WEBVTT - Regressed 0:00:02.279 --> 0:00:05.560 Strange Arrivals is a production of I Heart Radio and 0:00:05.680 --> 0:00:13.239 Grim and Mild Some Aaron Manky, go Tellahu talk to 0:00:13.400 --> 0:00:21.200 you tonight? Five General Food. Hello, here's your host Dall 0:00:21.280 --> 0:00:25.279 to tell the crows call you? Why do one of 0:00:25.320 --> 0:00:30.120 these beings? Right now? Let's meet our first team of challenge. 0:00:33.080 --> 0:00:36.400 What is your name? Please? My name is Bonnie Hill. 0:00:38.560 --> 0:00:43.560 My name is Barney Hill. My name is Bonnie Hill. 0:00:44.320 --> 0:00:47.120 Let's start the questioning with Arson B and Arson Number two? 0:00:47.640 --> 0:00:51.120 How tall were these humanoid creatures? Well? They were short 0:00:51.760 --> 0:00:55.080 five nine or five ten at the most. Number three? 0:00:55.200 --> 0:00:58.680 Did they speak English? Not in an actual speaking type voice? 0:00:58.840 --> 0:01:02.440 It was something like thought transferred? Number one? What physical 0:01:02.520 --> 0:01:09.320 symptoms did you later? Notice? What's what's is tom? Number one? 0:01:09.360 --> 0:01:10.920 Where you were alert when you were in the ship 0:01:10.959 --> 0:01:16.320 and awake? Uh? More like in a sim nabilistic states. 0:01:16.640 --> 0:01:18.919 Number two when they examined you, did they stick needles 0:01:18.920 --> 0:01:21.600 in you? Not needles? Needle? Remember when did they stick 0:01:21.600 --> 0:01:24.119 a needle in Betty too? Yes, they stuck a needle 0:01:24.160 --> 0:01:28.560 in Betty? Were they like our needles? Number one? I 0:01:28.600 --> 0:01:31.880 didn't say the needle? Were they the same build as us? 0:01:31.880 --> 0:01:33.880 I mean, you know, how did they like have pointy 0:01:33.920 --> 0:01:39.319 heads or something. No, they had large cranium and the 0:01:39.400 --> 0:01:44.080 chin was very small, wouldn't you know it? That's all 0:01:44.120 --> 0:01:47.400 the time we had, which we did have more fascinating story. 0:01:47.680 --> 0:01:50.160 So mark a ballace, if you will please, without any consultation, 0:01:50.200 --> 0:01:53.279 and of course without changing once you have marked Tom. 0:01:53.280 --> 0:01:56.400 For whom did you vote? I voted for number one, 0:01:56.480 --> 0:02:00.160 but I couldn't tell anything from the stories that they 0:02:00.160 --> 0:02:01.840 each told. But he looked like the kind of man 0:02:01.880 --> 0:02:06.800 who would have binoculars handy in his car, Beggy Cat. 0:02:06.960 --> 0:02:09.839 I voted for number one because they had big kids 0:02:09.840 --> 0:02:12.120 in me seating chins and wouldn't you know it's arsen 0:02:12.560 --> 0:02:15.240 I think that there's two great liars up there. And 0:02:15.280 --> 0:02:17.720 I had no way of judging except that the whole 0:02:17.760 --> 0:02:21.280 thing took place around New England. And when I asked 0:02:21.360 --> 0:02:24.720 Number one about the warts, he said watch they had watched. 0:02:25.520 --> 0:02:28.600 And I'm from New England too, and I noticed watches, watches, 0:02:28.680 --> 0:02:32.400 watch votes are all in mind's made up, as you heard, 0:02:32.400 --> 0:02:34.359 and all let's find out which one of these three 0:02:34.360 --> 0:02:39.080 gentlemen in truth is Barney Hill. Well, the real Barney Hill, 0:02:39.919 --> 0:02:53.440 please stand up on this episode of To Tell the Truth, 0:02:53.960 --> 0:02:57.240 the panelists were able to identify number one as the 0:02:57.280 --> 0:03:01.400 real Barney Hill, and both here and elsewhere, he was 0:03:01.440 --> 0:03:04.560 telling the truth as he saw it, but some of 0:03:04.560 --> 0:03:08.280 this truth involved memories that were revealed during his hypnosis 0:03:08.320 --> 0:03:12.440 sessions with Dr Benjamin Simon. This brings up an important 0:03:12.560 --> 0:03:17.160 question in evaluating the Hills experience. How much can you 0:03:17.240 --> 0:03:22.600 rely on memories recovered through hypnotic regression? Simply put, is 0:03:22.680 --> 0:03:30.320 hypnosis a reliable tool for bringing back memories? I'm Toby 0:03:30.360 --> 0:03:53.280 Ball and this is Strange Arrivals Episode five regressed Betty 0:03:53.320 --> 0:03:56.520 and Barney underwent their hypnosis treatment with Dr Benjamin Simon. 