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Barney Hill  died in 1969. Betty retired from the UFO abduction and sighting community some years ago. She died in November of 2004.Some of the material here was verified with email communications with a family member of Betty's.

http://www.jerrypippin.com/UFO_Files_betty_hill.htm

Click this line to skip the text introduction about this site.

This site is about a conflict of human physiology that shaped history but was undetected  until the 1960's.

In the entire history of man on the planet Earth this phenomenon was discovered only once.

It caused mental breaks for office workers.

You will find this material hard to believe.

This phenomenon is explained in first semester psychology lectures where students don't believe it either.

For that reason I wrote a demonstration that will allow you to experience the phenomenon.

The Everquest Connection page has the explanation and assumes you have not taken basic psychology.

The solution for this problem was the office Cubicle.

This site argues that the this phenomenon causes College Suicides and Missing Students.

The phenomenon causes mental events around the world, Chaco Canyon.

If you use computers in unprotected workspace such as homes, dorms, student apartments, and small business offices read  ...Prevention... at the bottom of most pages.

Long  term exposure can cause severely altered mental states. Qi Gong  Kundalini Yoga

If you are visiting the site as part of a school project send the person responsible for controlling violence at your school to this site.

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Hill Abduction

 Make no mistake, the Hills experienced something. They told the truth as they knew it.  Betty passed a lie detector test on a  TV program. (Article AlienZoo.com  linked below)

From the beginning Dr Simon believed the episode was a fantasy. This site provides the first concrete information on the physiology that caused the episode.

The human mind is not a video recorder. We cannot just play back memories. Many factors effect what we recall from stored memory even if we correctly interpret events that created those memories. In fact, what we perceive, not what is physically present, or what actually happened, determines our memories.

Seeing is not believing.

The story often told is that they did not have an interest in UFO's and Aliens before the incident. But the text of Peter Huston's interview introduces new information from Betty. She was 79 at the time of the interview.

 This incident, which grew into a world wide news story, may have been nothing but a delusional episode.

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The Phenomenon

This phenomenon was discovered when it caused dissociative mental breaks, nervous breakdowns, in Knowledge workers using the first close-spaced office workstations. To this day the Cubicle prevents these episodes in at risk office workers.

Barney never reached that level. His episode happened under hypnosis.

Barney's account of the experience under hypnosis  falls within the envelope of possibility for this phenomenon.

On this page the knowledge of this phenomenon provides a tool to re-evaluate the forty-four year old incident.

No one will ever know what actually happened that night. You are free to believe any version you wish. I have no interest in arguing the validity of alien abductions. I propose that they should be considered a Culture Bound Syndrome even though they happen across culture lines and around the world. If you are interested in investigating this problem leave a message for  Researcher. Given my physical disability and my wife's psychiatric problems, Personal Experiences, this project will be a long time to completion.

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Missing Time

The issue of two missing hours is critical since the abduction is supposed to have happened in that time window. A blog article published September 19, 2007 has taken the account from John Fuller's book, Interrupted Journey, and used personal knowledge of the area to recreate the 1961 trip. This page is illustrated with modern pictures of the area.

"Today, this very day, forty-six years ago, Betty and Barney Hill drove down U.S. 3, right past my house and into history. They were about to become Patient Zero for Alien Abductions with Weird Medical Experiments, Missing Time, and Big-Eyed Extraterrestrials."

http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/009378.html 

/The key information is mileage knowledge for Betty's account of driving between two points, 6.2 miles, at five mph. That would have taken an hour. There were excursions to find food and coffee which would have used eighty minutes. The obvious conclusion is that there never was missing time for the abduction to have happened.

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How Subliminal Distraction explains the Hill Abduction.

These paragraphs were written in response to email exchanges with Dr. Freidman who just can't see the connection to the Hill Abduction.

March 16, 2002: There is still a conflict in two pieces of information. One is that Barney drove 120 miles to work and worked over night in the Post Office. But my email exchange with Betty's niece was that Barney was always a outdoor rural carrier.

Briefly, Barney was a postal worker. He would have been exposed to Visual Subliminal Distraction anytime he worked in the Post Office performing "knowledge work." The final mail sorting for his route and any other activity that required mental investment would allow exposure.

Exposure usually consists of someone walking close beside the concentrating worker from behind. But it can also come from strange sources. In the case of Tommy Stein, son of actor Ben Stein, it was a large fish moving in an aquarium within arm’s reach as he concentrated to play Everquest. (Everquest Connection page.)

Barney had been ill for months with what Betty described as psychosomatic problems. In the Huston interview she said he had been totally disabled six months.  An incident on the Belgian Polar Expedition of 1898/99 shows that exposure from Subliminal Distraction can produce both physical and psychiatric symptoms. (See comments below.)

The inclusion of Culture Bound Syndromes in the DSM provides additional examples of the phenomenon at work. Going Postal is a CBS of the United States. Amok is the same problem in Malaysia, Puerto Rico, and other countries. Barney didn't have an ongoing dispute that could be raised to psychotic levels. Instead Barney just became ill. (Culture Bound Syndromes page.)

The cold weather CBS’s begin the explanation of how this connects. When two or more people are confined in very small over-wintering cabins or hogans, there will be many opportunities for exposure as one person works on something requiring mental investment and the cabin mate moves in the victim’s peripheral vision.

Windigo Psychosis, Icelandic Disease, Arctic Hysteria, and Cabin Fever from the fur trapping period in the US, are examples of the different outcomes shaped by ethnic and cultural elements as each person experiences the mental break associated with this phenomenon.

In the case of Amok entire villages live in a single large room, a longhouse. To have enough light to perform close handwork the villager must sit by a window or door. Others walking by or through that door create exposure.

In the 1800’s Jumping Frenchmen of Maine was discovered at Mooselake Maine among French Canadian Lumberjacks. Research eventually discovered the problem in Quebec and then in Malaysia and Siberia. Significant is that the "disease" was believed to be caused by operant conditioning. Command behaviors, a result of extreme suggestibility, point to operant conditioning but they could not find a source.

