Dr. Simon Says Abduction Was a Dream

Students of the alleged alien abduction of Portsmouth’s Betty and Barney Hill know there is a third primary character in their adventure. The credibility of their story among abduction believers rests in the hands of Dr. Benjamin Simon of Boston, who hypnotized, interviewed and taped the Hills. Transcripts of those tapes are the heart of the seminal book about the Hill case, “The Interrupted Journey” (1966) by paranormal enthusiast and best-selling author John G. Fuller.

In his book, Fuller went to great lengths to establish Dr. Simon as a professional. He noted that, during World War II, Simon served as chief of neuropsychiatry and executive officer at Mason General Hospital, the Army’s chief psychiatric center. Simon was interested in the possible benefits of hypnosis to soldiers suffering from severe stress. Col. Benjamin Simon even served as advisor to a documentary film director John Huston (“Let There Be Light,” 1946). Huston’s film was created for the Army to educate the public about “shell shock,” or post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and its treatment for veterans coming home from war. Although uncredited, Dr. Simon appears in segments of the film related to hypnotherapy and the documentary is currently available online. The film, however, was suppressed by the Army until 1980.

Betty and Barney spotted an unfamiliar light in the sky on September 19, 1961. But they didn’t begin their official hypnosis sessions with Dr. Simon until Jan. 4, 1964, more than two years later. Betty was suffering from nightmares and anxiety, while Barney was struggling with insomnia, high blood pressure, alcoholism, and ulcers. It was during a series of hypnosis sessions with Dr. Simon that Betty and, eventually, Barney came to believe they had truly been taken aboard an alien spacecraft and examined by extraterrestrials. Their doctor, however, did not agree.

Thanks to Betty Hill’s business acumen, the Hills and Dr. Simon became co-owners of the copyright to Fuller’s book. Dr. Simon maintained editorial rights over the content of the book. In his introduction to “The Interrupted Journey,” Simon made it clear he did not assign the Hill’s “sighting” to alien abduction. He was interested in the “crippling anxiety” the mixed-race couple was exhibiting. Whatever they saw, he said, had uncovered deeper personal anxieties that he hoped to uncover.

In 1975, six years after Barney’s death, a movie version of the Hill story, “The UFO Incident,” aired on NBC-TV starring James Earl Jones as Barney. Interviewed on the Larry Glick radio show soon after the film came out, Dr. Simon reinforced his opinion that Barney’s hypnosis sessions revealed the “marked anxiety he had of being a black man in a white culture.” Whatever Barney saw in the dark on the road that fateful night was created or intensified by his pre-existing “feeling of anxiety, feeling of being watched, feeling of dangers,” according to Simon. It was Betty, never Barney, Simon added, who believed in UFOs. And it was Betty’s nightmares, the Boston psychologist concluded, that fed the extremely dreamlike narrative of her alien abduction.

In an appearance together on the TODAY television show, both Betty Hill and Dr. Simon agreed the film effectively portrayed the Hills interracial marriage. “I think [the film] captured the relationship between Barney and me quite well,” Betty said on the show, “and the parts showing the two of us under hypnosis in Dr. Simon’s office were really excellent.”

Dr. Simon agreed, but continued to debunk the abduction story that had made him famous. “Did you conclude that they actually went aboard a spacecraft,” the Today show host asked Simon, “or did you conclude that it was a fantasy?”

“I concluded that … it was a fantasy, as you put it,” Simon said on camera. “In other words, that it was a dream. … The abduction did not happen. … I feel quite confident that there was a whole experience, and an experience with a UFO, if we clearly define that. It does not involve visitations from outer space, but it does involve seeing an object which cannot be identified at the time, whatever it is. I think that did take place. But from there on, I think it was largely a dream.”

Copyright J. Dennis Robinson, all rights reserved.