Focus News
McMenamins UFO Festival Features Hills’ Abduction
Many lectures, events and free family activities this weekend in historic McMinnville
By Lisa Loving
Of The Skanner News
A
fter New Hampshire
residents Betty and
Barney Hill were
forced by circumstance to
publicly recount their story
of being abducted by extra-
terrestrials, their lives
changed forever.
As an interracial couple
during the Civil Rights era,
they were already familiar
with stress and public pres-
sure. But the unexplained
incident in 1961 triggered
their even deeper fear that
people would think they
were “crazy” – after all,
theirs was the first alleged
alien abduction ever pub-
licly reported.
Hear the couple’s story
from their niece Kathleen
Marden this weekend at the
McMenamins UFO Festi-
val, which runs Thursday
through Sunday, May 14-
17, at the extraterrestrial-
themed Hotel Oregon in
McMinnville.
The event is held there to
commemorate one of the
most famous incidents in
world UFO history – the
snapping of two black and
white photographs of what
look like a flying saucer,
taken in 1950 by a
Willamette Valley farmer
named Paul Trent.
In addition to ticketed lec-
tures, the weekend features
free, family friendly live
music, the famous tinfoil
hat parade through McMin-
nville’s old town, contests,
a fun run and a movie.
Featured speakers include
Marden, one of the most
famous alien abduction
researchers in the world;
Canadian historian Grant
Cameron — an expert on
US Presidents’ knowledge
of UFO activity – speaking
on the question of whether
UFOs can affect human
consciousness; Stanton T.
Friedman, “the godfather of
‘ufology;’”
and
UFO
Reporting Center Director
Peter Davenport.
A former nuclear physi-
cist, Friedman was the first
“civilian” to investigate the
Roswell, New Mexico site
where a UFO was believed
to have crashed in 1947 (US
government officials now
say it was a string of high
Betty and Barney Hill with
Desley
altitude balloons equipped
with microphones to detect
suspected Soviet bomb
tests, called Project Mogul).
For enthusiasts, Fried-
man’s lecture this year is
extra important because the
80-year-old scholar is set to
speak for the first time
about “the Majestic 12,”
allegedly a panel of scien-
tists convened by the US
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government in
1947 to investi-
gate
UFO
sightings.
Hills says the
Saturday night
panel discus-
sion will be a
key event for
anyone
with
questions about
UFO phenome-
na because all
the experts will
be on hand to
answer ques-
tions from the
public.
The Skanner
News
spoke
with Marden
about her aunt
their dog and uncle and
why their story
is important.
The Skanner News:
What were your aunt and
uncle like?
iting Niagara Falls, they
drove up to Toronto and
then on to Montréal the fol-
lowing day. They had been
sightseeing for the after-
noon and decided to head
back to New Hampshire to
their home on the seacoast.
They heard there was a hur-
ricane coming and so they
wanted to put it where their
lawn chairs and get the
house ready for this hurri-
cane they might have.
They were driving home
through the night, when at
about 10 o’clock Betty saw
a light in the sky. She con-
tinued watching it, it grew
larger and larger and it was
traveling along beside the
car. They got out and they
looked at this thing three
separate times. On the third
time it came down so low
that it actually stopped
about 200 feet about their
vehicle. It was just right
just drove home. When they
arrived home they realized
that they were later than
they anticipated, and they
discovered that there was
some physical evidence that
shouldn’t have been there.
Betty’s dress was torn, and
Barney’s shoes were deeply
scuffed though he was a
meticulous dresser.
Their
watches
had
stopped working. There
were shiny spots on the
trunk of the car that hadn’t
been there.
This started to bother Bar-
ney especially, and he was
eventually referred to Dr.
Benjamin Simon, who is a
very prominent psychiatrist
in Boston. He and Betty
underwent hypnosis sepa-
rately for a period of six
months. At the end of each
session Dr. Simon instilled
amnesia again for this two
hour period of missing time
The Saturday night panel discussion will be a key
event for anyone with questions about UFO
phenomena because all the experts will be on
hand to answer questions from the public
Marsden: Well, they
were the most unlikely
experiencers if you could
ever meet. Betty was a
social worker for the state of
New Hampshire; Barney
worked for the post office.
But both were very actively
involved in community
affairs and the civil rights
movement. They helped to
set up the Rockingham
County Community Action
program in New Hamp-
shire. Barney was first
chairman of the executive
board for that organization.
He was given an award by
Sargent Shriver (a states-
man and diplomat, the
brother in law of President
John F. Kennedy and first
director of the Office of
Economic Opportunity) for
his work. They were politi-
cally involved in this state.
He was appointed to the US
Civil Rights Commission
State Advisory Committee.
So they were very political-
ly active and socially
involved.
Also they were very
active members of the Uni-
tarian church, and they
event went to the United
Nations with their church.
That is what they were
interested in. They had no
interest in UFOs.
They were good, honest,
down to earth individuals.
TSN: What actually hap-
pened to Betty and Barney?
Marsden: What hap-
pened is Betty and Barney
took a few days off from
work to go on a short trip to
Niagara Falls; Betty had
never been there. After vis-
over their head.
Barney took his binocu-
lars – remember they were
sightseeing so they had
binoculars in the car – and
he stepped out and looked
up at this thing as Betty sat
in the passenger seat look-
ing at it. They could see that
it was a large silent hover-
ing disc just sitting there in
the sky above them.
Then it shifted location to
an adjacent field and it
descended about 100 feet
from Barney; he walked
toward it. He looked up
through the binoculars and
he saw figures inside that
craft that he stated to Walter
Webb, the original investi-
gator from NICAP, were
“somehow not human.”
They frightened him terri-
bly. And he ran back to the
vehicle because he feared
he was going to be captured.
And he got into the car and
started speeding down the
highway. He shouted to
Betty to look up and see if
she could see the craft,
because as he was running
back to the car he noticed
that it appeared to be fol-
lowing him.
The next thing they knew
they were 35 miles down
the road and they had no
idea how they had gotten
there. They didn’t remem-
ber driving that stretch of
road. They had spotty mem-
ories of encountering a
roadblock somewhere along
the way, of observing a fiery
orb on the ground. But noth-
ing else.
They heard another series
of buzzing sounds, they did-
n’t see the UFO. And they
that they had. Then he let
them listen to each other’s
statement at the end.
What they discovered is
that they told precisely the
same story of being
stopped, of being taken
aboard a craft, being given a
very strange kind of exami-
nation and then released by
these nonhumans that he
had actually seen for the
first time when he looked up
at that UFO as he was stand-
ing in the field in Lincoln
New Hampshire.
Dr. Simon’s recordings
helped relieve Barney’s
anxiety about all of this. But
it was all to remain a secret.
Such a weird story – You
don’t want anyone to think
that you’re crazy. So it was
going to remain with some
scientists, with some inves-
tigators with the family, and
not be told to the public.
Marden’s book is “Cap-
tured: The Betty and Barney
Hill UFO Experience.”
Read more about her at
www.kathleen-marden.com.
A made for TV movie
about the Hills, “The UFO
Incident,” starred James
Earl Jones and Estelle Par-
sons; the X-Files episode
titled,” Jose Chung’s From
Outer Space” includes part
of their story; and a televi-
sion series based on their
lives that aired in the mid-
1990s was called “Dark
Skies.”
Find out more about the
McMenamins UFO Festival
at www.ufofest.com.