Speaker 1: Strange Arrivals is a production of I Heart Radio and
Speaker 1: Grim and Mild from Aaron Manky. At dusk in early August,
Speaker 1: I saw lights in the sky. My wife and I
Speaker 1: were having dinner with another couple. We were at my
Speaker 1: family's summer cottage on an island in Lake Winnipesauke. My
Speaker 1: wife saw them first, four or five red lights hovering
Speaker 1: above the horizon. It's impossible to say how far away
Speaker 1: they were. It was dark, and it's hard to estimate
Speaker 1: distances over water anyway, but they were at least a
Speaker 1: few miles off, probably more. We walked down from the
Speaker 1: porch and onto the dock. The lights moved slowly. They
Speaker 1: would be in one shape and then shift to another.
Speaker 1: At some point, two or three other lights material realized.
Speaker 1: We watched for several minutes. Four years later, we all
Speaker 1: have different memories about how it ended. I still don't
Speaker 1: know what we saw that night in the New Hampshire sky.
Speaker 1: One person agreed with me that it was probably something ordinary,
Speaker 1: we just couldn't figure out what. But the other two
Speaker 1: shared a different opinion. They thought it was probably a UFO,
Speaker 1: something from outer space. We also can't agree on how
Speaker 1: the night ended. Those of us looking for an earthly explanation,
Speaker 1: remember the lights blinking out one by one, as though
Speaker 1: they had lost power. Those who thought the lights were extraterrestrial,
Speaker 1: remember them flying off at great speeds. Nobody is budging
Speaker 1: on their memory. This incident was the colonel that began
Speaker 1: this podcast. If we all witnessed the same event, why
Speaker 1: would two of us think aliens and to think anything
Speaker 1: but aliens? More crucially, how did this initial assumption change
Speaker 1: the way we remembered what we saw. To try to
Speaker 1: get an answer to these questions, I decided to take
Speaker 1: a look at another sighting, one that took place almost
Speaker 1: sixty years ago, at a spot about an hour's drive
Speaker 1: from where we stood that night. I'm Toby Ball and
Speaker 1: this is Strange Arrivals, Episode one, Falling Star. In September,
Speaker 1: John F. Kennedy had been president for eight months, making
Speaker 1: it only five months since the Bay of Pike's fiasco.
Speaker 1: That same month, Russian cosmonaut Jurger Garan became the first
Speaker 1: person in space, prompting President Kennedy to call for a
Speaker 1: national initiative to put a man on the Moon by
Speaker 1: the end of the decade. Of the world now look
Speaker 1: into space to the moon end of the planets beyond.
Speaker 1: During that same September, Betty and Barney Hill took a vacation.
Speaker 1: The couple lived in Portsmouth, a small city on New
Speaker 1: Hampshire's Atlantic coast. They drove west across Massachusetts at New
Speaker 1: York State to see Niagara Falls. From there, they crossed
Speaker 1: into Canada and visited Toronto. They were planning to drive
Speaker 1: east and spend a final night in Montreal before returning home,
Speaker 1: but that plan changed. Barney Hill was African American. He
Speaker 1: worked a graveyard shift as a distribution clerk in the
Speaker 1: South Boston Postal Annex. Every day he made a grueling
Speaker 1: two hour commute from their home in Portsmith to the north.
Speaker 1: His wife, Betty Hill, was white. She was a social
Speaker 1: worker for the state of New Hampshire. Both were active
Speaker 1: in the community, particularly on the issue of civil rights.