0:03:58.800 --> 0:04:01.960 We now have a much better understanding of how hypnosis works. 0:04:02.760 --> 0:04:07.600 Hosted the Skeptic Podcast Bryan Dunning. So this is actually 0:04:07.640 --> 0:04:09.680 what originally got me into this because I was working 0:04:09.680 --> 0:04:12.360 on another subject at the time, which was the whole 0:04:12.360 --> 0:04:17.440 topic of hypnotic regression in general. And these recovered memories 0:04:18.560 --> 0:04:21.520 and the Betty Varney Hill story is kind of a 0:04:21.560 --> 0:04:24.240 classic example of what we think of as these recovered 0:04:24.279 --> 0:04:29.640 memories under hypnosis. It's now no longer the nineteen sixties, 0:04:29.680 --> 0:04:32.520 it's now the two thousand teens, and we now have 0:04:33.120 --> 0:04:36.200 very solid evidence that there is no such thing as 0:04:36.279 --> 0:04:41.520 hypnotic regression or recovered repressed memories. That's just simply not 0:04:41.680 --> 0:04:47.600 a part of psychology. That body of evidence is extraordinarily robust. 0:04:48.400 --> 0:04:51.000 We see things like a court cases being overturned and 0:04:51.040 --> 0:04:54.320 stuff based on kind of the modern science of hypnosis 0:04:54.320 --> 0:04:59.599 and psychology. Hypnotic regression came to the public attention in 0:04:59.640 --> 0:05:03.120 the nine teen eighties and nineties. At this time, some 0:05:03.200 --> 0:05:07.440 psychiatric professionals were working with patients, often children, to quote 0:05:07.480 --> 0:05:12.480 unquote recover memories of sexual abuse. One outcome of this 0:05:12.560 --> 0:05:15.760 movement was a rash of claims that sexual abuse rituals 0:05:15.920 --> 0:05:20.360 were being organized by groups of Satanists. The so called 0:05:20.400 --> 0:05:25.559 Satanic panic was eventually fully discredited and hypnotic regression along 0:05:25.640 --> 0:05:31.320 with it. Author freelance writer and skeptical investigator Robert Schaffer, 0:05:34.240 --> 0:05:37.359 and this whole business about recovered memories. If you recall 0:05:37.880 --> 0:05:40.919 back in the late eighties and early nineties, it was 0:05:40.960 --> 0:05:46.720 a big thing to hypnotize people that allegedly repressed memories 0:05:46.760 --> 0:05:51.080 of sexual abuse, usually or some other trauma, but for 0:05:51.160 --> 0:05:54.080 the most party, it was sexual abuse, and it was 0:05:54.160 --> 0:05:58.000 there was just a huge controversy over this, so many people, 0:05:58.640 --> 0:06:02.080 you know, we're claiming to have recovered such memories, either 0:06:02.200 --> 0:06:06.640 with or without hypnosis. And when somebody you know, claimed 0:06:06.640 --> 0:06:09.400 to recover this, they had, you know, there were support groups. 0:06:10.000 --> 0:06:13.160 It was a big thing. Innocent people got accused of 0:06:13.680 --> 0:06:18.120 terrible crimes based only on so called recovered memories, and 0:06:18.200 --> 0:06:22.320 the whole thing. Again, it's a very sad chapter. It's 0:06:22.320 --> 0:06:28.120 a very embarrassing chapter. Nobody in serious academia today takes 0:06:28.560 --> 0:06:33.800 any of this, you know, recovered memories as as anything 0:06:33.880 --> 0:06:37.800 more than likely a fantasy. It's it's possible that maybe 0:06:37.839 --> 0:06:40.320 some of it might be true, or somebody remembers something, 0:06:40.360 --> 0:06:47.279 but again there's just no way to tell. I don't 0:06:47.320 --> 0:06:51.120 do hypnosis with people, but I have studied the literature 0:06:51.400 --> 0:06:57.479 on hypnotically refreshed memories. This is Elizabeth Loftis. I am 0:06:57.520 --> 0:07:00.919 a professor at the University of California the Irvine, the 0:07:00.960 --> 0:07:04.760 Irvine Campus. She's also one of the foremost experts on 0:07:04.839 --> 0:07:08.680 human memory. One of the things that you can say 0:07:08.720 --> 0:07:12.200 about hypnosis it it might be helpful to somebody who 0:07:12.200 --> 0:07:14.320 wants to try to use it to lose weight or 0:07:14.360 --> 0:07:17.960 stop smoking or be less anxious, But when it comes 0:07:17.960 --> 0:07:22.200 to using hypnosis to try to to dig up allegedly 