In Malaysia, this time as Latah, a CBS, it produced command behaviors and hyper-suggestibility.

When the Belgian Polar Expedition of 1898/99 was trapped in polar ice for months the eighteen-man crew began to experience physical and mental problems. One man became a deaf mute, another hid in remote parts of the ship to sleep fearing that others were plotting to kill him. There was a heart attack that the American ship’s doctor believed caused by the man’s sudden fear of the dark. That ship copies the bunkhouse/longhouse model for Jumping Frenchmen of Maine Disease, Amok, and Latah.

 Like Barney the sailors and scientists on the Belgica were normal people, crew members, with no previous mental problems.  The event demonstrates the psychosomatic problem Barney had. (Astronauts and Insanity page.)

Qi Gong and Kundalini Yoga provide a model for differences in rates of exposure causing different outcomes. (Qi Gong Kundalini Yoga pages.)

Barney’s alien is a dead ringer for the alien from the Outer Limits episode The Bellero Shield. He drew the eyes as round but the costume shown on the program had horizontal rectangles with the actor’s eyes visible through the opening.

Why are their aliens different? An image could not be communicated in sleep talk.

Dr. Mack supported alien abduction, in part, because there was no viable explanation for the events. All I am doing is supplying that alternate explanation.

If this connection could be made with a single simple observation someone would have noticed this before.

The  text above has been added in preparation for a full page edit.

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Brief Psychotic Disorder

 Victims of temporary delusional or psychotic episodes experience bizarre things as their reality. After the episode subsides they can  retain some of the memories and have amnesia of others. Fear and paranoia are observed outcomes of this phenomenon. What a victim would fear is dependant on that victim's worries, contemporaneous activity and belief system.

While the expected dissociative/psychotic episode caused by this phenomenon usually resolves with no treatment the memory installed by the episode could last indefinitely. The victim perceives those memories as a part of their reality  As far as the victim knows the psychotically conceived event actually happened as remembered.

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The Premise

Barney had an ulcer believed to be caused by stress but he had no apparent stress in his life. In one interview Betty mentions he was out of work for six months prior to the Canadian trip.  I suggest that the ulcer was a reaction to the low level subliminal stimulation he would have received at the Post Office.

In the business office the movement of office staff beside a concentrating worker eight hours each day causes a sudden dissociative episode. (Think of a mini nervous breakdown.) At lower levels of human traffic the stimulation would be lower and the phenomenon would not quickly build to a mental break but other outcomes are possible. This is because the phenomenon is Accidental Subliminal Operant Conditioning.

The trip into Canada was to relax him. An episode of the Outer Limits was broadcast after the trip but before the hypnosis interview. That hypnosis session may have released what would have been a major event for Barney had it continued to build in his mind.  Barney had the potential of being the first case of "going postal."(*)  

Disturbed sleep, nightmares, and sleep talk, allowed communication to Betty before she underwent hypnosis about the episode. . His tossing and turning would have caused them frequent  periods of a near-waking type of sleep.  (Talking in sleep, nightmares, paranoid fear of being pursued was a part of my wife's experience.) Personal Experiences

(*)  The page on Mass School and Workplace Shootings is not complete. I will prepare place holder pages before filing the 2004 Copyright. I do not have enough information on all the incidents to complete the pages. Mark Barton Shooting Atlanta 1999, unfinished.

Paranoia is present in cases that involve this phenomenon. There is little information on Barney's diagnosis other than he had been ill for some time with physical problems that were associated with stress.  His ulcer is the only evidence of something going wrong.

Questions:

The Trip

If  Barney took binoculars into the field to view the star, could he have had an episode there and Betty not realized it? At first I though that this was not possible but later I found accounts of students who disappeared that showed they were able to drive during the early onset of their episodes.

The story is that they did not discuss the UFO part of the episode with anyone before the interview involving hypnosis. They were not aware of an abduction up to that point. This was explained as amnesia caused by the Aliens. Did they speak of any other details to any one before hypnosis?

Over several months as I research to build the pages on the phenomenon of physiology several things began to stand out.

The phenomenon produces un-attributed fear and paranoia. Barney could have had a low level anxiety attack during the trip into the field. As you read other pages on this site  you will find accounts of students having similar episodes with witnesses present. The witnesses were unable to detect the true nature of the event. (Maura Murray __ Missing Students)

The missing two hours

The missing period of time varies in on-line accounts from one to three hours. (Betty said two hours in the video clip linked below.)

 Did they tell anyone at the time, before the hypnosis, that there was missing time or did they remember it afterward? (Some accounts reveal that the missing time arose in an interview with UFO experts.

Site Quote:    Summary: Overview article on the Betty and Barney Hill abduction case by Loy Lawhon

"After talking to Keyhoe, and after reading Webb's report, two technical writers who were interested in UFOs, Robert Hohman and C.D. Jackson, made arrangements to interview the Hills in November. It was during this interview that one of the writers asked a key question: Why had it taken the Hills so long to get home? Calculating the time and the mileage from Colebrook to Portsmouth showed that they should have gotten home two hours sooner than they did, even allowing for stops. Also present at this interview was Major James MacDonald, a former Air Force Intelligence officer and close friend of the Hills. It was he who first suggested hypnosis to recover their memory of the missing time period."

http://www.ufoevidence.org/documents/doc357.htm 

   Original article, Lawhon is the UFO guide for this  site.   http://ufos.about.com/library/weekly/aa072997.htm

The stops mentioned were food and to walk the dog. Any error in the start time or in the count of how many times they stopped to walk the dog would cause a discrepancy in their time line. Two hours is too much missing time for the length of the trip but that is the point they raise.  Why would Aliens with their superior intelligence create such an obvious blank space in their activities? It would be too easily discovered.

One source cites the trip as 190 miles with a normal drive time of five hours. That night they believed they were on the  road seven  hours.

