Bigfoot Stories Told by a UFO Abductee

Some of the strangest Massachusetts Bigfoot stories I’ve read appear in Jack Lapseritis’s 1998 book The Psychic Sasquatch: and their UFO Connection. These stories were told to the author by Betty Hill. Her name may be familiar to you because she and her husband Barney were allegedly among the first people ever abducted by a UFO. 

On the night of September 19, 1961, the Hills were driving south through New Hampshire’s White Mountains on their way home to Portsmouth when they noticed a strange light in the sky. Thinking at first that it might be an airplane or a meteor, they were quite surprised when the light turned out to be an enormous, disc-shaped spacecraft manned by small alien beings. The ship landed in front of their car, forcing them to a stop. The Hills then lost consciousness. When they awoke, they were once again driving but were now 35 miles farther south than they had been – with no memory of how they got there. 

Betty and Barney Hill and their dog (photo by John Fuller)

They were understandably troubled by this incident and sought help from a Boston-area psychologist. Under hypnosis, they both said they had been taken into the spacecraft, where they were examined by small, humanoid aliens. Their psychologist didn’t believe in UFOs and was unsure of how to interpret their story. The Hill’s weren’t entirely sure how to understand it, either. 

Betty and Barney didn’t talk widely about their experience, but in 1965 The Boston Traveler newspaper ran a five-article series about their alleged abduction. (The reporter who wrote it had obtained a recording of a talk the Hills had given, along with notes from UFO investigators they had spoken with.) The Hills’ story was soon picked up by the national press and they became minor celebrities. A book about their experience, The Interrupted Journey, appeared in 1966 and a TV movie, The UFO Incident, aired in 1975.  

Barney Hill died in 1969 at the age of 46, but Betty lived until 2007, when she passed away at the age of 85. She was a well-known figure in the UFO and paranormal communities during her life, and people often told her stories about strange things they’d seen. They knew she’d be sympathetic since she’d experienced something very strange herself. 

Although many stories she heard were about UFOs and aliens, others were about strange phenomena like Bigfoot. Sometimes they were about both, like the following. 

A woman only identified as ‘Kelly’ told Betty Hill that she was sitting at home in Longmeadow when she saw a UFO land near the Connecticut River. Understandably curious, Kelly went to the landing area to see if she could locate the craft. 

She did not, but did fined a large circle of flattened grass where the saucer had landed. Next to it she saw one enormous humanoid footprint in the sand. She thought it looked as if Bigfoot had been inside the UFO and tentatively placed just one foot outside of it before deciding not to go any further. 

After consulting with Betty Hill, Kelly and a neighbor decided to make a plaster cast of the footprint. They went back to the circle of crushed grass, but as they made the cast a black helicopter appeared in the sky above them. The helicopter flew low towards Kelly and her neighbor and they ran home, bringing the cast with them. According to Betty Hill, the cast of the footprint was 14 inches long. 

A few days later, Kelly and another friend drove to the landing area to better document the footprint, this time with paraffin wax and a camera. Once again, a black helicopter appeared as they began to make the wax cast. Kelly panicked and drove back home with her friend. Betty Hill claims that Kelly called the police to report the menacing helicopter, but she does not say how the situation was resolved. 

My copy of The Psychic Sasquatch!

The area where the UFO supposedly landed in Longmeadow is officially called the Silvio O. Conte National Wildlife Refuge, but it’s known colloquially as the Meadows. According to Betty Hill, it was a hotspot for Bigfoot sightings in the 1970s, and the police reported finding the bodies of several crushed animals there. They never learned what had killed them, but a local man Hill identifies only as ‘Joe’ suspected the culprit was not human. 

Joe knew a thing or two about crushing, because he once owned a car-crushing business in the Meadows near the river. That was where he saw Bigfoot. One hot summer night, he and some friends were drinking beer outside the trailer that served as the company’s office. As they sat talking, they heard something large move through the trees and bushes on the river bank. All the men went silent when they saw an enormous, hairy, eight-foot-tall humanoid emerge into the clearing. Joe later said that although the creature was unnaturally large, it had a human face with a long beard. 