0:07:22.320 --> 0:07:26.440 buried trauma memories. That's when you've got to be really, 0:07:26.520 --> 0:07:31.720 really careful, because under the influence of hypnosis, especially if 0:07:31.760 --> 0:07:35.720 you're highly hypnotize herbal you are even more susceptible to 0:07:35.920 --> 0:07:40.720 contamination and distortion. And then when you produce something in 0:07:40.720 --> 0:07:45.120 this hypnotic state, you have a tendency to believe, well, 0:07:45.320 --> 0:07:47.560 if I thought about it under hypnosis, it must have 0:07:47.600 --> 0:07:50.520 really happened to you become even more confident about it, 0:07:50.560 --> 0:07:54.360 whether it's true or not. Did you catch the part 0:07:54.400 --> 0:07:57.320 where Dr Loftis said that people who are easily hypnotized 0:07:57.320 --> 0:08:01.320 are also highly suggestible. In nineties sixty four, when Dr 0:08:01.400 --> 0:08:06.880 Simon conducted his sessions with the Hills, this connection was unknown. 0:08:09.120 --> 0:08:11.800 In an undated document in the University of New Hampshire 0:08:11.800 --> 0:08:17.320 Special Archives titled Hypnosis Betty basically braggs about how hypnotizable 0:08:17.320 --> 0:08:20.960 she and Barney were. She writes at the end of 0:08:20.960 --> 0:08:24.440 the sessions, Dr Simon said that both of us were 0:08:24.640 --> 0:08:28.520 very good subjects who were able to reach a very 0:08:28.560 --> 0:08:33.600 deep trance quickly and easily. The depth of our trances 0:08:33.760 --> 0:08:38.240 was unusual, a level where only one person out of 0:08:38.440 --> 0:08:42.600 millions might be able to reach the fact that both 0:08:42.600 --> 0:08:46.360 of us were able to do this was outstanding that 0:08:46.480 --> 0:08:50.520 we were two out of millions with the abilities to 0:08:50.640 --> 0:08:55.280 do this. Even if we allow for some hyperbole, we 0:08:55.360 --> 0:08:58.640 have it from Betty that Dr Simon considered them good subjects. 0:08:59.640 --> 0:09:02.320 We now know this would also make them highly suggestible. 0:09:03.320 --> 0:09:05.720 This is not to say that Dr Simon planted memories 0:09:05.800 --> 0:09:09.199 during these hypnosi successions. He was an experienced and a 0:09:09.280 --> 0:09:13.720 highly respected psychiatrist, but it does raise the possibility that 0:09:13.800 --> 0:09:18.360 they weren't necessarily remembering actual events. Do you remember in 0:09:18.360 --> 0:09:20.480 the first episode we heard some audio from one of 0:09:20.520 --> 0:09:25.160 Barney's hypnos secessions. What struck me was how emotional Barney 0:09:25.160 --> 0:09:28.440 became when he described seeing the aliens looking at him 0:09:28.440 --> 0:09:35.679 from the windows of the UFO. I'm thinking my head away, 0:09:35.840 --> 0:09:56.199 God give all right, yes, God gotta get away. Oh oh, alright, 0:09:59.440 --> 0:10:03.920 I'm getting way. Would someone under hypnosis react with such 0:10:04.000 --> 0:10:07.680 strong emotion to something that never actually happened? Just at 0:10:07.720 --> 0:10:10.880 an intuitive level, it seems as though a false memory 0:10:10.880 --> 0:10:15.760 wouldn't create that kind of dramatic fear response. Again, Elizabeth 0:10:15.840 --> 0:10:22.320 loftus one of the questions that researchers have wondered about 0:10:22.640 --> 0:10:27.040 is whether people would be emotional about false memories the 0:10:27.080 --> 0:10:30.760 way they can sometimes be emotional about true memories. And 0:10:30.920 --> 0:10:36.560 the psychologist psychology professor Richard McNally has actually studied the 0:10:36.600 --> 0:10:42.079 emotional reactions of people who believe they were abducted by aliens. 