Page 23 - The 'X' Chronicles Newspaper - Late January 2019

Barney Hill’s “Racial Paranoia” 23

New Documents Offer

Insight into Barney Hill's

"Racial Paranoia" and

His Alleged Alien

Abduction

by Jason Colavito

It’s deeply satisfying to learn that a conclusion
that I reached through one line of evidence finds
confirmation through a new and unexpected line
of complementary evidence. That’s one reason I
was quite pleased to read a cache of forty-year-
old documents related to the 1961 Betty and
Barney Hill abduction that Robert Sheaffer
released last week. In them, we find some an African American married to a white woman Hill and race.
additional confirmation of one of the in an era that frowned on interracial marriage. In a letter of March 1, 1976, Simon
conclusions I reached in researching the I have no desire to armchair psychoanalyze the seems to confirm my own supposition about
abduction’s connection to The Outer Limits. The deceased, but it strikes me as beyond Barney Hill’s attitude in explaining his
evidence isn’t exactly new, but it is a slightly coincidental that an episode featuring aliens involvement in a UFO investigation: “My
different perspective on what we already knew that match Barney Hill’s description in a interest in UFOs was almost entirely on the
about the case. backwoods setting matching the abduction site phenomena of Barney Hill’s developing racial
Sheaffer has uploaded 48 pages of also featured a love story that closely mirrored paranoia which seems to me to have been the
documents, which include correspondence Barney Hill’s own personal story of a love that best representation on the matter that I had seen.
between Sheaffer, the Hills’ hypnotherapist Dr. defied social convention and came about The ultimate impact on other events, such as a
Benjamin Simon, and skeptic Philip J. Klass. through the union of different races.” probably UFO experience, served only to
Simon’s hypnotherapy session transcripts When I wrote the article, I had no way of amplify the situation, not to create an
formed the basis for John Fuller’s 1965 account knowing Barney Hill’s attitudes toward race explanation of UFOs or similar phenomena.”
of the Hill abduction, The Interrupted Journey. relations, and I could only offer parallels Later in the letter, he emphasized again that
The correspondence was occasioned by the between what Hill told Simon under hypnosis, “Barney’s paranoia” was responsible for his
publicity surrounding the 1975 NBC-TV movie what John Fuller wrote of it, and what I saw in interpretation of events, and “Barney’s racial
based on the book, The UFO Incident. viewing The Outer Limits. Now, however, attitudes” were the governing motive in Simon’s
Regular readers will remember that in Sheaffer’s cache of documents provides some treatment of Barney Hill.
1990 skeptic Martin Kottmeyer proposed that additional support for my supposition that Hill In The Interrupted Journey, Hill’s
Barney Hill’s description of the aliens as having internalized the narrative of “Spider County” psychosomatic symptoms were strongly implied
slanted eyes derived from a 1964 episode of the because of his own feelings about interracial to be due to the alien abduction, but Simon
Outer Limits called “The Bellero Shield,” which marriage. suggests that Hill’s own race-based fears led him
aired a few weeks before the hypnotic regression In the correspondence, Dr. Simon to manifest physical symptoms until hypnotic
session with Dr. Simon that yielded the famous informs Klass that he believed that that regression allowed him to express and relieve
abduction claims. Hill had sought the services of “abduction” never happened and was instead the his racial anxieties by discussing them in
a psychotherapist because he had been result of dreams that Betty Hill had after she and symbolic and fantastic form. It therefore makes
experiencing distress as well as psychosomatic her husband saw a strange light in the sky. These all the more sense that Hill would reach for a
symptoms, including genital warts, later dreams were similar to 1950s-era science fiction nearly identical television narrative he had
attributed to anxiety, during the first half of movies, and included a medical exam using recently seen and which reflected what we now
1962. He began seeing Dr. Simon after going techniques familiar from the era (the famous know to be a preoccupation with racial anxiety.
public with his UFO sighting story in late 1963, needle in the uterus account is essentially In short, Simon’s letter provides a pretty good
due to ongoing anxiety and distress. amniocentesis, a then decade-old but frightening reason why Barney Hill happened to internalize
I proposed in 2012 that it was more technique due to its risk of miscarriage before a narrative that resembled his own and
likely that Hill’s hypnotically induced false ultrasound became standard), but they lacked subconsciously spit its details back out to fill in
memories were a conflation of three successive many of the details that later emerged from the gaps in his recollection of his wife’s dreams.
Outer Limits episodes (and one from the Simon’s hypnosis sessions. (Her account of her Oh, and ufologist Kathleen Marden
Twilight Zone) that all aired in the weeks before dreams, said to be from November 1961 but not (coauthor with Stanton Friedman of Captured,
the hypnosis session that yielded abduction published until 1965, described the aliens as the Hill abduction book soon to be a major
details absent from earlier accounts and having noses like Jimmy Durante and dressed in motion picture) is upset by the whole thing and
hypnosis sessions. Most important for my Air Force-style uniforms—very different from alleges that Betty Hill had declared Dr. Simon’s
argument was the episode “The Children of Barney Hill’s version.) Simon concluded that letters to be a hoax, even though they agree
Spider County,” which not only featured aliens Betty Hill’s dreams were the result of “anxiety” substantively with all of the information in The
with slanted eyes but also featured a backwoods and that Barney Hill likely developed his Interrupted Journey (including Simon’s doubt
setting and narrative of interracial romance that abduction narrative from hearing his wife retell about the abduction, fully acknowledged by
closely paralleled Barney Hill’s own the story of her dreams. This much we already Fuller) and differ only in the spin that Fuller put
experiences. (Barney Hill was African knew from The Interrupted Journey. on Simon’s analysis.
American, and his wife Betty was white.) The next part casts the material in the
At the time, I wrote the following: book in a slightly different light. In The About The Author: Jason Colavito is an author
“The thematic resemblance between Interrupted Journey, Fuller makes scattered and editor based in Albany, NY. He is
“The Children of Spider County” and the life of reference to Barney Hill’s fear that backwoods internationally recognized by scholars, literary
Barney Hill cannot go without notice. In the people would exhibit hostility toward him due to theorists, and scientists for his pioneering work
episode, Lee Kinsolving, as the alien leader's his race, and Fuller writes that Simon felt that exploring the connections between science,
son, plays a half-human hybrid who defies the this fear might have led Hill to have a more pseudoscience, and speculative fiction. His
society of his heritage to run away with a white deeply emotional reaction to the events. investigations examine the way human beings
woman who loves him deeply. Barney Hill was However, Simon’s later testimony shows that create and employ the supernatural to alter and
this downplays Simon’s real conclusions about understand our reality and our world. []