The Bigfoot was unaware that it was being watched and began to examine the piles of crushed cars. The men stared in amazement as it effortlessly picked up one of the crushed cars – which weighed at least 1,500 pounds – and began to saunter off with it. 

Joe or one of his friends must have gasped, because the Bigfoot suddenly realized it was being watched. It put down the car, look quizzically at the men, and then walked down to the river and swam away. Joe told Betty Hill that he called the police, who made plaster casts of the footprints. Soon after seeing the Bigfoot, he closed his car-crushing business and opened a gas station in the center of town, far from the Meadows and anything strange that might live there. 

Sasquatch (image from Wikipedia)

Luckily, the Bigfoot that Joe and his friends encountered was peaceful, but a woman named Lorraine told Betty Hill that she once saw a different, more violent side of the creatures. Lorraine lived on a back road in a house that was adjacent to the Meadows, and had a large garden in her yard. One night, she was awakened by what sounded like two large animals fighting near her house. Without turning on the light, she peered out the bathroom window to see what was causing the ruckus. 

She was shocked to see two huge, manlike creatures rolling around in her vegetable garden, snarling and clawing at each other. She described them as “two very tall, massive, hairy creatures with rather long faces which were hairless, except for beards like human men, definitely not like an ape!” Eventually, one of the Bigfoots ran off in defeat, and the other one sauntered away a short time later. 

When she finally dared to leave the house in the morning, Lorraine saw that her vegetable garden was totally ruined. She soon moved to a house further away from the Meadows, where both she and a new vegetable garden could thrive without the threat of battling Bigfoots. 

Betty Hill said that these encounters all occurred between 1975 and 1978, but the stories are hard to verify. She doesn’t provide dates or last names, which makes them very hard to trace. Some elements in these stories, like the black helicopters or the Bigfoot strong enough to carry a car, might seem particularly unbelievable, but perhaps we aren’t really qualified to judge until we’ve seen the interior of a UFO like Betty Hill did. 

New England Folklore In The News: UFOs, Sasquatch Graffiti, Monomoy and Witch Talk!

There has been a surprising amount of strange New England folklore in the news this week. Summer is usually a slow time for news, but I guess that doesn't hold true if it's really weird and unusual.

UFOs in New Hampshire

First up, someone in Merrimack, New Hampshire took a photo of an unidentified thing in the sky on June 26. What is it? An alien craft? A giant space jellyfish?

Something strange seen over Merrimack, New Hampshire

The photographer sent the photo to NH1 News and several other websites. A NH1 meteorologist thought it might be the sun refracting off some clouds, while the people at UFO Sightings Hotspot thought it was probably just a lens flare.

The photographer didn't actually see the object/flare with their naked eye, only through their camera. They wrote the following on UFOStalker.com:

I took my kids to the park, clouds came in and it got dark, the sun was shining threw the clouds on the right so I started taking photos as it was beautiful as I was looking at the pictures I captured I noticed it away from the sun under the clouds not with my eyes with my photo.  so here it is no idea what it is but it's interesting

New Hampshire has a long and venerable history with UFO sightings. And as many people know, one of the most famous UFO abductions allegedly occurred in the Granite State when Betty and Barney Hill had an unusual encounter on a lonely road in 1961. Were they really abducted by aliens, or is there another explanation? Their niece Kathleen Marden recently spoke at a UFO convention in Roswell, New Mexico. You can read her thoughts on the case here. 

Bigfoot Graffiti in Kennebunk, Maine

Meanwhile, people up in Kennebunk, Maine were disturbed by strange activity of another kind. Not alien abductions, but rather someone defacing property with spray-painted images of Sasquatch. CBS News reports that Kennebunk police arrested a 36-year old man they say is responsible and charged him with criminal mischief and possession of drugs. There's no word on what motivated him to paint images of Sasquatch around town. 