I have one source that believes the missing time was eventually resolved due to different routing from their usual path from Canada.

I am reminded of the Sherlock Holmes story in which the action of a farm dog revealed that there was no intruder.

Queston: What was the dog's reaction to the stop and their sighting? What did the aliens think of the dog?

Betty is reported to have called her sister who recommended that they contact Pease Air Force Base about the moving star. What did she tell the sister?

 My memory is that the call was only about the moving star. All information I have is from authors relating their interviews. That can be erroneous. The writers do not intentionally change facts but their information is obtained after the story has been recalled and discussed over years by the principals and false memory has a chance to enter the account.

Did he view the star with binoculars?
 

Maybe, maybe not, I do not believe the point where the real trip stops and the panic and delusions begin can be determined. Barney said he had a sore neck and there is at least one story that the binocular strap was broken. There is no outside source for this information. Betty and Barney were the only ones there.  If they related that point to anyone before hypnosis then he did not have amnesia concerning using binoculars to view the star. But remember there is no mention of anything other than a light following them at the point where this event, the broken strap, happens.  This appears to be a conflict in the story.

After such a long time and the story being told over and over,  false memory syndrome would prevent determining that from anyone's memory. Only something written at the time should be used.

Betty reports a conversation with Major Paul Henderson of the 100th Bomb Wing at Pease Air Force base and says she was told that the light appeared on Radar.   What the Major probably told them was that there  was something on radar that night. It may or may not have been what they had observed.

There is a picture on-line of Betty demonstrating where the craft appeared over the field. (linked below) How did she find the field again?

Two people having exposure to create simultaneous parallel dissociative episodes is not possible. Their levels of exposure at different jobs would not be similar. Even if the exposure were similar the effect on each person is different depending on their mental state, concerns and other factors. That they had the same delusion at the same time is absolutely not possible.

(Different accounts have Betty with the disturbed sleep and dreams The book by John Fuller is said to have the text of those dreams.  But Barney was the one who had the extreme reaction under hypnosis. Betty told a different story under hypnosis but had no severe reaction. This would indicate she did not have serious exposure to the phenomenon but later interviews with Betty have strange remarks from her. Something was happening to her mental state as the years progressed_ See Betty Hill in the links section.)

Remember,  it has not been established that Barney had exposure but only that his job was such that exposure could have happened if his workstation allowed subliminal sight to detect movement beside him. Alternately, the home is another possible location for exposure. The phenomenon was discovered in  the 1950's. The Post Office building would have been constructed before the engineering discovery. Even if the construction came after the engineering discovery it is unlikely that the information was disseminated outside the office furniture manufacturers and civil engineering field quickly enough to include Cubicle Level Protection in designing work areas in the building.

Barney began to experience odd psychiatric symptoms after the trip. He was still using the same workstation at the Post Office and slowly building again to a full mental break  Unknown to any one he had the same continuing exposure possibly for the rest of his employment there.

Betty, from the Huston interview: "I mean I reported seeing the craft in the beginning around midnight". 

Moving Star An Illusion

The trip was on a winding mountain highway. There would have been few lights on the road. When the moon appears to move from side to side and appear ahead then behind the car we would realize that the winding of the road creates this illusion. This is because we know the moon travels in one path across the night sky. The moon had set by 6:32 PM. This is not true of an unreferenced star or light.  It is easy to believe through the illusion that a light is moving relative to your car rather than the truth that the car is reversing positions relative  to the stationary star. Once you begin to believe the light is following you, anxiety would fuel the illusion. Barney's growing paranoia from exposure at work would also fuel the belief.

Betty said that she first saw the moving light near midnight. (Huston) At this point  I believe the Moon disappeared in the southwest at around 12:38. Jupiter and Saturn were close to the Moon. This  time can vary. The clock time we use doesn't change but the stars in the night sky change location because of the Earth's rotation. That will make a difference if you are at different locations along both Longitude and Latitude. The Earth rotates every twenty-four hours so at the equator you must move about one thousand miles to make an hour change in relative time. But as you travel north the lines of Longitude converge so that the distance between them shortens.

Astronomy Software - Freeware

Getting the night sky correctly depicted  for September 19, 1961 has proven to be a problem. In the terrain for the trip back to Portsmouth the horizon is unknown. Many soft ware programs will not allow you to position the viewer in randomly selected locations. They compute sky charts from locations near known cities. This entry will be moved to the links section at the bottom of this page.

Free  astronomy Software - pick your poison- load and roll your own. http://freeware.intrastar.net/astronomyone.htm

The Craft

This quote is from the Peter Huston interview.

BH: When this first happened, actually the very first day we were home, I talked to the police officer and told him about this craft...

PLH: So you talked to the local police about it.

BH: Yeah, and they told me to call Pease Air Force base. And tell them about it. Which I did. And they called back several times, and said the calls were being monitored, and some of the calls were being briefed and transferred to another area. So that's the September 20th. Right from the very beginning... Now what was your question? (laughs.)"

The story in other versions is that Betty called her sister about the light that followed them and the sister told her to contact Pease AFB. This may just be a slip by Betty, referring to the "craft" years later after telling the story many times. .

"BH: (remembering) Oh... NICAP! I wrote to NICAP originally, because I was concerned, basically, with is it an outer space craft, what if, healthwise, and what had we been exposed to? What about cosmic rays? What about radiation? Those things. I was thinking of my health, But nobody had any answers. And that's how I wrote to NICAP, but then later, just very soon after that, like three weeks later, we started getting phone calls from government agents. I mean top government people. The top people of the United States government. White house. National Security Agency. NASA. And from that moment on, I would say... how many years... five or six years anyway. They were coming here and bringing other scientists with them. So actually we didn't have any contacts with UFO organizations. It was all strictly government."

"And then one day, he happened to mention to Doctor Stevens that we'd been up in the mountains looking for the place where we had seen the UFO.

This statement from Betty establishes that far from being uninterested in UFO's before Barney's hypnosis, they had searched for the site where they saw it. They had the UFO in mind for some time.

