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S2 E 18 Kathleen Marden - UFO abduction researcher, author, and lecturer
28 Plays9 days ago
Tonight I'm delighted to have Kathleen Marden with me,
Kathleen is an internationally recognized UFO abduction researcher, author and lecturer.
At age thirteen, Kathleen became directly connected to history when her aunt and uncle, Betty and Barney Hill, reported the first scientifically investigated UFO abduction in U.S. history
From the events that started on the night of 19th September 1961, to the morning of the 20th Kathleen tells me the entire story.
We delved into what happened over the next few years, until the story finally comes to light, after multiple hypnosis sessions.
We also discuss the Zeta Reticuli, the star maps that Betty recalled under hypnosis
Recommended
Transcript
Intro
00:00:12
Kathleen Marden
Bye.
Introduction to Kathleen Marden
00:00:12
Lee Hatfield
Hello everybody and welcome to the latest episode of SEPA Paranormal Chronicles. to Tonight I'm delighted to have this guest with me. She's got a really interesting, cool story to tell us.
00:00:27
Lee Hatfield
I'm going to do the introduction, but I'm going to need to take a breath afterwards because it's quite a big introduction. Kathleen Marden, internationally recognized UFO abduction researcher, author and lecturer.
00:00:42
Lee Hatfield
Director of MUFON's Field Investigation Training Program. Director of MUFON's Experiencer Research Team. You're also the recipient of the International UFO Congress Lifetime Achievement Award and currently serves as a MUFON Lifetime Member, Benefactor and Research Consultant.
00:01:05
Lee Hatfield
I'll take
Connection to Betty and Barney Hill
00:01:05
Lee Hatfield
a breath now. Kathleen, welcome and thank you for spending some time with me tonight.
00:01:10
Kathleen Marden
Hello, it's great to be with you.
00:01:13
Lee Hatfield
Yeah, so like I thought I'm going to do the full introduction and i've got I've got a sneaking suspicion you might have something to do with UFOs buy that by that introduction.
00:01:25
Kathleen Marden
a little bit, a little bit.
00:01:28
Lee Hatfield
Just a little bit. Just a little bit. Okay, so for those people that don't know, you're the niece of Betty and Barney Hill.
00:01:37
Kathleen Marden
That's right.
00:01:37
Lee Hatfield
And we'll get into why they're famous to start off in a little bit. But what we're going to be talking about tonight was 1961. You were 13 years old.
00:01:52
Kathleen Marden
That's right.
00:01:53
Lee Hatfield
I was minus four. Yeah, minus four. so Before we go into what happened on that night, was your interest with the paranormal and UFOs there, or was it that that night spurned everything on going forward?
00:02:18
Kathleen Marden
I had absolutely no knowledge or interest. in the paranormal or UFOs prior to September 20th, 1961. I was an average farm girl in southern New Hampshire, lived across the street from my grandparents who had dairy cows and chickens and spent a lot of time over there with them.
00:02:43
Kathleen Marden
and my grandfather had been a selectman in the town. My grandmother helped as a welfare agent. So um You know, we were but a politically oriented family. um My father was ah the scout master.
00:02:59
Kathleen Marden
um my brother i had two brothers. they They were heavily involved in scouting. I was in 4-H, that kind of thing. That's what our lives were like back then.
00:03:13
Lee Hatfield
Okay, and then the night of the 19th, 20th of September 1961 changed everything.
00:03:21
Kathleen Marden
It did. It absolutely did.
00:03:23
Lee Hatfield
So before we go into that story, I'm going to ask you personal-ish question.
The 1961 UFO Encounter
00:03:32
Lee Hatfield
At what point after that date did you hear about it, and what was your first thoughts after you heard it?
00:03:41
Kathleen Marden
I heard about that on September 20th, the day that Betty and Barney arrived home. They had their sighting on the night of September 19th. They had their close encounter at about midnight, and then the abduction or the missing time event. that they later realized was an abduction, occurred ah just after midnight for a of a couple of hours aye on September 20th. So it was on September 20th when I arrived home from school that my mother was on the phone with my Aunt Betty.
00:04:22
Kathleen Marden
and having a conversation about the sighting and also about the concern that the craft had been so close to them that they might have been contaminated.
00:04:37
Kathleen Marden
And so I was ah very interested in immediately, what crap, what happened there? What do you mean contaminated? My mother said, oh, well, she had to call a neighbor when he arrived home from work. He was a physicist because she wanted to give Betty and Barney ah some and information and guidance from this physicist. And I said to my mother,
00:05:04
Kathleen Marden
Well, in school, we didn't learn anything about this. We've learned about our solar system, but ah you know i we don't think any of those planets are inhabited. And that was the extent of my knowledge.