Weird Tales from Monomoy Island

The Boston Globe recently ran an article about Cape Cod's Monomoy Island. Currently uninhabited, Monomoy once was home to a small village of fishermen and their families. The Globe notes that the islanders also had the reputation for being shipwreckers:

On stormy nights, Monomoyers would walk a limping old horse down the beach with two lanterns hanging from a pole mounted on his saddle. Mariners trying to get around the Cape would mistake the lanterns for the lighthouse, turn too soon, and wreck on the bars. The most sinister version of this story has the villagers murdering the ship’s crew. Wrecking continued until as recently as 1909, with the wreck of the Horatio Hall. Today, many homes in Chatham have china and silverware from the Hall and other wrecks.

Someone in the comments posted a link to an article in Cape Cod Life that downplays the shipwrecking and argues instead that most of the Monomoyers actually tried to save people from shipwrecks. That same article also notes that the island was haunted by a ghost called Old Yo-Ho who stalked Monomoy's shore at night, carrying a lantern and endlessly calling out his own name. 

Image from Cape Cod Life. 

Let's Talk About Witches!

Do you want to hear me talk about witchcraft? If you said yes, this is your lucky day. WAMC, an NPR affiliate from New York, interviewed me for their podcast "Listen With The Lights On." I talk about an early witchcraft trial from Springfield, Massachusetts, a young lady who was tormented by a spectral witch in the 1840s, and some teenage boys who encountered something witchy in the Freetown State Forest. 

That's it for this week. Who knows what weird stories will show up next? I'm hoping they're as good as these were!

American Horror Story and New England Folklore

This fall, Tony and I have been watching American Horror Story: Asylum on the FX channel. The show is lurid, violent and cheesy, but it shows me things I've never seen on TV before, and it's definitely not boring.

While watching the first episode I was surprised (and excited) to see that the show draws upon New England folklore. 

The series is set in and around Briarcliff Manor, a large insane asylum in Massachusetts. (The audience is reminded throughout the series of the Massachusetts setting by the Boston accents the actors attempt with varying success.) In the current day, a young newlywed couple played by Maroon 5 singer Adam Levine and Jenna Dewan-Tatum are exploring Briarcliff, which has been abandoned for many years and is rumored to haunted. A system of tunnels run underneath the hospital out into the woods. Needless to say, bad things happen.

Briarcliff Manor

While I was watching I was immediately reminded of Danvers State Hospital, the notorious asylum in Massachusetts which was abandoned for many years. The similarities are too big just to be coincidence. The Massachusetts setting, the haunted abandoned insane asylum, the tunnels underneath - it all makes me wonder if the show's creators have some connection with Massachusetts, or maybe just really loved Session 9. Briarcliff even looks similar to Danvers.

Danver State Hospital before it was renovated

The main storyline in American Horror Story: Asylum is set not in 2012, however, but in 1964 when Briarcliff is a bustling asylum run by the Catholic church. In the first episode we're introduced to various residents, including Kit Walker, a white Massachusetts man suspected of murdering his African-American wife and other local women. Therapists claim that guilt over hiding their interracial marriage drove him to become a murderer.

Kit Walker (Evan Peters) and Alma Walker (Britne Olford)

But Kit tells the therapists what sounds like an unbelievable story. He and his wife were abducted by extra-terrestrial aliens who probed and experimented on them. His wife is not dead, but is still off somewhere with the aliens.

Betty and Barney Hill

I almost fell off the couch when I saw these scenes. This situation (an interracial couple abducted by aliens in the 1960s) is clearly a reference to Betty and Barney Hill, an interracial couple from New Hampshire who claimed they were abducted by aliens in 1961. The Hill's story is well known, and inspired the book The Interrupted Journey and the movie The UFO Incident. Some people have theorized that the stress of being an interracial couple in the early 60s led to their concocting the UFO abduction story.

Just to be very clear, neither of the Hills were murdered and they were never confined to an insane asylum. The theory about the stress of their interracial marriage also seems a little lacking, since thousands of people of many races have also claimed they were abducted. But the American Horror Story writers are clever to use the Hills as an inspiration for their show, which deals thematically with the conflicts between religion and science, and with the various civil rights movements (feminism, racial equality, gay rights) that were bubbling up in the early 1960s.