0:10:42.120 --> 0:10:45.040 And what he has found and shown in a beautiful 0:10:45.120 --> 0:10:50.320 study is that when people are thinking about their abduction experiences, 0:10:51.120 --> 0:10:54.280 they are highly emotional. You measure their heart rate or 0:10:54.400 --> 0:10:58.920 their their skin resistance or those physiological measures. They are 0:10:59.000 --> 0:11:03.040 as aroused and upset when they think about these experiences 0:11:03.440 --> 0:11:06.880 as other people are when they're thinking about truly traumatic 0:11:07.120 --> 0:11:11.160 experiences that have happened to them. And so mcnali concludes, 0:11:11.320 --> 0:11:14.679 and I would concur based on some work that I've done, 0:11:15.240 --> 0:11:20.520 that emotional reaction is certainly no guarantee of authenticity, that 0:11:20.640 --> 0:11:27.360 people can be very emotional about false memories. Our current 0:11:27.440 --> 0:11:31.040 understanding of hypnosis and recovered memories is far more skeptical 0:11:31.080 --> 0:11:35.440 than it was in We know now that hypnosis is 0:11:35.440 --> 0:11:37.840 not a tool by which people can recall the exact 0:11:37.920 --> 0:11:41.800 details of past events. We also know that so called 0:11:41.920 --> 0:11:45.559 repressed memories are not reliable part of this has to 0:11:45.600 --> 0:11:48.760 do with how hypnosis works, but it also has to 0:11:48.800 --> 0:11:52.000 do with how memory itself is constructed and then retrieved. 0:11:54.040 --> 0:11:56.800 We like to say that memory doesn't work like a 0:11:56.880 --> 0:12:00.000 recording device, like a video recorder. You don't just red 0:12:00.080 --> 0:12:02.559 or did and play it back. The process is much 0:12:02.600 --> 0:12:06.720 more complex and actually when we are remembering, we're essentially 0:12:06.760 --> 0:12:11.079 constructing or reconstructing the experience, and that means we are 0:12:11.080 --> 0:12:15.360 taking bits and pieces of information, sometimes acquired at different 0:12:15.360 --> 0:12:19.559 times and places, and bringing it together to construct what 0:12:19.559 --> 0:12:23.640 what feels like a memory, because that's what it feels like, 0:12:23.840 --> 0:12:27.600 right that you are remembering things as they actually happened, 0:12:28.520 --> 0:12:31.280 But you aren't. Your memories are the product of a 0:12:31.360 --> 0:12:34.040 number of factors, which include the reality of what happened, 0:12:34.360 --> 0:12:41.599 but other things as well, memories of far more or 0:12:41.679 --> 0:12:45.199 I should say, remembering is a far more active process. 0:12:46.080 --> 0:12:49.320 This is Dr Mark Kenn, principal lecturer at the University 0:12:49.320 --> 0:12:52.400 of New Hampshire, among others. He's had a course on 0:12:52.480 --> 0:12:58.199 paranormal and other extraordinary beliefs. Every time you're telling that story, 0:12:58.240 --> 0:12:59.920 as you're saying, if you've told it a hundred times, 0:13:00.880 --> 0:13:03.720 the hundredth time you're telling it. You're remembering the ninety 0:13:03.800 --> 0:13:05.920 nine time you told it. In the ninety time, you're 0:13:05.920 --> 0:13:09.640 remembering the time you told it. And so we have 0:13:09.720 --> 0:13:14.200 a several biases in there. We we have a bias 0:13:14.280 --> 0:13:17.120 that makes us more the focus of the story, so 0:13:17.160 --> 0:13:19.880 the things that happened to us are more prominent. We 0:13:19.960 --> 0:13:23.240 have a bias that puts the memories in line with 0:13:23.440 --> 0:13:26.400 what we believe about ourselves now. So even if we 0:13:26.440 --> 0:13:29.800 have changed tremendously since that time, that story is going 0:13:29.840 --> 0:13:33.320 to fit who we are now. There's a number of 0:13:33.320 --> 0:13:36.760 other ones that stories tend to, as you say, streamline 0:13:37.040 --> 0:13:41.400 and fit a storyline better than the fragmented way that 0:13:41.440 --> 0:13:45.520 we might remember it initially. But there's a lot of time. 0:13:45.559 --> 0:13:49.880 I mean, people remember things that they can't possibly have remembered. 0:13:49.960 --> 0:13:53.200 They remember things that in fact did not happen. My 0:13:53.440 --> 0:13:57.840 brother remembered stories about being born. He didn't. He remembered 0:13:57.840 --> 0:14:05.800 people telling him stories about that. Trying often we will, 0:14:05.880 --> 0:14:10.160 we will remember something as having happened to us when well, wait, no, 0:14:10.320 --> 0:14:12.800 we heard about that from somebody else. It's just that 0:14:12.840 --> 0:14:17.040 we imagined it so vividly that it became part of 0:14:17.240 --> 0:14:22.640 our own autobiographical memory. People will remember something happened, and 0:14:22.680 --> 0:14:25.480 in fact it was a TV show. The function of 0:14:25.560 --> 0:14:28.280 memory is to be able to have stuff that happened 0:14:28.280 --> 0:14:32.640 at time one help us at time too. There's absolutely 0:14:32.720 --> 0:14:36.520 nothing about that that means it has to be accurate. 