Link to the interview and read the entire story. http://www.capital.net/com/phuston/bettyhill.HTML

The Bellero Shield

 The Outer Limits episode aired before the hypnosis interview. The dialog Barney recalled  with his aliens was very close to the script of the TV program.  ( REALL  has an article linked below.  "Eyes Still Speak" )

 I had the opportunity to see the full episode of the Bellero Shield. The Alien's eyes did not wrap around. The eye was behind a smaller than human eye opening or slit. The brow ridge and cheek bone formed a cleft that did wrap around the skull and decreased  in size until it disappeared above what would have been an ear position in human anatomy. Barney's sketch of his alien does have this feature. Barney drew the eye as round within

The Bellero Shield was a Plexiglas-sheet prop in the shape of a box.  The shield would pop into existence when the alien pressed a round device like a surface mount door bell button held in his right hand.  When alien was inside the box, the  view of him was through the corner seam.

The shield beeped every time it was touched from outside. The accounts of beeping while they drove the car September 19, 1961 happened months before this airing Feb 14, 1964. I am not sure when that was recounted in the course of the developing story.

Dialog with the alien about his method of communication happened more than once in the episode. The method of communication of Barney's aliens appeared in his account of the abduction.

Psychotic episode

Barney had the episode and mental event during the hypnotic trance. Remarks about that interview say he was screaming in fear. When the doctor regressed him Barney put the story together part from memory of the trip, memory of the TV program, and part from the unrealized building fear and paranoia from the ongoing subliminal distraction and stimulation at his workstation. The episode was milder because it happened under hypnosis. Without data it is not possible to know if his job would have ever created  enough  total compressed exposure to cause the classic expected episode. (Called a Nervous Breakdown in that time period.) If that was the case then but for the hypnosis Barney would have continued to decline mentally and physically but he would have been unaware of the reason. The belief at the time was that he was recalling a real incident.  The story was created as a paranoid psychotic delusion just as the delusions were created in the Shotwell-Shields case. Mysterious Disappearances

Members of Betty's family have objected to the paragraph above.  I don't understand how they though I said that Barney had "gone postal." That is not the suggestion intended. The Post Office has never provided Cubicle Level Protection. Another  reader who emailed me  said that Post Offices are like a large barn.

Rather, the phenomenon and exposure that caused the alien event for Barney is the same exposure that would later cause mass shootings in Post Offices. These came to be called "Going Postal."

The phenomenon creates a feeling of being watched or of something being behind you. When your brain associates that subliminal effect with on-going disputes those disputed are raised to a delusional level. In the onset of the dissociative/psychotic break associated with this problem shooting everyone involved becomes a reasonable act. Most of the shooters committed suicide. That is another possible outcome of the mental break. College Suicides

As far as I can determine Barney had no such situation.  Instead Barney became ill with stress related symptoms.

In the Huston interview Betty said Barney had been completely disabled for six months. I  took that to mean he did not work in that period before the trip.

See the Culture Bound Syndromes page. Going Postal is considered a Culture Bound Syndrome of the United States.

A new page Astronauts & Insanity is about the Belgian Polar Expedition of 1898/99. Eighteen men confined aboard a small ship stuck in polar ice began to have severe psychiatric symptoms. In my first scan of the book, Bold Endeavors, I found that there has been a long term problem with psychiatric complaints in polar expeditions. I didn't know that.

 If you do not believe this is possible read the case of Maura Murray on the Missing Students page. She had an episode while talking to her sister on the phone. After the call she had to be helped to her college residence. The discussion on the phone was about her sister's boyfriend and their break up. Maura told school authorities and her employer that there was a serious emergency and death in the family. At the point of the dissociative break Maura used some parts of true events to create a delusional situation. She experienced that delusion as reality. She disappeared and there is only one sighting of her walking on a rural road since. (Mura's family found my Missing Students page.)

Return of the jewelry

A communication from a source near Betty says that   Betty was unaware the earrings were missing until she found them in a pile of withered leaves on the table.

Another suspicious event was the return of Betty's jewelry she believed lost during the abduction. The items were found on the kitchen table in a pile of leaves. Come on.... Do you really believe friendly aliens traveled back to the site of the abduction found her jewelry and returned it to her. The pile of leaves was included to suggest that. If the items had just been left on the table she might not have connected finding them to the abduction. She would have realized she had just miss-placed them in the house. Barney had two teenage sons who attended high school and lived in the home. I did not find a time line for their presence in the home. But someone with access to the home had to play that prank.

"They took my blue earrings. And about six weeks later, Barnie and I were up in the mountains, thinking if we could find the spot, where we had... been stopped, we could remember what happened, and since we went and came home, right there in the kitchen, a pile of leaves, and in the pile of leaves were my blue earrings." [Peter Huston Interview -  Links - Quote Copy/Paste spelling is as copied]

"The Hill'sUFO encounter happened in the morning of September 20, 1961.....Betty's dreams, written down a matter of days after the UFO sighting, mention men with Jimmy Durante noses, dark or black hair and eyes, and a relaxed human appearance that she said was "not frightening."... The most salient issue was when the wraparound eyes were first described. That turned out to be during a hypnosis session involving Barney Hill dated February 22, 1964." [The Eyes that Spoke: Martin Kottmeyer  Quote-Copy/Paste-Spelling as copied]

This element of the story is problematic. Who returned  the earrings? The Aliens? But this story is by Betty's own account happening only six weeks after the moving star incident. From the quote above they went back to find where they had been stopped.

Family members say that no one had a key to the house but they also say that there was vandalism inside the house while the house was locked.

In the Huston interview Betty has an exchange where she mentions that there are two apartments upstairs. She names two men that came in the 1970's. But there is no mention of  who  lived in the upstairs at the time of the UFO sighting.

Accounts of the discovery that they had been stopped did not come out until much later in hypnosis.

Response from the family.

