earth. In
Speaker 1: the early nineteen fifties, he begins taking photographs of what
Speaker 1: he claims are flying saucers. You can find adam Ski's
Speaker 1: photos on the Internet. The saucer has been identified as
Speaker 1: a model constructed from a German medical lamp and three
Speaker 1: light bulbs. In nineteen fifty two, he has a meeting
Speaker 1: in the desert with a being from a flying saucer
Speaker 1: and he communicates through gestures, and he's from the planet Venus.
Speaker 1: The Venusians are concerned because of atomic explosions they've detected
Speaker 1: coming from the Earth that this might spell doom for
Speaker 1: the balance of the Solar System. These other civilizations have
Speaker 1: already passed beyond this stage of development that Earth is in.
Speaker 1: Not only did the Venusians come from an advanced and
Speaker 1: enlightened civilization, they were, according to Adam Ski, kind of hot.
Speaker 1: This is from an interview Adam Ski did it with
Speaker 1: radio host long John Nevile. Yeah, a man about a
Speaker 1: fight with a seven to eight inches and I would
Speaker 1: say around a d and thirty five pounds of quite
Speaker 1: delicate hands. Uh, the tapered fingers and beautiful a very
Speaker 1: sharp eyes looked like they looked right through you. Sometimes
Speaker 1: you couldn't hardly tell what he was really a man
Speaker 1: or a woman. And the long hair waving sure resting
Speaker 1: on his shoulders. He kind of a half away smile,
Speaker 1: and put his hand down and shake and it was
Speaker 1: a pump to pump contact anyway, and he smiled. He
Speaker 1: started telling me things and I couldn't understand, and I
Speaker 1: finally got the idea, I want to know where he's from.
Speaker 1: I pointed to the Sun and I made one or
Speaker 1: it haland Mercury named it, and then Venish and then
Speaker 1: Earth and pointed on myself and they art, and then
Speaker 1: I said, we are you from? They got the idea.
Speaker 1: He finally pointed to the Sun and he made one
Speaker 1: orbit and saying nothing, made a second orbit and he
Speaker 1: pointed to himself and to that orbit, and that meant Venish.
Speaker 1: That's how I knew he was Venetian. It's hard to
Speaker 1: imagine anyone taking this very seriously. Back in the nineteen fifties,
Speaker 1: it was very much akin to to science fiction fandom.
Speaker 1: And you get the impression that even when they don't
Speaker 1: believe every word of something that somebody like Adam Ski wrote,
Speaker 1: they recognize the value of his message, which honestly, I
Speaker 1: think is what Adam Ski was trying to get across
Speaker 1: the flying Saucers. We can take or leave, but his
Speaker 1: consistent message of humanity needing, needing, to ascend to a
Speaker 1: higher moral plane that predates his saucer stories, goes back
Speaker 1: to his stuff he was doing in the twenties and thirties.
Speaker 1: So you have the contact e s spreading this story
Speaker 1: of peace, fellowship and high spiritual attainment. But there was
Speaker 1: another track of interest in UFOs what Aaron calls the
Speaker 1: nuts and bolts people, people who took a more scientific
Speaker 1: approach trying to determine what was causing these reports of
Speaker 1: unidentified craft in the skies. Among its ranks were many
Speaker 1: professionals such as journalists, scientists, and military personnel. There's also
Speaker 1: from the nuts and bolts people a deep disdain for contact.
Speaker 1: He is um for for sort of making UFOs or
Speaker 1: flying saucers, something that's easy to laugh at, which brings
Speaker 1: us back to Major Keyhoe. Donald Kehoe wasn't the founder
Speaker 1: of NIGHTCAP, but he took control of it very quickly.
Speaker 1: NIGHTCAP is the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomenon and
Speaker 1: in its earliest incarnation in nineteen fifties, it's governing board
Speaker 1: had people who had been connected with the military and
Speaker 1: intelligence and and government circles at the national level, and
Speaker 1: Donald Kehoe, who was an aviation journalist and Marine Corps
Speaker 1: major took a very common sense approach to UFOs. In
Speaker 1: a lot of ways, these are strange objects flying in
Speaker 1: our skies. They are behaving in ways that our technology can't.
Speaker 1: The Air Force has been interested in them. Therefore, the
Speaker 1: Air Force must know something about these craft that we
Speaker 1: do not know and that they refused to tell us.
