The Interrupted Journey: Two Lost Hours "Abroad a Flying Saucer"

xiv, 301 pp. "Driving home from Canada on the night of September 19, 1961, Betty and Barney Hill of Portsmouth, N. H., sighted a flying saucer. The experience left them shaken. When they arrived in Portsmouth, Barneyt found inexplicable scuff marks on the tips of his shoes; Betty noticed rows of mysterious shiny circles on the trunk of their car. What was worse, they realized that they could not account for almost two hours of their time on the road. After many months of psychic distress dating from this night, the Hills sought medical assistance from a distinguished Boston psychiatrist and neurologist. Under psychotherapy, including time-regression hypnosis, the Hills gave almost identical accounts of what had happened during the lost two hours of their journey - a period of time their conscious minds had repressed. They told of an encounter with intelligent humanoid beings who took them aboard an alien spacecraft, questioned them, and submitted them to physical examination. After seven months of treatment, the psychiatrist decided that neither of his patients was psychotic, and that both consciously and under hypnosis had told him what they believed to be the absolute truth. Here is the complete account from beginning to end, of the story of Betty and Barney Hill. It includes the actual transcription of the tapes made of their testimony under hypnosis, as well as the sketches they drew, both in and out of trance, of the spacecraft and the humanoid creatures. Neither Betty nor Barney Hill will state that the experience cannot be challenged; on the other hand, the doctor has not offered an incontrovertible assessment to discredit the Hills' testimony. Whether Interrupted Journey is fact or fantasy or something in between, it is unquestionably one of the most fascinating books of the decade."