A communication from a member of Betty's family revealed that there were constant break-ins after this incident. Some damage was done and legal papers were thrown around in one incident. Deadbolt locks were installed. I asked what type locks were originally on the doors but don't have a reply yet. It was revealed that Betty did not know the earrings were missing until she found them on the table. Who would have known which earrings Betty wore on the night of the abduction?

That information contradicts the story in Peter Huston's interview with Betty.

Someone gained access to the house based on the reports of damage. It would be more likely that the person's who damaged the house were responsible for the earrings on the table  rather than aliens.

Conclusion?

Can I prove any of this?... NO... Starting an  investigation to prove it is the point of beginning this page.

You have the choice of believing that aliens, possessing abilities  far in advance of  us visited the Earth in 1961 to study the locals in the northeastern United States. Or you can believe that a little known problem of normal  human physiology completely explains the abduction episode.

A diagram of Barney's workspace showing the traffic pattern would lean toward proof.

______________________

The material below is from my research on line. The initial paragraphs are repeats of information on other site pages.

You should be able to visit the links section below and judge the quality of information used.

There are still persons alive who might shed light on the events of September 1961.

If you have already read the basic explanation, history, and psychology of the phenomenon on other pages click this line to jump past the next paragraph.

The Phenomenon

Over forty years ago, as a freshman engineering student, I accidentally discovered the phenomenon existed  I have known about this most of my life. I was stunned to find that almost no one else is aware of it. The realization that it is Subliminal Accidental Operant Conditioning happened just months ago.

In the 1950's design engineers for office furniture manufacturers were surprised when workers in new close-spaced workstations began to have odd dissociative or psychotic episodes. The problem was discovered to be peripheral vision reflexes.  This discovery changed the way business offices must be designed. The Cubicle was the solution by the 1960's. The discovery was known in engineering circles but almost no where else. Psychologists solved the problem so there is a brief mention made in psychology lectures on subliminal sight and peripheral vision reflexes. If you recently took such a course your instructor may have noted that, "Subliminal Sight caused a problem in the early days of modern office design." If it wasn't on the test you probably quickly forgot the statement.

The explanation given in those lectures is that a conflict arises in the mind and builds to a mental break. Instead the phenomenon is Accidental Operant Conditioning. That being the case many outcomes are possible.

The detection of movement to cause a peripheral vision reflex happens subliminally. The action is automatic and instantaneous. That's why it's a reflex.

Why does this happen?

Man developed over the millennia as a hunter gather. To survive early man and pre-humans had to react quickly to the attempted  predation of larger animals or be eaten. Peripheral vision reflexes are a retained evolutionary developed warning system. If you have ever been startled or 'caught something out of the corner of your eye,' you experienced a peripheral vision reflex.

You cannot turn the detection system off. To be effective it must work to warn you of threat movement behind you no matter what you are doing. It does this by breaking your concentration and causing a turn of your head toward the appreciated movement. You can ignore the movement. As a human you can, 'attach selective levels of attention to objects or movement in your vision field.' But because sight is not sensory adaptable you cannot stop seeing objects or movement. Micro movements of the eye refresh sensor cells on rods and cones to prevent chemical depletion. That constant refreshing of the cells keeps sight from being sensory adaptable. The subliminal action of the detection system prevents your being aware that you are still seeing threat movement after you ignore that movement upon the initial presentation as a peripheral vision reflex.

When we sit for long periods concentrating on something that requires our full attention and complete mental investment, the posture and mental state provide the opportunity to create the phenomenon. All that remains is for a source of repeating detectable movement to enter our Subliminal Peripheral Vision to create periodically repeating peripheral vision reflexes. In the business office it was usually human traffic moving from behind, walking by the unprotected worker. Peripheral vision reflexes are created at such a primitive level in the brain that almost anything that blinks or moves can serve as stimulus for threat movement if it meets basic rules of delectability. Obviously the stimulus must rise above the threshold of delectability for the given situation and lighting.

Unexplored is the possibility that low levels of stimulation, not enough to cause the mental break, over long periods, can subtly alter you beliefs and concept of reality. This may explain the recently discovered correlation between TV viewing and violence in children. yu

In addition physiological changes in your eye due to accommodation change the area covered by Subliminal Peripheral Vision. Plitz's reflex alters the sensitivity of the rods so that only large movement close by will  be detected. When you concentrate on something at arm's length everything falls in place. Knowledge workers in the business office and students in college have the behavior necessary to create the opportunity for the phenomenon to happen. The act of using a computer, viewing the monitor, reading for comprehension, or playing computer games also create the opportunity.

(I am still seeking a complete definition of Plitz's or Attention Reflex. If  you can cite a text book reference to back up my memory of this reflex leave a message for the WebMaster. My memory is that the pupil of the eye dilates as we concentrate on something.)

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The Abduction Story

In the fall of 1961 Barney and Betty Hill took a short vacation in Canada. Barney had been ill with what Betty described in an interview as psychosomatic problems. On their return trip they believed a light was following their car. In an interview with UFO experts they noted that the drive took about two hours longer than it should have. There was some damage to the trunk lid of the car. Accounts vary on what that damage was. Some say there were shiny spots in the paint and others say the paint was removed leaving bare metal spots. Over the next few weeks Barney began to experience  psychiatric problems and eventually they sought medical help. Using hypnosis their doctor discovered hidden memory of an abduction by aliens.

Barney and Betty were believed because of their positions in the community and because they had not sought to publicize the event. The hypnosis session did not break the news until some time afterward.

The medical opinion was that the episode did not happen and was a fantasy.

The Internet is full of sites about this incident.  It is the seminal story of alien abduction. The Hills were believed because they made no claims until the news was leaked and appeared in news reports. They were both respected members of their communities and Civil Rights workers. Much was made of the stress they would have suffered as an interracial couple. I found nothing that they had said on that issue.