Speaker 1: So Nightcapp's mission from very early on was in attempting
Speaker 1: to get the handling of UFOs. The investigation of UFOs
Speaker 1: moved away from the Air Force toward more civilian investigation
Speaker 1: efforts to have government hearings and civilian government sponsored research
Speaker 1: into the UFO phenomenon, because the Air Force would just
Speaker 1: keep everything secret. This secrecy is a main theme of
Speaker 1: the Flying Saucer conspiracy. Nightcap saw the Air Force's approach
Speaker 1: as being unhelpful to solving the mystery and believed that
Speaker 1: if only Congress would authorize a big research project, we
Speaker 1: might be able to get to the bottom of this
Speaker 1: and get the Air Force out of the picture and
Speaker 1: force them to maybe bring forth what they know and
Speaker 1: admit whatever the truth might be about it. But Nightcap
Speaker 1: was was very much focused on sightings on evidence on
Speaker 1: on very detailed, careful reports from witnesses. They had no
Speaker 1: time for contact ease, They had no time for anything
Speaker 1: they saw as as silly in Nightcap would be the
Speaker 1: first group Betty and Barney Hill would reach out to
Speaker 1: with their story Strange arrivals will return in a moment.
Speaker 1: At the time of the Hills encounter, Nightcap was the
Speaker 1: most prominent UFO investigation organization in the country. They had
Speaker 1: over five thousand members in chapters across the US. By
Speaker 1: the sixties, membership had grown to fourteen thousand. Among its
Speaker 1: ranks were many professionals such as journalists, scientists, and military personnel.
Speaker 1: After reading Donald Keyhos The Flying Saucer Conspiracy, Betty contacted Nightcap.
Speaker 1: They sent an astronomer named Walter Webb to investigate in
Speaker 1: October of n a month after the encounter. This early
Speaker 1: investigation was mostly concerned with establishing the events that we
Speaker 1: looked at in episode one. Here's a passage from Webb's
Speaker 1: report on his meeting with the Hills, as read by
Speaker 1: an actor. It gives you a sense of his conclusions.
Speaker 1: Following my initial six hour interrogation of the witnesses on
Speaker 1: October one, nineteen, I was of the opinion the Hills
Speaker 1: were telling the truth and that the first encounter with
Speaker 1: the UFO occurred exactly as reported, except for minor uncertainties
Speaker 1: and technicalities that must be tolerated in any such observation
Speaker 1: where human judgment is involved, i e. Exact time and
Speaker 1: length of visibility, apparent sizes of object and occupants, distance
Speaker 1: and height of object, etcetera. Although their occupations did not
Speaker 1: qualify the witnesses as scientific observers, I was impressed by
Speaker 1: their intelligence, apparent honesty, and obvious desire to get at
Speaker 1: the facts and to play the more sensational aspects of
Speaker 1: the siding. Neither witness had read any books on the
Speaker 1: UFO subject before the siding. Mr. Hill especially had been
Speaker 1: a complete UFO skeptic before the experience. He's still to
Speaker 1: test the term flying saucer. Two things changed for Betty
Speaker 1: and Barney after the ufone counter. First, Betty had vivid
Speaker 1: dreams of being kidnapped and brought aboard a craft. They
Speaker 1: were so unusual that she began to think they might
Speaker 1: be subconscious memories of an actual abduction. On the night
Speaker 1: of the encounter. In November, she wrote about her dreams
Speaker 1: in a document titled Dreams or Recall. We'll take a
Speaker 1: closer look at these dreams later in the series, but
Speaker 1: in introducing the dreams, she writes, I will attempt to
Speaker 1: tell my dreams in chronic logical order, although they were
Speaker 1: not dreamed in this way, and in fact the first
Speaker 1: dream told was the last one dreamed. My emotional feelings
Speaker 1: during this part was of terror, greater than I had
Speaker 1: ever believed possible. The second thing was that Barney's health
Speaker 1: took a turn for the worse. He developed a circular
Speaker 1: pattern of warts around his groin, His mental health deteriorated,
Speaker 1: and he began to suffer from ulcers. But he explained
Speaker 1: this during a talk she gave in Connecticut. Then Barney's
Speaker 1: health began to fail and to the point that he
Speaker 1: became totally disabled. He would not responding the medication. His
Speaker 1: doctor thought that maybe he has some kind of emotional problem,
Speaker 1: so he sent Bonnie to a friend of his, a psychiatrist,
Speaker 1: and Biling is going in talking about his early childhood
Speaker 1: and his mother and his wild We're not al This
Speaker 1: psychiatrist was Duncan Stevens, and his office was an Exeter,
Speaker 1: New Hampshire. Here's Barney Hill from a man sixty six
Speaker 1: appearance on the Alan Douglas Show. I had an altar
Speaker 1: that has not bothered him, but he then began to
Speaker 1: bother me, and it did not respond to any medication
Speaker 1: from the medical cospel, and so h He then decided
Speaker 1: about a possibly it had some kind of psychological origin
Speaker 1: or cause that continued so that it persisted in we
Speaker 1: maybe causing this distress with the UFO encounter was mostly
Speaker 1: ignored during these sessions, but in nineteen sixty three, Dr
Speaker 1: Stevens felt that Barney could benefit from hypnosis therapy and
Speaker 1: referred him to the esteemed Boston based psychiatrist Dr Benjamin Simon.