00:05:20
Lee Hatfield
That's funny. And it's, yeah, even though there's a few, a couple of years difference between yourself and um ah me, this is still the generation where you didn't normally speak about this kind of thing publicly, because people would think that you were crazy.
00:05:36
Kathleen Marden
That's correct. And I was sworn to secrecy. The whole family was sworn to secrecy. So we didn't tell people. We knew the consequences.
00:05:46
Lee Hatfield
Yeah. So at what point did you get the chance to speak to Betty and Barney to kind of get their side of the story, bearing in mind they're telling 13 old?
00:06:00
Kathleen Marden
Well, my mother, father, two brothers, and I traveled the 19 miles from my childhood home to Betty's and Barney's house in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, a couple of days after that phone call.
00:06:15
Kathleen Marden
And that's when I heard the story directly from Betty um and went out and saw the shiny spots on the trunk of the car that had not been there the day before their event and were only there after this craft hovered over their vehicle and they heard code-like buzzing sounds a series of them that sounded like, as Barney said, a tuning fork had been dropped.
00:06:43
Kathleen Marden
So, ah yeah, we were we were there a couple of days later, and Barney was different. He was usually very gregarious. We had a great time with him as children.
00:06:56
Kathleen Marden
But on that particular day, he was sitting in the living room quietly waiting for a phone call, I suppose, from the Air Force.
00:07:09
Kathleen Marden
And my father sat next to him and they quietly talked.
00:07:16
Lee Hatfield
Yeah, because like I say, yeah it's still a taboo subject in the 60s and right up to yeah even the 80s. And that's when it kind of really started to come to light. yeah Some of the movies that came out, Close Encounters and and and such like. So people started talking about it more.
00:07:35
Lee Hatfield
But how long did you have to keep it secret for?
00:07:41
Kathleen Marden
I'm trying to think, ah for all of my life until there was a violation of confidentiality. And it was 1965. first week in last week in October, yeah, it started October ninety sixtyfi when John Luttrell published five articles in the Boston Traveler.
00:08:11
Kathleen Marden
And that was huge news. ah it It went around the world. I have a printout from a newspaper in Australia that his articles went to.
00:08:22
Lee Hatfield
Hello.
00:08:24
Kathleen Marden
So this was big news. Betty and Barney were extraordinarily distressed. They thought they were going to lose their jobs now. It was very, very difficult for them.
00:08:39
Lee Hatfield
So we've kind of touched on the subject and we've kind of mentioned a couple of things. So from start to finish, can you kind of give me a timeline of events that Betty and Barney encountered?
Detailed Abduction Experience
00:08:56
Kathleen Marden
Okay, on the night of September nineteenth
00:08:59
Lee Hatfield
Well, yeah, so from from the first thing that they saw yeah right through to when they got home,
00:09:06
Kathleen Marden
Okay, um this was on the third day of their trip, and they were going to stay in Montreal, but they went on to upstate New Hampshire, and south of Colebrook, around...
00:09:26
Kathleen Marden
um Lancaster. I want to say Groveton, but Groveton was the first where they estimated they were. um They went up and and realized that it wasn't Groveland, that it was actually south of Lancaster, town of Lancaster. And so you'd have to look at a New Hampshire map to see that. But this is when Betty saw a new light in the sky.
00:09:52
Kathleen Marden
And about a half hour later, they were down at Twin Mountain and ah the ah but Betty was telling Barney to stop the car. She wanted to get a look at this and he said, ah Betty, I just want to go home and and drive keep driving.
00:10:11
Kathleen Marden
And she said, but Delcy the dog has to go She needs to be walked.
00:10:15
Lee Hatfield
Yeah.
00:10:17
Kathleen Marden
So Barney stopped the car and walked Delcy. Well, Betty looked through binoculars. Barney looked through binoculars. He was a confirmed skeptic. He did not believe this was possible.
00:10:28
Kathleen Marden
So he was kind of poo-pooing the entire thing. He said, oh, it's probably a Piper Club or a commercial airliner heading toward Canada.
00:10:40
Kathleen Marden
and But the odd thing was that it just shot back at him. And he then knew that it wasn't. They continued on.
00:10:51
Kathleen Marden
They entered Franconia Notch, beautiful scenic area, mountains on both sides, There's a stream that runs down on one side of it as well. They cross over the Hugh Gallon Bridge and they have a really good look at Cannon Mountain.
00:11:08
Kathleen Marden
And they see the craft ahead of them flying over the top of the mountain. And then um they move they drive down a little bit further.
