I was surfing the web this morning and somehow (I actually don’t remember how!) stumbled onto the story of Betty and Barney Hill, an American couple who claimed to have observed an alien spaceship as they were driving home through the sticks one night and, furthermore, insisted the craft had landed, stopped them and men in “shiny black suits” had abducted them.
This happened in 1965 and the state where it occurred slips my mind but it was not a populated area at the time and the road the couple were taking was isolated and few cars were observed on the journey.
Betty and Barney Hill were an interracial couple, not that there is anything wrong with that but it was a notable situation in 1965 for a European-American woman to be married to an African-American man and of course some skeptics who sought to deride their story in the aftermath pointed to their unique racial pairing and the stress they must have endured in society at the time because of their union as leading to delusions which overflowed on that isolated country road and led them to imagine the whole thing. A suggestion which would be rightly scorned at today.
I have read the Hills’ account of their “abduction” in the past and it was interesting to re-read it today as a mature man rather than a bright-eyed boy prepared to believe anything that is written on paper about extraterrestrials and visitors from the stars.
It does seem the Hills had very vivid imaginations and their “sighting” may well have a been signal tower on the nearby hills and their “abduction” merely some imagined memories brought forth through hypnotic recall that seemed very familiar to science-fiction shows which had recently aired on television.
All that being said, the Hills maintained their story to the end of their lives despite repeated harassment from skeptics looking to debunk their claim of a “Close Encounter of Third Kind” and never sought to profit from their new found notoriety.
It is hard to believe a couple such as they could simply invent such a tale although of course there are folk who lie their whole lives and never think twice about it. I tend to think that something strange did happen to the Hills that dark night on an isolated country road but have serious doubts whether it involved aliens in shiny black suits.
I have no doubt people see strange things in the sky, things which to the human mind are unexplainable. Some people really do see unidentified flying objects. Whether they are man made or vehicles from another world are open for discussion of course.
It would be easy to write off the Hills as cranks who had drunk too much and imagined it all or wasters who just wanted to impose themselves on other peoples time but there have been plenty of people announce to the world that they have encountered something abnormal who can’t be written off as cranks.
The Westall High School UFO sighting in 1966 is a case in point.
Several hundred students at the school in Melbourne saw a silver disk fly over their school and land in nearby woodland and many of them saw the craft on the ground before it took off, never to be seen again. Of course it could be written off as a case of mass hysteria but many of those children became doctors and lawyers and respected and trusted members of society. And all of them today stand by the story as it was described in 1966. Hard for skeptics to denounce such people as fools and liars.
Seeing something of note which I have described does not of course mean visitations from denizens of alien worlds is the norm or should be believed by the majority who read such reports in the papers and sigh at the ridiculousness of it all. But I do believe many of the famous stories told about UFO’s to be true. Just what these people come across is open to debate.
There is no doubt the military are always testing new and strange weapons and craft and I have no doubt that many sightings of “alien” vessels in the sky are merely the military having some fun at the expense of hysterical innocent bystanders.
I am also sure there are physical phenomena which occurs all over the world from time to time which the average Joe cannot explain on the rare moments that humans stumble onto such events. Easily misinterpreted as supernatural, extraterrestrial but most certainly abnormal.
Which brings me to my own little close encounter.
Many years ago I would spend many a Saturday evening with a couple I use to work with. Pizza and a video were my staple on these nights for many years and I would drive home from their place around midnight, a journey which would only take 20 minutes.
Some nights, not feeling ready for bed, I would take a longer route home enjoying the solitary delights of driving at night with no-one else about.
Many people who know Canberra would be aware of the Monaro Highway which runs from the industrial centre of Fyshwick and skirts the southern town centre of Tuggeranong before running full steam for Cooma and the Snowy Mountains. I would hop onto the highway at Narrabundah and jump off near Wanniassa, taking a right at Long Gully Lane past the rubbish tip, over the range into Tuggeranong itself and would weave my way home through the streets to my home in Kambah. A direction I still take often all these years later.
This particular night I had driven through the dog leg where a turn to the left takes you to the city of Queanbeyan and veered to the right past the industrial suburb of Hume. On this night I eschewed my normal escape route towards Wanniassa and would take the next right hand turn at the roundabout which would see me through Fadden and the heart of Tuggeranong, a real “roundhouse left” of a way to get home.
As I drove past the Wanniassa turn-off I looked towards what I presume is the west-and home-and saw a very strange thing. Two of the brightest stars one would ever wish to see were hanging majestically in the western sky. This in itself would not usually elicit anymore than a gasp of admiration at mother nature’s magnificence except for one startling observation. Both stars were bright orange!
I turned off the highway and drove past the snoozing suburbs of Tuggeranong, guided home by the two orange beacons now hanging squarely over the Urambi Hills. I had never seen such things in the Canberra night sky before but I could easily write them off-at this stage-as perfectly normal natural phenomena
As I reached home in Kambah-I was still living with my parents at the time-it was a little disconcerting to realize the two “stars”were now directly over the house and as I exited my vehicle they held me spellbound for several minutes as they dazzled in the darkness. It was then that the inexplicable really took hold.
The two objects, still brightly lit orange orbs, began to move towards each other as if in a controlled movement. They stopped. Then they retreated to their former position. I was completely gobsmacked. They held their position perfectly as they moved for and aft, a maneuver they repeated several times, almost seemingly for my benefit, or so I began to think in the hazy frame of mind which was beginning to grip me. Were they putting on a show for me? Did they know I was watching? I felt a slight shudder slither through my shoulders.
I ran inside and fetched my mother to ensure I wasn’t crazy and to this day she can confirm what I saw.
The two orbs circled each other and swapped positions then, as if they were sick of playing with me, returned to their original stations then departed, one to the North, the other to the South. I have never seen anything like it since.
So, do you think I’m a crank? Deluded? Making up stories on my Blog? Well if you do, I am in the same boat as all the other deluded cranks like Betty and Barney Hill!
People see strange things in the sky. Things they can’t explain. They are not all shysters and cranks. I don’t believe the things I saw that night were beings from another world flying for sport because I was watching but it was certainly something I have never seen described before and I have no explanation.
We live in a crazy world. A world full of mystery. I don’t know what I saw. But the truth is out there.
Strange Notations From a Laborious Life 