Barney Hill (1923-1969) was an American postal worker from Portsmouth, New Hampshire, who is renowned alongside his wife Betty for the first widely documented UFO abduction case in 1961. Born in 1923, Hill worked as a postal worker in Portsmouth and was an active member of the NAACP and the local Unitarian church, also serving on the U.S. Civil Rights Commission board. He died in 1969 at age 46 from a cerebral hemorrhage.
On September 19-20, 1961, while driving home from Montreal through New Hampshire's White Mountains, Barney and Betty encountered a UFO that followed them, leading to a claimed abduction by humanoid beings. The couple experienced a UFO that pursued their vehicle on Route 3, and they reported being abducted by humanoid beings who conducted examinations aboard the craft. They suffered missing time and significant trauma from the experience, and both experienced physical changes, including Barney's scraped shoe.
Following the encounter, the Hills underwent hypnotic regression therapy to recover memories of the missing hours. They underwent separate hypnotic regressions with Dr. Benjamin Simon between 1962 and 1964, during which they recovered consistent memories of the abduction event. Betty created a star map later linked to Zeta Reticuli, and their testimony was detailed in John G. Fuller's 1966 bestseller The Interrupted Journey.
Barney and Betty Hill's case fundamentally shaped the field of ufology and introduced new concepts to UFO research. The case pioneered the use of hypnotic regression in UFO investigations and introduced documented accounts of alien medical procedures. Their case became the foundation for modern alien abduction narratives and demonstrated how civil rights activists could also be credible UFO witnesses.