Just a final warning if you haven't watched American Horror story yet. If you are squeamish about violence, weird sexual situations, and poorly done Boston accents don't watch this show. But you should definitely watch if you want to see something crazy that is loosely inspired by some famous folklore from this area.

Aleister Crowley's New Hampshire Vacation

School will be starting up again soon, and I wonder if kids are still asked to write essays about what they did on their summer vacations. I suppose most kids write about similar things: trips to the beach, playing Little League, family vacations, etc.

I wonder if any kids write about practicing ritual magic? That's what Aleister Crowley did on his summer vacation to New Hampshire in 1916.

Aleister Crowley has a very sinister reputation, which he actively cultivated, but I don't think it is entirely deserved. Crowley was born into a well-off British family in 1875, and even as a very young child he questioned his parent's devotion to fundamentalist Christianity, which resulted in his mother calling him "the Beast." The name stuck, and when he was an adult he called himself the Great Beast 666 to signify his opposition to Christianity.

However, Crowley was not a Satanist. While he was attending college in Cambridge he became a bisexual libertine, and also became interested in occultism and ritual magic. After college he joined the Order of the Golden Dawn, an order of ritual magicians in England that included notable members like W.B. Yeats, Bram Stoker, and Sax Rohmer.

The Golden Dawn eventually splintered apart due to conflicts between members, and Crowley founded his own magical order called the Argentum Astrum after he had been contacted by a divine being called Aiwass while he was living in Cairo. Crowley felt that he had come in contact with the Godhead itself, and was able to converse directly with the Holy Guardian Angel that guided his life. It's not entirely clear if he thought this angel was an external being or part of his deep subconscious.

Before his death in 1947, Crowley founded even more magical orders and lodges, went through a string of male and female lovers, preached about the end of Christianity, and became addicted to a lot of drugs. Crowley felt there was no such thing as bad publicity, and reveled in being called the Wickedest Man in the World by the British press. Even in death he generated controversy. The physician who was attending Crowley died exactly one day after Crowley did, and the press claimed the magician had put a curse on the doctor.

With such a busy life, you can see why Crowley might want an occasional vacation, and in 1916 after leaving New York City he spent the summer on the shores of New Hampshire's Lake Pasquaney. In his book The Confessions of Aleister Crowley, he describes what he did on his summer vacation. He did not play Little League.

Before leaving New York, he drank a special potion to restore his youthful vigor. The effects didn't kick in until he reached New Hampshire, where he found himself unable to focus on any intellectual work and instead chopped down an enormous tree to build a wharf for his canoe. He claims that "Passers-by spread the story of the hermit with superhuman strength, and people came from all parts to gaze upon the miracle."

After the effects of this potion (which sounds like some type of amphetamine to me) faded away, Crowley decided to clear his mind of the remnants of his parents' Christianity by ritually crucifying a toad.

The result was immediately apparent. A girl of the village, three miles away, asked me to employ her as my secretary. I had had no intention of doing any literary work; but as soon as I set eyes on her I recognized that she had been sent for a purpose, for she exactly resembled the aforesaid toad. I therefore engaged her to come out every morning and take dictation.

While in New Hampshire, Crowley also had a vision of the universe, which he called the Star Sponge Vision.

 I lost consciousness of everything but a universal space in which were innumerable bright points, and I realized this as a physical representation of the universe, in what I may call its essential structure. I exclaimed, "Nothingness with twinkles!" I concentrated upon this vision, with the result that the void space which had been the principal element of it diminished in importance; space appeared to be ablaze, yet the radiant points were not confused, and I thereupon completed my sentence with the exclamation, "but what twinkles!"

I guess Crowley overall had an eventful summer vacation in New Hampshire - he even had a ball of lightning follow him into his cottage during a thunderstorm, which he wrote about in a letter to the New York Times. However, there is one small catch to the stories he told about his vacation: there's no such place as Lake Pasquaney in New Hampshire. (Thanks to Joseph Citro and Diane Fould's Curious New England for pointing that out.)