00:11:18
Kathleen Marden
They're in a mile south of Cannon Mountain at the old man of the mountain. And they see that the craft has come out and descended and it's now hovering beside the profile of the old man in the mountain, which is 48 feet from a forehead to chin line. And they realized that this craft was at least as long as that profile, but Betty estimated a one and a half times to two times the length of that profile. the craft would flip up on its side. It appeared to be rotating. It would flip down, would flip up again, and flip down again. Very erratic behavior.
00:12:06
Kathleen Marden
And so they looked at it through binoculars, and and Barney described it the movement at one time as bouncing back and forth in the sky like a yo-yo.
00:12:20
Lee Hatfield
Bye.
00:12:20
Kathleen Marden
It goes it out and then it comes back. It reminds me of the how the military pilots said it looked like a ping pong ball, the one that they saw bouncing back and forth.
00:12:28
Lee Hatfield
like Okay. Okay. Gotcha.
00:12:31
Kathleen Marden
So they they proceeded south, continuing very slowly to look at this craft. And then they they're on Route 3 at the time. Route 95 had not been constructed yet that far north.
00:12:47
Kathleen Marden
So they're on Route 3. They exit the south entrance of Franconia Notch, and now that they're in an area of called Indian Head, and it's Lincoln, New Hampshire.
00:13:01
Kathleen Marden
There's a stone facade that looks like an Indian profile, so Iroquois kind of profile.
00:13:06
Lee Hatfield
Okay.
00:13:09
Kathleen Marden
And so there are cabins there, and it's the first sign of You know, the tourist area there. Barney said under hypnosis, they're out of the barren hostility of ah the the wooded area.
00:13:23
Kathleen Marden
And he feels relieved. And they're driving along now. And but Betty's becoming excited because this craft is swooping down. She wants Barney to stop the car.
00:13:35
Kathleen Marden
He looks up, he sees that it's swooping down and it's he stops directly in the middle of the highway because the craft is now hovering only a couple of hundred feet over the right side of the highway, which would be the Western side of the highway.
00:13:53
Lee Hatfield
Right.
00:13:54
Kathleen Marden
And ah Barney stopped the car. Betty's looking up at it. Barney grabs the binoculars. He opens the door, he steps out of the car, and he's resting his elbows on the roof of the car, looking up at the craft, and he sees a low a row of very britly brightly lighted windows. It's almost like a mercury vapor ramp, an intense blue-white light. And there's a little red light that seems to be showing on each side of the craft.
00:14:35
Kathleen Marden
He steps back for a less encumbered view. And when he does, the craft passes over the highway in front of the car. He walks away leaving the door open, the interior light on in the car, and he walks toward this craft, which is now hovering about 100 feet overhead and about 50 feet away from him, he estimated, in this field.
00:15:05
Kathleen Marden
And he put the binoculars up to his eyes and he saw figures dressed in black shiny uniforms staring down at him.
00:15:16
Kathleen Marden
Suddenly all but one turned in unison toward what he thought was at some kind of a panel. Their arms went up. He could now see them from their knees up to their arms being raised.
00:15:32
Kathleen Marden
And ah as when that happened, fin-like structures with those red lights on the ends slid out, little fin-like structures.
00:15:45
Kathleen Marden
And he's looking up at this one, staring down at him, and he's terrified by this is the looks of this individual, so terrified that he had a mental block.
00:15:58
Kathleen Marden
at that point for what his features looked like. He remembered the black he remembered the black shiny uniforms and but it's and something's dropping down out of the bottom of the craft.
00:16:02
Lee Hatfield
I think I would.
00:16:06
Lee Hatfield
Yeah.
00:16:11
Kathleen Marden
And he pulls the binoculars away from his eyes so forcefully that he broke the leather strap and went screaming back to the car, feet pounding the pavement on the road ah to Betty that they had to get out of there or they were going to be captured.
00:16:33
Kathleen Marden
As he entered the car, he looked back and the craft was coming in his direction. He went speeding down the highway, maybe a half mile to a mile, and Then he and Betty heard a series of code-like buzzing sounds that I already told you earlier sounded like a tuning fork had been dropped. He said there were around maybe seven of those buzzing sounds, um rhythmic.
00:17:03
Kathleen Marden
And then um when that happened, the car vibrated. Betty touched the metal on the car because she sensed that there was some kind of an electrical charge there but fortunately she wasn't electrocuted. And you know so ah then you know the the car is vibrating and they have this tingling sensation that comes over them and they lose their memory.
00:17:35
Kathleen Marden
that Everything becomes very, very vague. And they have spotty memories for what happened in the interim. But they find themselves now 35 miles down the highway.