0:14:37.000 --> 0:14:40.360 And in fact, if biases are going to help us 0:14:40.480 --> 0:14:43.400 learn from the stuff that happened back then, to condense it, 0:14:43.480 --> 0:14:45.760 to make it simple so that we can react more quickly, 0:14:46.400 --> 0:14:50.560 then they're very useful, uh, to be able to say, oh, 0:14:50.600 --> 0:14:54.360 instead of there's all this this, this weirdness and random 0:14:54.400 --> 0:14:56.880 stuff that's happening back there, so I don't quite know 0:14:56.920 --> 0:14:59.080 how to make use of it. Nope, there's a story 0:14:59.080 --> 0:15:01.240 in it. Boom, I can make use of it now. 0:15:04.800 --> 0:15:23.440 Strange arrivals will return in a moment. It's a difficult 0:15:23.440 --> 0:15:27.720 thing to contemplate that memories that seem so real, so vivid, 0:15:28.320 --> 0:15:32.200 are not necessarily what happened. There are mental recreations that 0:15:32.320 --> 0:15:36.160 change over time due to a number of factors, new 0:15:36.160 --> 0:15:40.440 perceptions about oneself, incorrect details that found their way into 0:15:40.480 --> 0:15:43.360 the last time you told the story, and the instinct 0:15:43.400 --> 0:15:45.520 to create a narrative out of the fragments from which 0:15:45.560 --> 0:15:49.600 memories created. Memories can be vivid, but that does not 0:15:49.720 --> 0:15:54.080 equate to being accurate. And there's another thing. Memories can 0:15:54.120 --> 0:15:58.040 be influenced, altered, or even made up by external sources 0:15:58.120 --> 0:16:02.600 after the fact. That is, memory is not only fairly unreliable, 0:16:03.160 --> 0:16:08.400 but it is also easily corrupted. What we have shown 0:16:08.520 --> 0:16:11.520 is out there in the real world, well, we're exposed 0:16:11.560 --> 0:16:15.240 to misinformation. I don't know you could even say frequently. 0:16:15.280 --> 0:16:18.960 We get misinformation when we talk to other people, or 0:16:18.960 --> 0:16:23.680 when we overhear other witnesses being interviewed, or what when 0:16:23.680 --> 0:16:27.360 we're asked a suggestive or leading questions by somebody who's 0:16:27.400 --> 0:16:32.000 interrogating us. When we are exupposed to media coverage about 0:16:32.080 --> 0:16:35.000 some event that we might have experienced. All of these 0:16:35.120 --> 0:16:39.960 provide an opportunity for new information to become available to 0:16:40.040 --> 0:16:45.280 a witness and to potentially produce a contamination of distortion 0:16:45.560 --> 0:16:50.200 in the witnesses memory. I asked Dr loftis how malleable 0:16:50.280 --> 0:16:54.520 people's memories really are. One of the things that I 0:16:54.680 --> 0:17:01.040 and my collaborators have done is to expose people two events, 0:17:01.080 --> 0:17:06.159 maybe a simulated crime or accident, and then we feed 0:17:06.200 --> 0:17:10.359 them some misinformation about the event, and we look to 0:17:10.400 --> 0:17:14.160 see the extent at which they will accept this misinformation 0:17:14.520 --> 0:17:18.600 and it will alter or transform their memory. And so 0:17:18.640 --> 0:17:21.760 we have found that you can show people an accident, 0:17:21.840 --> 0:17:25.159 for example, where a car goes to a yield sign, 0:17:25.240 --> 0:17:28.520 and you can feed the misinformation that it was a 0:17:28.560 --> 0:17:31.840 stop sign, and many people will claim that what they 0:17:31.880 --> 0:17:35.720 actually saw was the stop sign. They fall for the 0:17:35.800 --> 0:17:41.480 misinformation and it in essence becomes their memory. That's one 0:17:41.680 --> 0:17:44.840 type of study that we have done showing that it's 0:17:44.880 --> 0:17:48.639 pretty easy to change people's memories for the details of 0:17:48.680 --> 0:17:54.120 events that they actually did experience. Details can be altered, 0:17:55.119 --> 0:17:58.320 I asked Dr loftis entirely new details could be created 0:17:58.359 --> 0:18:02.040 from suggestion? Can you lead someone to believe in something 0:18:02.080 --> 0:18:07.240 that wasn't there or didn't happen? You can add objects 0:18:07.240 --> 0:18:12.639 to memory. We've added objects to the memories of soldiers 0:18:12.680 --> 0:18:15.560 who were being interrogated. We made them believe they saw 0:18:15.680 --> 0:18:20.600 telephones or weapons in interrogation rooms when they didn't exist. 