Different jobs are cited for Barney but I believe he was a dispatcher for the Post Office on the midnight to eight shift.. That fact is critical. If he had been a mail carrier there would have been little opportunity for the phenomenon to have been created. Betty was a social worker and some site accounts place her as a supervisor. I have little information past that but she certainly would have desk time in that occupation. A private office provides Cubicle Level Protection from all but introduced movement. That would almost eliminate Beverly as a possible direct victim of the phenomenon unless the stimulation was at home.

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To establish that there is a reasonable probability for SPVP to have caused this incident the jobs must be verified and the possible source of stimulation in Subliminal Peripheral Vision found. If Barney did work inside the Post Office, a floor plan of Barney's workspace with the traffic path of other workers around him would decide this issue.

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Disputed Facts

Barney's job

There are sources that say Barney was a dispatcher on the midnight to eight shift. My communication with a source close to the family says that he was always a letter carrier.

The phrase Betty used in the Peter Huston interview was that he was a "rural mail carrier."

This fact may be important. If he worked inside for eight hours daily there should have been heavier exposure.

As a letter carrier he would only have been in the Post Office building a short time each morning.

The Aliens

Betty has in interviews argued that the aliens were more like humans than the representation in the movie and press stories. An Outer Limits episode aired near the time of the hypnosis interview supplied the interpretation we now see in the media. (Linked below.) The press and TV changed the story and that altered version not Betty's is on most sites I visited.

Although they could communicate thoughts through speach during disturbed sleep they could not communicate an image that way. This may be why their aliens are different. Why would different aliens conduct the two examinations? Barney's drawing of his alien  is a close copy of the alien on the "Bellero Shield" Outer Limits episode.

I am working on a frame capture of the alien on that episode and a comparison with Barney's drawing.

Interstellar Travel

At least one of the sites has a problem understanding Einstein's theory of relativity.

 ".... the Reticulan crew would not have to be going faster than the speed of light to pay a visit to our Solar Sys­tem and return facing the prospect of residence in a home for the elderly. Using Einstein's change factor, a one-way trip at 80 percent of the speed of light at a constant velocity would take them 13 years. At 99 percent of the speed of light, it would take them nine months but at 99.9 percent of that velocity, the trip could be made in only 27 days!"

Although the math might be true as stated it is a flawed argument. The people they left behind would have aged not the Reticulan Crew. Einstein's theory, validated here on earth, says that time slows for the ship occupants traveling near the speed of light but not for the home planet residents. This raises another problem with travel between the stars for trade purposes. What commodity would be worth the same after several hundred years  back home? What manufacturing process or scientific research using some element hauled from a distant star system would wait that many years. What trade goods would be valued so highly that vast efforts, measured in money on Earth, would be expended to transport them across space between stars?

The physics of time and space must be the same for alien visitors or their ships would not operate in our little corner of space. Many sightings show instantaneous acceleration and changes of direction. That is not possible under physics as we understand it for a body that has mass. Low mass probabilities  are static charges, ball lightening, or optical illusions involving distant light sources, including the sun and moon,  being reflected or ducted by atmospheric layers containing water or dust to allow reflectivity. Large distant buildings rising high enough would reflect sunlight under those conditions.

Shiny Silver Glowing UFOs  (This section on UFOs has been  moved to a separate page UFOs -  Glowing Low Mass Objects.)

The Star Map

Betty had studied an article published in the New York Times about the constellation Pegasus. (one source dates that article to 1965. I thought I had a source placing the Times story before she drew the map. I will recheck this point. ) She has said her map was closer to the illustration in the Times. The map seen on most Internet sites is from research by Marjorie Fish. Betty's drawing is usually included. I cannot verify this but one source cites a letter to Fish in which Betty said the three dimensional star map was above her view point. The bottom of  the map was about her eye level. Betty's drawing seems to be from a vantage point above the alien 3D star map not below. Betty had help in drawing the aliens but I will have to check to see if she had help with the star map. The story I have is that the original map was drawn under hypnosis.

Another recent  interpretation of the Star Map points to the circular markings on the two globes said to be Zeta Reticuli 1& 2. Stars do not have equatorial belts. The site then proposes the two globes are actually Saturn and Jupiter, the belts being the moons and rings,  seen from a point past both, looking back toward the Sun. In that scheme the Sun and Earth appear in the map. The belts on the globes are viewed as the rings of Saturn and the moons of Jupiter. (This  would mean that the alien was pulling Betty's leg when he asked her if she knew where she was in the map.  Strange sense of humor those aliens had huh.)

The "alien base" referred to in Internet articles is actually a suggested match of star pattern visible only from Earth's  southern hemisphere. Marjorie Fish used the Von W. Gliese Catalogue of 1957. Researchers do not fault her work. But arguments against the match cite as much as a forty percent error possibility for some of the star locations. The number and quality of telescopes available to calculate this data from the southern hemisphere was low. This means that for the fifteen or so stars involved, a huge error in the data would spoil any calculation of a possible match. No matter the quality of the work GIGO, Garbage In Garbage Out. ( A long "Astronomy" magazine article is linked below. )

"After several run-throughs, he confirmed the positions determined by Marjorie Fish. "I was able to locate potential areas of error, but no real errors," Steggert concludes.

Steggert zeroed-in on possibly the only real bone of contention that anyone had with Marjorie Fish's interpretation: The data on some of the stars may not be accurate enough for us to make definitive conclusions. For example, he says the data from the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory Catalog, the Royal Astronomical Society Observatory Catalog, and the Yale Catalog of Bright Stars "have differences of up to two magnitudes and differences in distance amount to 40 percent for the star Gliese 59". Other stars have less variations in the data from one catalog to another, but Steggert's point is valid. The data on some of the stars in the map is just not good enough to make a definitive statement. (The fact that measurements of most of the stars in question can only be made at the relatively poorly equipped southern hemisphere observatories accounts for the less reliable data.)"
http://www.stealthskater.com/Documents/ZetaReticuli_1.doc

An Australian astronomy site mentions current measurements of 100,000 stars. This is a monthly column and will change.  This is the quote the site gives.