00:17:52
Kathleen Marden
And they're ready to go onto ah the ah ramp onto the interstate. And there is another series of buzzing sounds. They don't see the craft this time.
00:18:06
Kathleen Marden
Betty turns to Barney and says, now do you believe in flying saucers? And he says,
00:18:11
Lee Hatfield
Yeah.
00:18:12
Kathleen Marden
Betty, don't be ridiculous. There's no such thing. And he said, I will prove to you that I can make that sound with this car. So he stops the car in the on the highway and he starts driving from one side of the road to the other and doing everything he can to make that sound. And it was impossible. He couldn't do it.
00:18:36
Kathleen Marden
And then... Betty had more memories than Barney, but they had vague memories of finding themselves on a dirt road with tall trees lining the road, of a fiery orb that appeared to be sitting on the ground, and of a roadblock.
00:18:55
Kathleen Marden
They didn't know where or where when that occurred, but they looked for it for years. They started in the fall of 1961.
00:19:08
Kathleen Marden
and looked for it in that on that spring when the snow had melted, and on and on and on. They didn't find it until after they had hypnosis.
00:19:22
Kathleen Marden
And in ah over Labor Day weekend in September of 1965, they finally found that spot
00:19:32
Lee Hatfield
Wow. The fact that you've just told me that story, I think, yeah, if anybody loves to investigate or research UFOs, for that to happen to an individual nowadays, they'll be going, as soon as they recovered, it'll be like, right, notepad, and they'll be writing down all the details of what they could remember.
00:19:55
Kathleen Marden
Yes.
00:19:56
Lee Hatfield
But it's such a a fascinating story, With the fact that they lost time, ye with the fact that yeah there were strange noises that could not be replicated, I imagine for both of them, it was a very difficult scenario for them to comprehend what had happened.
00:20:22
Kathleen Marden
It was difficult. And when they arrived home, they were really concerned. They felt grimy, very, very dirty for, you know, just having driven from ah just west of Montreal home.
Initial Research and Correspondence
00:20:38
Kathleen Marden
And ah they felt that they'd been contaminated. They wouldn't take their suitcases in the house. They threw away everything and they they had in their picnic cooler.
00:20:49
Kathleen Marden
um they They took a lot of precautions and were very concerned about their own health and that of their dog, too.
00:20:51
Lee Hatfield
Thank you.
00:20:59
Kathleen Marden
And so, you know, that was their response. Betty was very curious because she had no idea about what she saw. So she went to the Portsmouth Public Library and took out the first book she had ever read on the topic. And there was an address in the book.
00:21:18
Kathleen Marden
The address was for ah Donald Kehoe, who was the director of the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena. And she sat down with Barney and she wrote a letter to him on September 26, just a few days after this happened.
00:21:38
Kathleen Marden
And so in that letter, she showed that erratic pattern. She wrote about the figures dressed in black, shiny uniforms. um that they She wrote that they were considering finding a psychiatrist who could do hypnosis to hypnotize Barney because of the problems that he was having.
00:22:03
Kathleen Marden
now ah This was immediate. ah There's been a lot of false information disseminated so people might say oh she doesn't have it right look I've i've been on this case since I was 13 I've investigated every little detail. I'm the trustee of the estate I set up their archival collection at the University of New Hampshire I worked with nuclear physicist Stanton T Friedman on this investigation as well.
00:22:36
Kathleen Marden
So, i mean, I worked with the best. I have the best knowledge. And i i get really disappointed when I read articles online where people are using scientists ah and and things that scientists had have said, as skeptical scientists, And then ah changing Betty's and Barney's information.
00:23:05
Kathleen Marden
So that part of it is inaccurate. um that Certain details have been changed.
00:23:14
Lee Hatfield
Yeah.
00:23:14
Kathleen Marden
And it's very kind of frustrating and disappointing to see that happening. of You know, among people who call themselves investigators, among people who call themselves investigators, writers, professional writers. to It's just they need to do their homework.
00:23:37
Lee Hatfield
Yeah. And one one thing that I learned extremely quickly by doing these podcasts, and I've spoken to people about UFOs, aboutrypteds about cryptids, about fairies and about ghosts and spirits.
00:23:52
Lee Hatfield
It's not up to me to say if somebody is lying or not, because it's a personal experience that they've had.
00:24:01
Kathleen Marden
yeah
00:24:02
Lee Hatfield
and you want to hear their story. I'm not the person who's going to go, well, I think you're lying because I've got no evidence of that.
00:24:11
Kathleen Marden
Right.
00:24:11
Lee Hatfield
That's just my...
00:24:11
Kathleen Marden
I agree with that.