0:18:21.280 --> 0:18:27.320 All through suggestive supplying of new information after some event 0:18:27.440 --> 0:18:32.159 is over keep this concept in mind that through suggestive 0:18:32.200 --> 0:18:35.399 supplying of new information, you can make people believe that 0:18:35.440 --> 0:18:38.200 they are remembering things that weren't there or didn't happen. 0:18:42.119 --> 0:18:44.800 I talked to al Jundra Rojas, the host of Open 0:18:44.840 --> 0:18:49.400 minds UFO Radio. He also writes about UFOs and the paranormal. 0:18:50.720 --> 0:18:54.560 You know my attempt, and luckily, I think making my 0:18:54.600 --> 0:18:58.280 credits will agree I'm pretty good at it. Is that 0:18:58.680 --> 0:19:02.200 I try to take a journalistic approach, so I try 0:19:02.240 --> 0:19:05.119 to cover all sides and give all the facts available 0:19:05.440 --> 0:19:08.240 so people have more of an unbiased kind of overview 0:19:08.280 --> 0:19:11.600 of the phenomena or whatever it is that topic that 0:19:11.720 --> 0:19:15.359 I'm covering in this arena. Here he talks about Betty 0:19:15.400 --> 0:19:18.200 and Barney and the stories they told while under hypnosis. 0:19:19.359 --> 0:19:25.520 You know, these two individuals under hypnosis and by you know, 0:19:25.600 --> 0:19:28.719 I believe a credible hypnotist who wasn't really you know, 0:19:28.800 --> 0:19:33.280 trying to guide them. They had very similar stories, even 0:19:33.320 --> 0:19:37.000 though they were regressed separately. I think that's the most 0:19:37.000 --> 0:19:41.600 compelling piece as far as evidence goes. This is the 0:19:41.600 --> 0:19:44.840 other mystery about the Hills hypnosis sessions. If you are 0:19:44.840 --> 0:19:47.760 a skeptic, how do you account for Betty and Barney 0:19:48.080 --> 0:19:52.479 separately telling essentially the same story. Dr Simon went so 0:19:52.480 --> 0:19:55.359 far as to have them forget what they disclosed so 0:19:55.440 --> 0:19:57.800 they could not talk to each other about them between 0:19:57.800 --> 0:20:02.159 the weekly sessions. So we put, if the abduction didn't happen, 0:20:02.600 --> 0:20:05.600 how could their memories of it be so similar. This 0:20:05.640 --> 0:20:10.880 is Robert Schaeffer, followed by Brian Dunning. The whole idea 0:20:10.960 --> 0:20:13.680 of you know, this alien contact and being stopped and 0:20:13.760 --> 0:20:16.520 so on, that idea was not there originally. That's in 0:20:16.600 --> 0:20:20.120 the hypnosis part of the story. What happened was they 0:20:20.240 --> 0:20:23.119 met with the number, talked with a number of upologists. 0:20:23.160 --> 0:20:25.400 They loved to tell the story. Betty loved to tell 0:20:25.400 --> 0:20:27.800 the story to people who wanted to listen to her 0:20:27.840 --> 0:20:31.000 about what she saw. And at that point it was 0:20:31.040 --> 0:20:34.720 a UFO sighting. It wasn't an abduction or or or 0:20:34.760 --> 0:20:38.679 an alien encounter. And it was only after then she 0:20:38.720 --> 0:20:42.680 started to have these dreams in her dream she was abducted. 0:20:42.800 --> 0:20:45.479 She did meet up with aliens, and she told her 0:20:45.560 --> 0:20:48.320 dreams to people, and then somebody suggested, well, maybe it 0:20:48.359 --> 0:20:51.920 wasn't a dream, maybe it really happened. And so then 0:20:51.920 --> 0:20:55.639 when later when they went to doctor Simon, and really 0:20:55.680 --> 0:20:58.200 the reason that both of them went to see Dr 0:20:58.280 --> 0:21:02.080 Simon was they were having especially Barney was was very nervous. 