I love the Betty and Barney Hill story. It's got everything that fascinates me about the paranormal and is probably the single greatest reason that I seek out esoterica and listen to paranormal radio shows: I'm always on the lookout for tales that give me that same frisson of excitement that the B&B story gave me as a kid.
But I've learned to separate my love of stories from my understanding of how the world really works. I did a lot of post-B&B reading about the case and long ago came to the conclusion that there's not much there. I'm not 100% certain that the story is baloney, but if I had to bet...
We humans deceive ourselves that we can't be deceived, that our perceptions and memories are infallible. And it's worked pretty well, evolution-wise. In the game of survival, it's always better to err on the side of caution when estimating the size of threat (say, a mountain lion) or the imagined horrors of things that go bump in the night. Our dreams seem real to us right up until the time we wake up, and maybe just a little bit longer for some. Our imaginations, boon to our survival, can re-write our memories in ways that we don't have the power to perceive. I clearly remember things from my youth that didn't happen the way I remember them. I've edited and refined the memories over the years and have come to know that the memories are faulty only because of objective physical evidence (pictures, recordings, the consensus of other rememberers). The point is we don't always get it right and it's sometimes hard to realize that.
I believe that Betty Hill had a world-view that was significantly at odds with reality, built up over years of interest in ufos and aliens. I believe this world-view corrupted her perceptions and that her imaginings influenced Barney, who may also have independently shared these beliefs. Certainly Betty's post-abduction career became increasingly bizarre and she could not reliably distinguish between a landed ufo and a street light. Her 1995 book contains stories so delusional that even her biggest supporters were forced to avert their eyes. Barney's passion in relating his story under hypnosis is riveting, probably because he actually really believed it after a couple of years of living with Betty and her stories. I say again: by the time Barney Hill underwent this session, some part of him actually believed it. I think some part of Whitley Strieber actually believes that everything that he says happened to him is objectively true. I think that John Edward probably knows he's a cold-reading charlatan. I believe that J Z Knight was a pretty good actress and the chance that she was actually channeling an entity named Ramtha is very very very slim. But one can't ever really be totally certain, can one?
I know this is not going to be popular with readers of this forum, but I highly recommend a site called Skeptoid, which doles out common sense analysis of popular and paranormal topics each week in the form of a 15-minute podcast. I would especially direct you to the episode on the Hill abduction:
Betty and Barney Hill: The Original UFO Abduction . The host can be a little patronizing but he serves up heaping helpings of common sense every week.
I still need my fix of paranormal stories, but find that the weekly Skeptoid podcasts keep me grounded in reality.