Speaker 1: Barney was an officer in the Portsmouth n Double A
Speaker 1: c P, a member of the New Hampshire State Advisory
Speaker 1: Board of the U S Civil Rights Commission, and a
Speaker 1: member of the board of directors of the Rockingham County
Speaker 1: Poverty Program. Betty was involved in the N Double A
Speaker 1: c P as well, and was the United Nations envoy
Speaker 1: to the Unitarian Universalist Church of Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Their
Speaker 1: civil rights work even earned them an invitation to Lyndon
Speaker 1: Johnson's presidential inauguration. In short, they were professionals and respected
Speaker 1: members of their community. On the night of September, instead
Speaker 1: of spending the night in Montreal as initially planned, Betty
Speaker 1: and Barney decided to drive home. Why did they change
Speaker 1: their minds depends on who you ask. It could be
Speaker 1: that they got lost in Montreal and were unsettled because
Speaker 1: they couldn't understand directions given in French, or that they
Speaker 1: wanted to get home before tropical Storm Esther arrived in
Speaker 1: New England, or maybe they simply ran out of money. Regardless,
Speaker 1: they cut their vacations short and headed home. Betty and
Speaker 1: Barney re entered the United States at a remote border
Speaker 1: crossing near the town of Colebrook, New Hampshire. It was
Speaker 1: there they stopped to eat before making their way back
Speaker 1: on the road. Two years later, Betty and Barney would
Speaker 1: undergo hypnosis to try to recall the strange events of
Speaker 1: this night. These sessions were recorded and transcripts made, so
Speaker 1: we have a detailed account of Betty and Barney stop
Speaker 1: in Colebrook. The recordings, with a couple of exceptions, continue
Speaker 1: to be in private hands, but the transcripts are available.
Speaker 1: In a couple of places, we will use actual audio
Speaker 1: from Betty and Barney's separate hypnosis sessions. In other places,
Speaker 1: actors will read from transcripts. And one of these sessions
Speaker 1: that took place on February n Barney recalled this visit
Speaker 1: to the restaurant performed here by an actor. There is
Speaker 1: a dars skinned woman in there. I think dark by
Speaker 1: Caucasian standards, and I wonder is she a light skinned
Speaker 1: Negro or is she Indian? Or is she white? She
Speaker 1: waits on us and she is not very friendly. And
Speaker 1: I noticed this, and others are there and they're looking
Speaker 1: at me and at Betty, and they seem to be
Speaker 1: friendly or please, but the dark skinned woman doesn't. I
Speaker 1: wanted them more so is she Negro? And I wonder
Speaker 1: if I if if she is wondering, if I if
Speaker 1: I know she is me growing and is passing for white.
Speaker 1: I eat a Hamburg and I have come in patient
Speaker 1: with Betty tonight to drink her coffee so we can
Speaker 1: get started. And in the clock on my watch says
Speaker 1: five minutes after ten, and I know I should be
Speaker 1: in Port Smith. I think by two o'clock. They left
Speaker 1: Colebrook heading south on a dark, remote highway. They were
Speaker 1: about sixty miles south of the Canadian border when it happened. Well.
Speaker 1: Barney was driving, Betty caught something out the window. When
Speaker 1: they were about four miles south of Lancaster, New Hampshire,
Speaker 1: Betty spotted a new light in the sky. Kathleen Martin
Speaker 1: is the director of Experiencer Research for the Mutual UFO
Speaker 1: Network or mouf ON. I am also the niece of
Speaker 1: Betty and Barney Hill. I was thirteen years old when
Speaker 1: they had their experience in the White Mountains of New Hampshire.
Speaker 1: At first, she thought of a falling star, but she
Speaker 1: realized that falling stars don't fall upwards, and that's what
Speaker 1: this one was doing. She thought, well, could it possibly
Speaker 1: be a satellite? But that didn't make sense either. My
Speaker 1: family was interested in the space program, and my grandfather,
Speaker 1: brother and I used to go out and look for
Speaker 1: satellites at night. They continued to drive south on Route
Speaker 1: three through upstate New Hampshire, and she was watching this
Speaker 1: light in the sky as it grew larger and larger.
Speaker 1: It was a bright light night, so it was easy
Speaker 1: to see outside. The moon was about three quarters full.
Speaker 1: As she watched this, and it grew larger and larger.
Speaker 1: She became very curious, so south of Twin Mountain, she
Speaker 1: asked Barnie to stop by the side of the road.