0:21:02.119 --> 0:21:05.520 He was having trouble sleeping, he was having ulcers. Frankly, 0:21:05.560 --> 0:21:09.360 he was in quite a state, and so then Dr 0:21:09.440 --> 0:21:15.160 Simon hypnotized both of them. I think the most significant 0:21:15.200 --> 0:21:19.000 point about it is that this hypnotic regression didn't happen 0:21:19.119 --> 0:21:23.240 for almost two and a half years after the supposed event, 0:21:23.920 --> 0:21:25.439 and a lot of people don't realize that. A lot 0:21:25.480 --> 0:21:27.360 of people think, oh, they went in the next day 0:21:27.359 --> 0:21:30.359 and had their hypnosis and told the same story in 0:21:30.400 --> 0:21:33.240 these separate rooms where they hadn't had time to corroborate 0:21:33.280 --> 0:21:35.960 and get their stories straight. That's not the case at all. 0:21:36.640 --> 0:21:39.760 So for more than two years, Betty had been writing 0:21:39.800 --> 0:21:43.679 down this version of her story in tremendous detail, writing 0:21:43.680 --> 0:21:47.080 and rewriting and editing it, telling it to Barney over 0:21:47.160 --> 0:21:50.760 and over and over again. Is it any surprised that 0:21:50.800 --> 0:21:54.600 their stories were similar once they went under hypnosis. Once 0:21:54.640 --> 0:21:56.160 you get to that part of it and you see, 0:21:56.440 --> 0:22:00.480 oh my gosh, there goes the whole hypnos just part 0:22:00.480 --> 0:22:03.399 of the story. Just there's nothing interesting or surprising about 0:22:03.440 --> 0:22:07.840 it at all. Anymore, the question becomes did Betty tell 0:22:07.880 --> 0:22:11.480 Barney about her dreams? If so, this would explain why 0:22:11.520 --> 0:22:14.560 their stories were essentially two perspectives on the same narrative. 0:22:15.600 --> 0:22:19.800 This came up during the March hypnosis session when Dr 0:22:19.920 --> 0:22:23.199 Simon questioned Barney about the basis for his tale of 0:22:23.280 --> 0:22:27.560 alien abduction. This is from the transcript of that session 0:22:28.320 --> 0:22:33.240 as read by actors. Somebody told you about this before 0:22:33.280 --> 0:22:39.440 that in some way? Who was that? Betty? My wife? Yeah? 0:22:39.480 --> 0:22:43.040 And how did she tell you about it? She would 0:22:43.080 --> 0:22:45.919 say that she had a dream, and that a dream 0:22:46.119 --> 0:22:48.879 was that she had been taken aboard a UFO, and 0:22:48.960 --> 0:22:51.240 that I was also in a dream, I was taken 0:22:51.240 --> 0:22:55.879 a boat. Yeah, but you told me that she didn't 0:22:55.920 --> 0:22:58.760 speak to you about this. How did she tell you this? 0:23:00.520 --> 0:23:02.840 She would tell me this from usually when someone would 0:23:02.880 --> 0:23:06.000 ask us about our sighting of a UFO, and then 0:23:06.080 --> 0:23:09.080 she would mention this, and I just told her it 0:23:09.200 --> 0:23:13.199 was a dream and nothing to get alarmed about. Did 0:23:13.280 --> 0:23:16.000 she tell you all of the details? Can you tell 0:23:16.040 --> 0:23:18.240 me all of the details of what happened to her? 0:23:20.359 --> 0:23:23.320 She would tell me a great many of the details 0:23:23.320 --> 0:23:26.000 of her dreams, but she was not certain to the 0:23:26.040 --> 0:23:29.720 location where we had stopped. And she would tell me 0:23:29.800 --> 0:23:33.280 she had gone into this UFO and had talked with 0:23:33.320 --> 0:23:37.760 the people there on board and she was told she 0:23:37.800 --> 0:23:43.560 would forget in her dreams, she would forget about this, 0:23:43.720 --> 0:23:48.159 and she said she would tell me that she was 0:23:48.240 --> 0:23:53.280 determined that she would not forget. That she told these 0:23:53.440 --> 0:23:58.840 people in this UFO that she would not forget. And 0:23:59.119 --> 0:24:01.399 this is the way she would tell me of her dreams. 0:24:02.440 --> 0:24:06.560 And I told her they were only dreams, and that 0:24:06.640 --> 0:24:09.959 I can't believe whatever these dreams are that she is having, 0:24:11.080 --> 0:24:14.000 only that she is having nightmares if they are frightening, 0:24:15.160 --> 0:24:19.480 and she said, no, they are not frightening. It's just 0:24:19.640 --> 0:24:23.040 that she feels that somehow there is some connection between 0:24:23.080 --> 0:24:27.520 her dreams, because she never dreamed of UFOs before. And 0:24:28.960 --> 0:24:33.439 she would tell me that they had stuck something in 0:24:33.520 --> 0:24:38.320 her navel, causing great pain, and that just the