Speaker 1: Dr Simon was famous for his work with returning soldiers
Speaker 1: suffering from what we would now call PTSD. Betty went
Speaker 1: along with Barney to the first appointment. This is Kathleen Martin,
Speaker 1: Betty Hill's niece and an experienced UFO investigator. She indicated
Speaker 1: to Dr Simon that she would like to be hypnotized
Speaker 1: as well, so he agreed to hypnotize the two of
Speaker 1: them separately and to reinstate amnesia because they had amnesia
Speaker 1: for the events that occurred with Dr Fireman Umber that individually,
Speaker 1: and he also gave us amnesia at the end of reason,
Speaker 1: so that we could not remember when had happened, and
Speaker 1: that's why we couldn't talk about it. He had worked
Speaker 1: with us quite a bit, and then he opened up
Speaker 1: the amnesias so we could what had happened. For a time,
Speaker 1: Dr Simon ensured that Barney and Betty could not recall
Speaker 1: the content of their sessions. This was to prevent further
Speaker 1: trauma and to keep them from discussing the memories that
Speaker 1: had come up under hypnosis. Eventually, Dr Simon played the
Speaker 1: tapes back to the Hills so that they could process
Speaker 1: what they had recovered during hypnotic regression. Leader tell me something.
Speaker 1: Over the course of these sessions, a story emerged, a
Speaker 1: story that explained what had happened during the early hours
Speaker 1: of September, a story that seemed to fill in the
Speaker 1: missing time from their trip. It starts with Barney, for
Speaker 1: no apparent reason, turning off the highway. What they revealed,
Speaker 1: and they did this separately, is that somehow they found
Speaker 1: themselves on a new road. They were tall trees all around.
Speaker 1: Barney turned then onto a dirt road. It's my understanding.
Speaker 1: Betty consciously recalled him moving the car, almost stopping them,
Speaker 1: but almost screeching the brakes and turning towards the left.
Speaker 1: And so they went down this dirt road, and standing
Speaker 1: in the dirt road were men and they were holding
Speaker 1: One of them was holding some kind of lighted thing
Speaker 1: in its hand. There was a red orange glow in
Speaker 1: the background. Again from Barney's radio interview. Can you describe
Speaker 1: are you? Are you able to describe well? When I
Speaker 1: saw them in the headlights of the car before the
Speaker 1: lights went out, they were in dart stimular kinds of
Speaker 1: dan and I called it a uniform, which I thought
Speaker 1: as a p jacket. I also understand Allan that in
Speaker 1: critical situation we continually try to put things into the
Speaker 1: frame of reference that we can identify with as a
Speaker 1: natural thing, so that I thought of the uniforms being
Speaker 1: much like a jacket. On March seven, during a hypno
Speaker 1: secession in Dr Simon's Boston office, Betty relived what happened
Speaker 1: on this remote stretch of road. I thought, well, you know,
Speaker 1: they in a car and the cat broke it down,
Speaker 1: or what are they doing there? And Donnie said to stop,
Speaker 1: and then he stops the calf and these had status
Speaker 1: come up to the calf. They they separated. They came
Speaker 1: up in two groups. And when they started to do that,
Speaker 1: I get real scared. Yeah, the car motor died the
Speaker 1: cast off, and whether he started covering up val He
Speaker 1: tried to start the car. He tried to start it.