Speaker 1: This was at the Mount Cleveland picnic area, and got
Speaker 1: out of the car with binoculars and looked up at
Speaker 1: this thing in the sky. The perplexing thing is that
Speaker 1: it did not make any sound whatsoever. Barney was arguing
Speaker 1: that it must be a commercial plane and they simply
Speaker 1: couldn't hear it and route to perhaps Montreal or Toronto.
Speaker 1: And then this thing, this object bounced back and the
Speaker 1: sky toward Barney. He realized it was highly unusual. He
Speaker 1: was still attempting to identify it. Betty had already returned
Speaker 1: to the car. He got in and said, oh, it's
Speaker 1: it's really nothing, It's just a plane. They entered Franconian
Speaker 1: Notch State Park, where steep mountains rise on each side
Speaker 1: of the road and there are no houses to be seen.
Speaker 1: This stretch is one of the most beautiful in New
Speaker 1: Hampshire and isolated it can also be claustrophobic, especially at night.
Speaker 1: So they proceeded self into Anconia Notch and as they
Speaker 1: passed by Cannon Mountain, they got a view of this
Speaker 1: object passing over the top of a building on top
Speaker 1: of the mountain, and the light in the building blinked
Speaker 1: out as it passed by. Strange arrivals will return in
Speaker 1: a moment. As they entered Franconia Notch, Betty and Barney
Speaker 1: watched as the light that they've been tracking flew over
Speaker 1: Cannon Mountain. In a hypnosis transcript read here by an actress,
Speaker 1: Betty described losing track of the object. I don't know
Speaker 1: if it went down in the valley between the two
Speaker 1: mountains or if it turned its light off. And this
Speaker 1: puzzled me because I kept looking for it, and then
Speaker 1: I thought, well, maybe they're going away. They are and
Speaker 1: interested in us. But then we came out by Old
Speaker 1: Man of the Mountains, and there it was. The Old
Speaker 1: Man in the mountain was a rock formation in Franconian
Speaker 1: Notch that looked like the profile of a craggy face.
Speaker 1: From the time they lived Mount Cleveland Picnic area. They
Speaker 1: perceived that the light was following them The couple made
Speaker 1: several brief stops to get a look at it, but
Speaker 1: it was there stopped by the old man in the mountain,
Speaker 1: that caused a change in their experience. What had been
Speaker 1: a point of light in the sky was now a
Speaker 1: craft of some sort, a physical object with a shape
Speaker 1: and a size, and colored lights, and it made no sound.
Speaker 1: They stopped again at the base of the old man
Speaker 1: of the mountain. They got out and they looked up
Speaker 1: at this thing again through binoculars. The old man's profile,
Speaker 1: I believe is forty eight feet from warhead to chimp.
Speaker 1: And they then were able to measure the diameter of
Speaker 1: this object. They said that it was about one and
Speaker 1: a half times, maybe a little more the length of
Speaker 1: the old man's profile. That's about seventy five or six
Speaker 1: cars lined up back to back. As they're watching it,
Speaker 1: it appeared to be lighted on only one side, and
Speaker 1: it appeared to be rotating, which was very perplexing. And
Speaker 1: then it started to move in a stair step pattern,
Speaker 1: this very unusual pattern. Barney, of course, was in a hurry.
Speaker 1: He wanted to get home. He was wide awake, he
Speaker 1: had been well rested the night before. But they knew
Speaker 1: that they could stop for some rest if they grew tired.
