Betty Hill could pack a lot into a letter. In a roughly 500-word note penned in 1993, the woman known for her 1961 interrupted journey suggested she was doubtful about the abundance of claims of alien abduction, emphasized her lack of confidence in those who investigated the claims, and shared two personal anecdotes as to why that was the case. She also asserted she was paid by government and intelligence agencies for her research and to lecture at military bases.
The letter comes to us compliments of the Ann Druffel Special Collection, a section of the online Expanding Frontiers Archive. The April 23, 1993, note was apparently written as part of ongoing correspondence. It does not seem difficult to envision why Druffel, a pioneer of modern UFO research, may have identified this particular message from Betty as one to keep on file.
Betty opens the letter by seemingly agreeing with Druffel that the abduction scene is in chaos. She says she receives a couple of phone calls a week from people thinking they have been abducted and tells them to contact Budd Hopkins (who was a relatively famous – if dubious - researcher of alien abduction and an advocate of hypnosis as a memory enhancer).
“I know I am not going to believe them,” Betty adds.
She suggests investigators share the blame for the chaos. Betty describes how she watched a well-known investigator over the course of a few days pressure a woman into submitting to his hypnosis to uncover what he told the woman were her abductions. He persisted through her resistance and even though she declared she never so much as had a UFO sighting. The investigator told her this was because her mind had been blocked.
“She continued to refuse,” Betty explained to Druffel. “Then he suggested hypnosis, to cut down on her smoking, and she agreed. He said a few words, and then told her to tell him about her abduction. She said she was not in a trance, and she never had an abduction. The argument went on for a while, and she finally decided, to get rid of him, by saying she was told to never discuss this. He went home, happy, he had uncovered another abduction.”
I wonder how happy his hypnosis subjects were.
Betty suggested investigators suppress information that contradicts their preferred narratives and sensationalize circumstances to appeal to wider audiences. This is arguably very much a staple of the UFO subculture, then and now.
“I have found if information disappears,” Betty explained, “it is not the government, but other investigators. I gave a report I wrote to one, and later he told me, he took my report, changed it a bit, and sold it for a good price.”
Betty then proceeded to tell Druffel, “Our best friend in the 1960s was head of intelligence at Pease AF Base, and I have been paid by them to give lectures about ufos, at different bases. Also I have been paid by different government agencies for some of my research.”
I don't recall Donald Keyhoe ever mentioning that part during any of his monologues about Air Force and CIA cover-ups. Go figure.
Continuing to describe the nature of her relationships with government agencies and military personnel, Betty concluded, “When some one [sic] writes to them asking for ufo information, they check with me as to the identity of the writer.”
The 1993 letter from Betty Hill to Ann Druffel:
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