Speaker 1: And you know how a mote of a cow just
Speaker 1: turn over turn over at WoT five. Yeah, he's trying
Speaker 1: to stomach you did what. He's trying to start the car.
Speaker 1: It won't start. Because then just and I think, well,
Speaker 1: I can't get away from this. I can if I
Speaker 1: get the car door up like a brother than wit
Speaker 1: and ide and I was thinking of and I just
Speaker 1: put my head on the car door and open up it.
Speaker 1: Just the may come up and they open it for me.
Speaker 1: And they opened the cat door. And this very big
Speaker 1: bit and this what next day is this? Who there's
Speaker 1: a couple of bits behind me. Is that this body
Speaker 1: is okay, this is a bandit each side of him
Speaker 1: and my eyes are opened. My body is still asleeps
Speaker 1: he's lacking it. He's asleep. And then I think gonna
Speaker 1: get bad, And they go, oh the heck are these
Speaker 1: characters and what do they think that's going. Yes, So
Speaker 1: I turn aroundinized the body. I got, why don't you
Speaker 1: wake up? If he doesn't Patty attend? Should he keeps walking?
Speaker 1: I keep going a little bit further and I turned
Speaker 1: around it I say his name to get body wake up.
Speaker 1: He doesn't pay attention that the man who's walking beside
Speaker 1: me here, he says, Oh, is his name Unnie? Yes,
Speaker 1: that's her round. I looked at this man and I
Speaker 1: said it's none of his business. So I didn't speak
Speaker 1: to him. Did we keep walking? Did I try to
Speaker 1: wake Batty up again? I can see a batty body
Speaker 1: wake up, and he doesn't. So the man said he
Speaker 1: can't ask me again. He said he's biding his name.
Speaker 1: Did I wouldn't ask him? So that he says, He says,
Speaker 1: you don't be afraid. You don't have any reason to
Speaker 1: be afraid. We wasn't I gonna have you, but we
Speaker 1: just want to do some test with a tense of
Speaker 1: rowful women. We'll take you a body back and put
Speaker 1: you with your car. You'll be a you way back
Speaker 1: home in no time. So he was sort of reassuring
Speaker 1: it away. But I wasn't get his trusted what he said,
Speaker 1: and I wasn't sure what was going to happen, and
Speaker 1: we kept the body was told asleep, and then we
Speaker 1: came to that's clearing h and I wish it was
Speaker 1: lighter so I could get a been a pink ju
Speaker 1: hunt up. There was a ramp and it don't want
Speaker 1: there was the object was on the grab It was
Speaker 1: I say what I was watching as the sky and
Speaker 1: there were trees and there was a pass and there
Speaker 1: was a claring at this object, just the clary I
Speaker 1: could see just about filled up filled up the clearing
Speaker 1: and they're taking me up to the object. I had
Speaker 1: a lot of a lot of I I don't know
Speaker 1: what's going to happen to like a lot of I
Speaker 1: don't want to go? Yes, I go up the ramp?
Speaker 1: Should I go inside? These weren't Georgia Adamski's beautiful space
Speaker 1: piece next But what were they and what did they want? Next?
Speaker 1: Time on Strange Arrivals. Strange Arrivals is a production of
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio and Grim and Mild from Aaron Manky.
Speaker 1: This episode was written and hosted by Toby Bowl and
Speaker 1: produced by Miranda Hawkins and Josh Thane, with executive producers
Speaker 1: Alex Williams, Matt Frederick and Aaron Manky. Betty Hill was
Speaker 1: portrayed by Gina Rickicki. Walter Webb was voiced by Michael J. Weaver.
Speaker 1: Special thanks to the MILNS Special Collections and Archives at
Speaker 1: the University of New Hampshire, John Horrigan, w y A
Speaker 1: M in Norwich, Connecticut, John White, and David O'Leary, the
Speaker 1: executive producer of the History Channel's dramatic series Project Bluebook.
Speaker 1: Learn more about the show over at grimm and mil
Speaker 1: dot com. For a more podcasts from I Heart Radio,
Speaker 1: visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows. H