Speaker 1: At this point about Barney being well arrested would become
Speaker 1: a matter of dispute later on. So they got into
Speaker 1: the car. They drove self, and as they exited Franconian
Speaker 1: Notch and came into North Lincoln, that object swooped down
Speaker 1: in the sky, and then they realized that it was
Speaker 1: a highly unusual craft. Barney stopped the car in the
Speaker 1: center of the highway because the object was overhead, and
Speaker 1: the object at first appeared to be about two hundred
Speaker 1: feet high, and then it appeared to descend to about
Speaker 1: a hundred feet above their vehicle. We saw the object
Speaker 1: off in a great distance. It appeared to be winking,
Speaker 1: but now that it was closed, it looked as if
Speaker 1: there was just one solid band of light and this
Speaker 1: was moving back with it. This is Barney interviewed by
Speaker 1: Harv Morgan for the Cleveland based radio show Contact on
Speaker 1: October three years after the fact. And I had closed
Speaker 1: the car down to appoximately five Well, this was very
Speaker 1: up Addy, So I came to a complete stop in
Speaker 1: the center of the highway. I got out of the
Speaker 1: car and I took the binoculis. I rested my left
Speaker 1: arm on the door that was opened at the car
Speaker 1: door and my right elbow on the roof of the car,
Speaker 1: and I tried to look, but the car was motor
Speaker 1: was running, so I had to step away. As I
Speaker 1: stepped away from the car, the object swung from the
Speaker 1: passenger side over to the left, which would have been
Speaker 1: the side that I was driving, making a large art
Speaker 1: like turn, placing it over a field. Barney was transfixed
Speaker 1: by the ship. He walked away from the car and
Speaker 1: into the field to a point where he was just
Speaker 1: below the craft. There was absolutely no sound associated with
Speaker 1: this object. It must have at the time been approximately
Speaker 1: a hundred feet up above my head. This would be
Speaker 1: about ten stories up. The size of it was about
Speaker 1: to approximately if you were looking at a large military
Speaker 1: plane or at any commercial airliner. From tail to head.
Speaker 1: This is the size of it. As the series of
Speaker 1: windows were around it, this is how huge it was.
Speaker 1: He trained his binoculars on those windows and saw about
Speaker 1: ten figures looking back at him. There was nothing unusual
Speaker 1: about them. They did have on what I thought was
Speaker 1: a black type shiny uniform similar to the black leather
Speaker 1: type jacket you find motorcyclist wearing the one that I
Speaker 1: will now for identifying purposes, called a leader, while he
Speaker 1: had on a military type cap with surdvisor, while the
Speaker 1: others did not. They moved back away from the window.
Speaker 1: All this one with the black leather type uniform. I
Speaker 1: will say, uniforms continue to look down at me. Well,
Speaker 1: thank You want to get earlier that they were pretty
Speaker 1: human looking with and you have to consider that looking
Speaker 1: at anyone in a window ten stories up with the
Speaker 1: binocular the only thing you can discern is that they
Speaker 1: looked human and nothing would test about them. Now listen
Speaker 1: the last pitch. Did you feel there was anything sinister
Speaker 1: about these people? Did you get that impression? Yes, they did,
Speaker 1: only that it was a strange situation. And therefore I
Speaker 1: have thought of this many times. That is to say,
Speaker 1: was there anything sinister about them? Or was it because
Speaker 1: of the unusual situation that I was in magnifying my feelings?
Speaker 1: I did feel that there was something sinister, strange, unusual
Speaker 1: about the whole thing. One of the beings remained at
Speaker 1: the window looking at Barney, who looked back through his binoculars.
Speaker 1: The others turned away, and from what Barney could see,
Speaker 1: she began to pull levers that were attached to a
Speaker 1: panel in the wall. This lever pulling seemed to deploy
Speaker 1: what Barney described as fan type wings tipped by red lights. Well,
Speaker 1: this was too much for me, and I made it
Speaker 1: used to be treating to the card, seeming to the
Speaker 1: wife that they had seen me, they had seen us,
Speaker 1: and we had to get away. Barney sounds very calm
Speaker 1: in this interview, but Barney said no secession on February
Speaker 1: gives a sense of the trauma of this moment. A warning.