"Four degrees directly north of NGC 1313 is the fine optical pair of Sun-like stars, Zeta Reticuli 1 & 2 (3h 18m, -62° 30'), much beloved of UFO buffs as one of the home places of alien visitors (do a Web search on Zeta Reticuli and you'll see what I mean). Makes an excellent binocular pair 5 arcminutes apart, and if you're really sharp-eyed you can resolve the mag. 5.2/5.5 stars with the unaided eye. They are relatively close at 39 light years from us. According to one reference, they lie about 3 l.y. from each other, which would put them too far apart to be physically connected, but as they have the same proper motion through space, possibly they may be the remains of a disrupted binary system (my speculation)."

http://www.mso.anu.edu.au/cas/southerncross/sc_200002.ht

Spots on the Car

It is part of the lore that they discovered the spots on their return. I do not remember from my reading of Interrupted Journey many years ago. Again this is problematic because they were unaware of there being an alien craft in the first few days after the trip. They only reported a light following them.

There are many substances which can change the reflectivity of paint on an automobile. If the spots were just that, the removal of aged oxidized, dead paint, someone could have taken buffing compound, abrasive rouge,  and applied it to a few spots. In that case the spots would not be perfectly round. (How old was the car at the time?)

Things such as brake fluid will remove paint. Insect repellent will do this. Army surplus repellent, available in the 1960's, did that for a car my family owned. The paint would bubble, curl, and be blown away if the car were driven at highway speed.

Both the accidental damage or deliberate prank are possible depending on when the spots were discovered. If the spots had been there all along and only discovered after the event that too would explain the apparent sudden appearance of spots on the trunk lid.

Beeping Sounds

There are areas of human dreaming that allow input to the dream from the outside environment. They happen just as we fall asleep and again as we wake. (Correct terminology , names of the areas of sleep, will be inserted as I have time.) An example is when you do not wish to wake up you may create a dream that the alarm buzzer is the phone ringing and you know it is someone you do not wish to speak with. You successfully ignore the alarm. The sound of the alarm does not have to match the sound of your phone. In the almost instantly conceived short dream you will understand it to be the phone no matter what sound the alarm makes. The memory that it was the phone would be in place instead of the correct situation. I sometimes remember the dream episode and other times not. The two episodes of perceived beeping sound like an automatic snooze alarm.

Once either of them had the dream experience and communicated it to the other that suggestion could have been the source of the beeping sound they believed coming from the aliens. Communications could have happened more than once. Remember that the whole story was revealed under hypnosis. The problem at the time was how Betty had a similar story.

Blind Abductees?

While surfing the Internet this morning I found a site with a letter from an investigator of abduction accounts. She remarked that in all the years she had researched these cases there had never been a case of a blind abductee. Do you think that is because the phenomenon which leads to the accounts is sight driven? Subliminal Peripheral Vision Psychosis for instance? There was a  reply which recounted two cases that happened before the subject lost sight but no reply citing a blind abductee.

October 13, 2005   In emails and letters since this original writing I have been unable to find any reference to a blind alien abductee. When I asked treatment centers for Panic Attacks about this there appears to be no blind victim of panic attacks either.

The second phase of this investigation has begun so  there are now page changes.

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Links    (Organization of the links into categories is not complete.)

Additional information on the Hill Abduction requires that some text material be moved. Links to UFO material is still included here but the text material on the page has been relocated to a new UFO page. Bright Glowing Low Mass Objects

My method of displaying links allows you to copy the text of my page and keep the URL of the link in  Notepad. If  you later save the text to Word® or to other word processor document while you are on-line the link should work from the word processor. Button style links are lost when saved to notepad.

Galaxy of Stars

"For centuries, humankind has looked to the heavens in wonderment and awe at both natural atmospheric and astronomical events; but every now and then, something strange and seemingly, unearthly appears in our skies, prompting us to ponder... " Introduction paragraph at Galaxy of Stars
 

http://www.a-galaxy-of-stars.co.uk/galaxy/index.php

Sites about the Hill abduction

Virtually Strange

Home page       http://www.virtuallystrange.net/index.html

http://www.virtuallystrange.com/mindshift/

http://www.virtuallystrange.com/aic/hillcase.html

Mailing list archive page. Subscribe at the bottom of this page. http://www.virtuallystrange.net/ufo/updates/

Search Tools

Search Engines

Paranormal and UFO Directory - UFOseek.com is the largest paranormal and UFO directory.

Aliens

Eyes That Spoke 

The Outer Limits episode the "Bellero Shield" aired just twelve days before the hypnosis interview. The little grey men, flat faces, no ears, and wraparound eyes plus some of the account by Barney closely parallels this TV episode.  This link is to the  Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal, Martin Kottmeyer, author. Note that Betty can be seen in pictures on-line with an alien head replica, which appears human not the typical alien depiction. CSICOP

http://www.csicop.org/sb/9409/eyesthat.html

Kottmeyer replied to criticism  of the original article in this REALL newsletter archived article.

http://www.reall.org/newsletter/v06/n05/eyes-still-speak.html

Nova On-Line

Home page for Nova On-Line "Exploring the Alien Abduction Phenomenon"

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/aliens/

Phillip Klass - Kidnapaped by Aliens  http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/aliens/philipklass.html

John Mack    http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/aliens/johnmack.html

Betty Hill

"Betty Hill- The Grandmother of Ufology" by Avis Ruffu

This article and interview has many of the incidents of UFO sightings in later years. The blue earrings are mentioned.

" ...there is a craft that comes in that she calls a "sneaky one." It will come right down in close to a populated area and set down in a wooded area. The craft looks like a house with a pitched roof and the windows are lighted so that it looks like someone is home with the lights on.  Betty said if you passed it while driving you would only think it was a house sitting back in the woods.  This shape and ordinary appearance allows them to come into populated areas without being seen for what they really are." 

There is a video offered for sale at the bottom of that site page.
 

http://www.tntleague.com/misc/bettyhill.html

"Interview with Betty Hill. Held at her Home in Portsmouth NH on Thursday October 1, 1998 by Peter Huston."