wave 0:24:38.400 --> 0:24:43.200 of the hand, this pain disappeared. And she was not 0:24:43.280 --> 0:24:48.760 telling this to me, but I would be present while 0:24:48.840 --> 0:24:51.200 she was telling it to friends of ours, or to 0:24:51.320 --> 0:24:55.520 Walter Webb. Whenever we would see him, he would ask 0:24:55.600 --> 0:24:58.199 us about the UFO sighting that we had had. In 0:24:59.040 --> 0:25:01.879 then I would hear of dreams. But never did she 0:25:02.400 --> 0:25:08.600 tell this actually to me. Dr Simon himself endorsed the 0:25:08.600 --> 0:25:11.840 theory that Barney had been influenced by Betty's dreams, and 0:25:11.840 --> 0:25:13.840 that those dreams were the basis for both of their 0:25:13.920 --> 0:25:20.280 quote unquote memories recovered through hypnosis. And in October letter 0:25:20.359 --> 0:25:24.359 to the prominent UFO researcher Philip Class, Dr Simon writes 0:25:25.040 --> 0:25:28.480 the UFO was a citing the abduction did not take place, 0:25:28.680 --> 0:25:31.320 but was a reproduction of Betty's dream which occurred right 0:25:31.359 --> 0:25:35.280 after the sighting. This was her expression of anxiety. Is 0:25:35.320 --> 0:25:39.680 contrasted to Barney's more psychosomatic one. Of course, Dr Simon's 0:25:39.720 --> 0:25:43.280 opinion is just that an opinion. It is an evidence, 0:25:43.880 --> 0:25:47.000 and just as our understanding of memory and hypnosis has changed, 0:25:47.440 --> 0:25:50.080 the concept of alien abduction was unknown at the time. 0:25:51.240 --> 0:25:54.960 UFO researcher and physicist Stanton Friedman believes that it was 0:25:55.000 --> 0:25:58.280 the unprecedented nature of the Hills experience that led Dr 0:25:58.400 --> 0:26:03.080 Simon to discount it. There's no question that Dr Simon 0:26:03.320 --> 0:26:08.199 was skeptical of the notion of alien visitors. Everybody was. 0:26:09.119 --> 0:26:13.159 You know, we're talking in the sixties, long before we 0:26:13.200 --> 0:26:17.960 had gone in the moon, long before we operated nuclear 0:26:18.040 --> 0:26:21.560 rocket engines, for example. On the ground, there wasn't a 0:26:21.600 --> 0:26:24.520 body of data which would lead most people to think 0:26:24.560 --> 0:26:29.280 that this kind of thing could happen. That may be true, 0:26:29.920 --> 0:26:32.639 but what we know about regression hypnosis makes Benny and 0:26:32.640 --> 0:26:38.560 Barney's abduction seem unlikely. Absent other evidence, the hypnotically recalled 0:26:38.600 --> 0:26:42.400 stories really don't prove anything, and we've already seen how 0:26:42.400 --> 0:26:45.240 the alien symbols and the star map have at best 0:26:45.760 --> 0:26:50.160 questionable value as proof. We'll talk about the physical evidence 0:26:50.320 --> 0:26:53.760 torn dress, scuff shoes, and so on in a later episode. 0:26:55.280 --> 0:26:58.959 Even in Dr Simon realized that they might very well 0:26:59.040 --> 0:27:01.520 be talking about Betty dreams and not a real event. 0:27:02.680 --> 0:27:07.480 Where did the line blur between reality and nightmare? Next 0:27:07.480 --> 0:27:18.919 time on Strange Arrivals. Strange Arrivals is a production of 0:27:18.960 --> 0:27:21.960 I Heart Radio and Grim and Mild from Aaron Mankey. 0:27:22.560 --> 0:27:25.280 This episode was written and hosted by Toby Bowl and 0:27:25.320 --> 0:27:29.200 produced by Miranda Hawkins and Josh Thane, with executive producers 0:27:29.240 --> 0:27:33.280 Alex Williams, Matt Frederick, and Aaron Manky. Betty Hill was 0:27:33.320 --> 0:27:38.520 portrayed by Gina Rickikey. Barney Hill was portrayed by Jason Williams. 0:27:39.440 --> 0:27:42.679 Special thanks to the Milns Special Collections and Archives at 0:27:42.680 --> 0:27:48.200 the University of New Hampshire. John Horrigan w y A. M. 0:27:48.240 --> 0:27:52.560 In Norwich, Connecticut, John White and David O'Leary, the executive 0:27:52.560 --> 0:27:56.520 producer of the History Channel's dramatic series Project blue Book. 0:27:57.160 --> 0:27:59.200 Learn more about the show over at grimm and mil 0:27:59.359 --> 0:28:03.960 dot com. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, 0:28:04.119 --> 0:28:07.520 Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.