Speaker 1: This clip is very emotionally intense. This creature, this leader
Speaker 1: is telling me something you're telling yourself. How how is
Speaker 1: he getting it to you? I can see it in
Speaker 1: his face. See, yes, M telling you And he's looking
Speaker 1: at me. What did I tell you? M Stay there
Speaker 1: and keep looking, Just keep looking and stay there and
Speaker 1: just keep looking. Yes, keep looking? Could you Harry tell
Speaker 1: oh I got a pullice binoculis away from my eyes?
Speaker 1: Because if I don't, I'll just keep staying there. Look
Speaker 1: at Harry tell you lest oh, No, he didn't say it,
Speaker 1: you felt you sell? I know you know he's n't there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: just stay there, He's saying to be all. I'll think
Speaker 1: in my head, all right, pull over, docles away, God
Speaker 1: give his all right, God is my God? Give me
Speaker 1: his fans backing away? Oh oh oh Again. Barney fled
Speaker 1: back to the car in a panic. He was convinced
Speaker 1: that the figures on the craft had seen him and
Speaker 1: we're going to capture him and Betty. They started driving
Speaker 1: south again, trying to get away, and then they heard
Speaker 1: a series of beeps coming, it seemed from the rear
Speaker 1: of their car. These beeps were very peculiar because it
Speaker 1: was much like a pony for being struck in place
Speaker 1: to give you a very subtle, typed vibration, and that's
Speaker 1: the way the car vibrated. And it was b b
Speaker 1: b b b b b beep. And I said to
Speaker 1: my wife, my god, what is that? I said, look
Speaker 1: out the window. They're right overhead. And she looked out
Speaker 1: of the window, but you couldn't see anything. And later
Speaker 1: we find out that you couldn't see the sky as well,
Speaker 1: so apparently the glasses moved overhead over us. This beeping
Speaker 1: noise was followed by a hazy period for both Betty
Speaker 1: and Barney, almost as if they dozed off for thirty
Speaker 1: miles of driving. They didn't speak with each other. They
Speaker 1: had only vague memories of this period, including the impression
Speaker 1: that they'd seen something glowing, maybe the moon. And then
Speaker 1: thirty five miles further south, we will beat the game.
Speaker 1: And this is the only time. My wife and I
Speaker 1: then began to communicate with one another by saying, well,
Speaker 1: what was it we saw? This is surprising because that
Speaker 1: about my mile period we did not discuss anything. They
Speaker 1: were unsettled, but they continued towards home. They took a
Speaker 1: detour in the conquered the state capital, trying to find
Speaker 1: a cup of coffee and a police officer to tell
Speaker 1: their story to at that time of the morning. They
Speaker 1: found neither. They just drove on to their home in Portsmouth,
Speaker 1: New Hampshire, expecting to arrive about two o'clock in the morning.
Speaker 1: But when they arrived it was already dawn, sun was
Speaker 1: streaking the sky. It was start at five o'clock. There's
Speaker 1: a two or three hour gap between when Betty and
Speaker 1: Barney expected to arrive in Portsmouth and when they actually did.
Speaker 1: This quote unquote missing time becomes a key piece of
Speaker 1: evidence in support of the Hills story. Betty and Barney
Speaker 1: Hill arrived at their home at about five in the
Speaker 1: morning on September. They had driven through the night from Montreal.
Speaker 1: They had memories of a harrowing experience with the UFO
Speaker 1: and were exhausted and distressed. Betty was afraid that the
Speaker 1: things that they had in their car might be contaminated.
Speaker 1: She wouldn't let Barney bring the bags inside the house.
Speaker 1: They threw away the food they had in their cooler,
Speaker 1: and then they began to notice strange things, things that
Speaker 1: seemed like evidence. Barney went into the house and checked
Speaker 1: the time. His watch had stopped running at that point,
Speaker 1: so he just reset it and rewounded. The same thing
Speaker 1: happened to Betty. Her watch was not running either, even
Speaker 1: though she had said it at ten o'clock that evening.