The cottage where Crowley vacationed.

 Well, according to the site Atlas Obscura and a book called The New England Grimpendium by J.W. Ocker, Crowley actually spent his vacation in Hebron, New Hampshire in a cottage on the shores of Lake Newfound. The cottage (photo above) was owned by Evangeline Adams, a well-known astrologer in the early 20th century. Adams and Crowley collaborated on several books together, but eventually had a falling out over who should get authorial credit.

Evangeline Adams

Crowley only has bad things to say about Adams in his Confessions, so maybe this is what motivated him to invent Lake Pasquaney. He clearly enjoyed his time at her cottage, but perhaps didn't want to give her any credit for loaning it to him. Crowley also enjoyed creating an air of mystery around himself, so that was probably part of the decision as well.

Lam!

One more interesting vacation tidbit. Hebron is very close to where Betty and Barney Hill were abducted by UFOs, and Crowley once had an encounter with an entity named Lam that looked much like the aliens who abducted the Hill. This site has some speculation about connections between the two. Read at the risk of your own sanity.

October Monster Mania: Alien Abductors

This month I'm counting down to Halloween with some New England monsters. No witches or ghosts this month - they're so common around here they don't really count as monsters!

Let's start with a little story about an inter-racial couple living in New Hampshire in the early sixties. They both worked for civil rights, were members of the NAACP, and the husband sat on the local Civil Rights Commission. They were pretty forward thinking for 1961. New England has long been the home of innovators.

Betty and Barney Hill

But Betty and Barney Hill didn't become famous for their politics. They became famous because they were the first people in the world to be abducted by a UFO.

On September 19, 1961 the hills were driving home to Portsmouth from Canada when they saw a strange light in the sky. Betty first thought it might be a satellite, but it followed them for many miles. At one point it appeared to briefly land on Cannon Mountain, only to take off and follow them again. Finally, the light (now clearly a flying saucer) descended in front of the Hill's car, causing Barney to brake abruptly. Barney left the car to get a closer look at the saucer, which had moved away from the road and was hovering over an adjacent field. He saw some human (or humanoid?) figures looking through its windows at him. He panicked, returned to the car, and drove back to Portsmouth ASAP.

Sounds like the end of the story, no? It should be, but Betty was troubled by strange dreams throughout that fall, Barney developed warts in an unusual pattern on his genitals, and neither of them could account for two hours of missing time. They both seemed to have amnesia about part of their trip! Concerned, they talked with local UFO researchers and underwent several hours of hypnosis.

Their sessions with the hypnotists revealed what happened in those two hours. The Hills had been taken aboard the saucer by a group of small men with large bulbous foreheads. Betty's nervous system was scanned, samples of her skin and hair were taken, and the men tested her to see if she were pregnant. Barney received a similar exam, but his also included an anal probe (ouch!) and a sperm sample taken through a strange cup placed over his genitals. (The warts he developed mirrored the outline of the cup.)

Betty's drawing of one of the aliens.

The Hills gained notoriety when their story appeared in the press and as a popular book, The Interrupted Journey. It was later filmed as a TV movie, The UFO Incident.

Both of the Hills are now deceased, but their experience left an important legacy to American culture. Thousands of people have claimed since that they too were abducted by aliens, spawning a small industry of books and movies. Alien abduction was even studied by a Harvard psychiatrist.

Estelle Parsons and James Earl Jones (the voice of
Darth Vader) in The UFO Incident.

What really happened to the Hills? Was it all just lies? Were the memories really just constructed by the hypnotists? Was it a spontaneous release of the naturally occurring hallucinogen DMT? Perhaps the aliens weren't really from space at all, but are related to elves or fairies, who also show an unhealthy interest in human reproduction in old folktales.

Or, maybe, the Hills really were abducted by aliens.

Whatever the case, it's pretty dark in the White Mountains at night, particularly in the fall and winter. If you find yourself driving up there keep your doors locked!