Betty's returned blue earrings are mentioned in this tape recorded interview. Some of the data above is disputed by her account of events. Betty is 79 at the time of this interview. It is done seventeen years and one month after the abduction.

http://www.capital.net/com/phuston/bettyhill.HTML

The Grounding of Betty Hill  - As I Please - by J.Dennnis Robinson Vol3, No 3, February 4 1999

http://www.seacoastnh.com/arts/please020299.html 

Betty's unreliable testimony and later unsubstantial reports, levitating cats, poltergeist and other items are mentioned. 

http://www.100megsfree4.com/farshores/hills.htm

The Star Map

The Zeta Reticuli Incident by Terence Dickinson

This link is a reprint of articles in Astronomy magazine and others. It is a long read with arguments and replies from the original authors including Fish. Carl Sagan is listed as a supervisor in some of the work. The work of Marjorie Fish is disputed.

http://www.ufoarea.com/abduction_zeta.html

This page is an interactive presentation with a frame index on the left. It contains the pictures and drawings not in the reprint above. It contains the quote I use above. (1.06-MB MS-Word document)

http://www.stealthskater.com/Documents/ZetaReticuli_1.doc

Lie Detector, TV Program

Written by Paul Davids producer of a TV show called Lie Detector, this article tells of Betty's appearance and Polygraph test on the show. This Alien Zoo site is available again and may have additional information later. There is no method to communicate with site owners.

http://shop.alienzoo.com/alienabduction/bettyhillabduction.html

Beyond Reason, Canadian TV Program

On this site you can view a 3:23 minute clip of Betty telling the abduction story She has the alien replica head and explains the features of her aliens.

http://archives.cbc.ca/IDCC-1-69-725-4393/life_society/ufos/

This page has the picture of Betty in the field where the UFO was sighted. NICAP

http://www.nicap.dabsol.co.uk/hillriddle.htm

This paper by Rima E. Laibow, M.D. was written without the knowledge that the phenomenon exists. It includes a 'double(?)  blind' evaluation of nine abductees to determine any common psychiatric pathology.

http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Rampart/2271/fs-abduclaibow.html

This paper agues that alien abductions should be studied in the main stream of science. Harvard University attempted to dismiss Dr. Mack  because of  his views.

http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Rampart/2271/jmack.html

This page has several other articles indexed by Dr Mack.

http://www.ufoevidence.org/topics/JohnMack.htm

In this 1974 Astronomy article Fish is revealed to be a Mensa member. The map is described as flat but viewed as three dimensional. Betty is said to view the map from three feet away. This appears to disputes the version that the bottom of the map was at her eye level.

http://www.zetatalk.com/theword/tworx136.htm

This article has three star maps and all stars are named.

xxxxxxxxxxx

MUFON, UFO SYMPOSIUM -1974 "JOURNEY INTO THE HILL STAR MAP" Presented by Marjorie E. Fish

http://www.nicap.dabsol.co.uk/hillmap.htm

SolStation.Com has a page on  Zeta Reticuli 1, 2 The Fish and  Hill illustrations are included

http://www.solstation.com/stars2/zeta-ret.htm

General Sites

This site quotes several sources. One states that in independent hypnosis their stories agreed in considerable detail but does not say on what points they were in agreement.

http://www.ufocasebook.com/Hill.html

This site explores the history of UFO phenomenon as viewed through the discipline of  Anthropology. The same hypnosis results between Betty and Barney  is cited as different but compelling.

http://home.uchicago.edu/~ryancook/au-con.htm

Other Current Sites

Mufon.com is under construction.  An email to the site owner revealed no additional information.

http://www.mufon.com/coalition_frame.htm

http://www.cufos.org/UFO_Documents_internet.html

http://spj.org/foia.asp

Copyright 2003

*****

Accidental Operant Conditioning 

Operant conditioning usually does not  work well  with humans. This is because we have knowledge of self and of our surroundings. We are aware of the source when we snap the red rubber band on our wrist every time we have a craving for a cigarette. We can see the oinking pig every time we open the refrigerator door for a snack.

Accidental Operant Conditioning is devastating because it happens subliminally. Once you habituate notice of movement which is of a nature to cause a peripheral vision reflex, your conscious mind loses knowledge of that movement. That knowledge cannot be regained because the detection of movement in peripheral vision happens subliminally.

The internal brain signal to cause a peripheral vision reflex has no complex meaning. It also has no source the brain can use to identify it. Your brain normally forms your reality from memory and from neural impulses from sensors. Those are eyes, ears, skin, and a system including ambient vision and the balance system of the inner ear.

As your mind attempts to reconcile this un-sourced input you drift to delusional and psychotic episodes. 

The different models of timing, frequency, and total exposure over time, determine the outcome. Each  person's outcome will be different. .....

******

NOTE:    July 3, 0450 hours McDonough GA

 There are current forum postings from readers of this page.  I did read almost all information available on-line before writing this page. That material is linked near the end of the page so you can also read it. This page is the first step to begin a new discussion of Alien Abductions. Post your comments on your favorite forum and email me the URL.

I didn't read the 1600 pages of UFO sightings, FOIA, from the FBI electronic reading room, also linked.

 The thrust of the discussion should be that Alien Abductions should be considered as a sub-category of Culture Bound Syndromes, DSM (Diagnostic Statistical Manual of the American Psychiatric Association), briefly discussed on the Chaco Canyon page.

Victims of Alien Abductions are not lying. They did have an experience and memories of it. Some have ongoing experiences. They do have missing time for instance. The question is where and why the event happened. This page suggests that after you eliminate obvious hoaxes all the remaining abductions happen in the mind.  Understanding the conflict of physiology is critical.

A stated purpose of this site is to inform the public of the problem of physiology. If  you have contacts within the administrators of colleges or local school districts send them to this site to read College Suicides, Missing Students, and ...Prevention... at the bottom of most pages.