Speaker 1: Both watches broke on the same night, within a certain
Speaker 1: time frame. Those watches never ran again. Looking for advice,
Speaker 1: particularly about possible contamination, Betty called her sister, who had
Speaker 1: a neighbor that was a physicist. The neighbor, for some reason,
Speaker 1: told Betty that if she had a compass, she should
Speaker 1: take it to the car to see how the needle
Speaker 1: on the compass would react. Folklore's John Horrigan interviewed Betty
Speaker 1: Hill in her home. It was one of the last
Speaker 1: interviews she gave. What happens when you look at the car,
Speaker 1: Kylie Polish spots are the chuck of the car, really,
Speaker 1: and that day it was Louis getting um tropical rains
Speaker 1: from a hurricane that was going through, and it was
Speaker 1: heavy downfall and didn't affect spots at all. They stayed
Speaker 1: there for months. Your sister, who claimed to have seen
Speaker 1: a U phone, suggested that you do what went around
Speaker 1: the She talked to the physicists who said, go out
Speaker 1: with the compass and check out the spots, which we did.
Speaker 1: What happened, and the compass was very, very erratic, almost
Speaker 1: spinning or just you know, And we tried it other
Speaker 1: parts of the cab and it didn't react, but just
Speaker 1: near where the spots were, hence the inference being a
Speaker 1: magnetic anomaly. Something was was really distorting the magnetic drawal
Speaker 1: of the compass. She remembered the strange buzzing noises coming
Speaker 1: from the rear of the car from the night before.
Speaker 1: She wondered if these spots might be connected to that sound,
Speaker 1: and there were more strange clues. Betty's best dress us
Speaker 1: that she had been wearing that day was torn in
Speaker 1: several places. It was torn at the top of the zipper,
Speaker 1: a one inch tear on one side and two inch
Speaker 1: tear on the other. It was torn from waste to
Speaker 1: ham line. The ham was torn down on one side.
Speaker 1: She couldn't understand how this happened as she was sitting
Speaker 1: as a passenger in the seat of this vehicle. The
Speaker 1: binocular strap on the binoculars that Barney had around his
Speaker 1: neck was severed. He couldn't understand why there was vegetative
Speaker 1: matter on his clothing. Also, Barney's best dress shoes were
Speaker 1: so deeply scraped that he had to buy new shoes.
Speaker 1: He was a meticulous dresser, so he used them for
Speaker 1: yard work after that. He couldn't understand that either. But
Speaker 1: there was no conscious recall for a couple of hours
Speaker 1: of their time. Even when they considered the moments that
Speaker 1: they stopped to look at this craft, it was very,
Speaker 1: very perplexing. The stopped watches, barney scuffed shoes, the spots
Speaker 1: on the trunk, and then Betty's torn dress, the broken
Speaker 1: binocular strap, the missing time. All these bits of evidence
Speaker 1: confirmed to the Hills that what they had experienced that
Speaker 1: night was abnormal, but it also seemed that there was
Speaker 1: something missing, something forgotten. Two years later, when they would
Speaker 1: undergo hypnosis and new memories would emerge, they would find
Speaker 1: that there was more to the story next time on
Speaker 1: Strange Arrivals. Strange Arrivals is a production of I Heart
Speaker 1: Radio and Grim and Mild from Aaron Manky. This episode
Speaker 1: was written and hosted by Toby Bowl and produced by
Speaker 1: Miranda Hawkins and Josh Thane, with executive producers Alex Williams,
Speaker 1: Matt Frederick and and Manky. Betty Hill was portrayed by
Speaker 1: Gina Rickike. Barney Hill was portrayed by Jason Williams. Special
Speaker 1: thanks to the Milne's Special Collections and Archives at the
Speaker 1: University of New Hampshire, John Horrigan, w y A M
Speaker 1: in Norwich, Connecticut, John White, and David O'Leary, the executive
Speaker 1: producer of the History Channel's dramatic series Project Blue Book.
Speaker 1: Learn more about the show over at Grimm and Mile
Speaker 1: dot com. For more podcasts from iHeart Radio, visit the
Speaker 1: iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
Speaker 1: your favorite shows.