00:24:12
Lee Hatfield
So, yeah, and and I love talking to people that have these stories because it makes me a better person to to do these podcasts because I'm learning every single time.
00:24:24
Lee Hatfield
And something that you said a couple of minutes ago but ago about you being the person that's got the best knowledge... After seeing, I can't remember which UFO show it was, but after seeing that particular episode, it's like, I'm going to reach out to Kathleen.
00:24:40
Lee Hatfield
to to
00:24:41
Kathleen Marden
Thank you.
00:24:42
Lee Hatfield
And that's when I sent you the email. But I love it that we've got somebody that has done, yeah that has basically yeah crossed the T's and dotted the I's with regard to this.
00:24:56
Lee Hatfield
And you like like I say, I'm not going to go to a third party to get the information. I'm going to go straight to the source. And you are that source. So I know they mentioned that there was like um a few years before they rarely got it really got investigated into and analyzed. So from 1961 1965, is that correct?
00:25:22
Kathleen Marden
um Well, not really. ah Walter Webb, that they reported this to the Air Force immediately. i have those reports. You'll find them on my website, Kathleen-Marden.com.
00:25:38
Kathleen Marden
Betty ah ah ah had written to NICAP, and Walter Webb, a NICAP investigator who was also a scientist, he was an astronomer at the Hayden Planetarium in Boston, came and he did an investigation for NICAP immediately.
00:25:56
Kathleen Marden
So there's his investigative report ah published in October of 1965.
00:25:57
Lee Hatfield
Right. OK.
00:26:03
Kathleen Marden
It was confidential.
00:26:05
Lee Hatfield
Right.
00:26:05
Kathleen Marden
It was not made public. This all became public in 1965. There were other investigators, Robert Homan, C.D. Jackson, um a number of people, Jacques Vallée looking into this, ah Alan Hynek.
00:26:21
Kathleen Marden
ah There were other people who were involved in this very, very quietly. But ah in 1965, friend of Betty spilled the beans to ah to a newspaper reporter from a Boston newspaper.
00:26:38
Lee Hatfield
Bye.
00:26:39
Kathleen Marden
And he contacted Betty and Barney. he I have the letter. He said, if ah you will speak to me, I promise you that I will not ah commercialize this in any way.
00:26:54
Kathleen Marden
And Betty and Barney said, absolutely not. ah We don't want anyone to know about this. And it's confidential, period. We're not going to speak to you.
00:27:07
Kathleen Marden
So he did his own investigation and somehow convinced other investigators who knew about the case that Betty and Barney had were coming forward with their story, which was complete baloney.
00:27:23
Kathleen Marden
And he did, ah let me say, he did a good investigation.
00:27:23
Lee Hatfield
Bye.
00:27:28
Kathleen Marden
I have his articles still. He did a good investigation, and he even was able to identify an Air Force cover-up. when the original report arrived in dayton ohio at project blue book they launched a cover-up and in 1965 they rewrote the original report and took out the interesting information
00:27:57
Lee Hatfield
Wow. That's crazy.
00:28:00
Kathleen Marden
yes
00:28:01
Lee Hatfield
it It is kind of strange how you the governments, the air forces, the military think that we're not capable of understanding what's going on.
00:28:16
Lee Hatfield
So, you it's not the first time you've heard of cover-ups. Yeah, it's not the first time that... yeah Lost well. Oh, it was a weather balloon. Okay, whatever.
00:28:28
Kathleen Marden
Oh, that was a popular cover up explanation.
00:28:31
Lee Hatfield
Exactly, yeah. And it's sort of like, it's only now, and yeah if you can take as gospel what's floating around the news about releasing all these files...
00:28:44
Lee Hatfield
yeah Let's not get political, but that could be just be a way to divert the attention away from something else. But it's sort of like, how can we convince Joe Public that what happened didn't happen?
00:29:05
Lee Hatfield
And it it's it's it's crazy and ridiculous all at the same time.
00:29:10
Kathleen Marden
Well, ah yes, but there has been a great effort to convince John and Jane Q. Public that this did not happen, with false information, um with character assassination, with a statement by Dr.
00:29:18
Lee Hatfield
Yeah.
00:29:30
Kathleen Marden
Benjamin Simon that he believed that it was ah Betty's ah ah dreams, she had five dreams, nightmares after she wrote them down. Barney didn't want to hear them, but he overheard her speak to Walter Webb, so he knew some of it.
00:29:47
Kathleen Marden
And so Dr. Simon said, well, that was his best explanation. Because he didn't have scientific evidence that this could be real, he had to look at the best alternative explanation that he could come up with.
00:30:04
Kathleen Marden
There was no folly au deux. There was no ums like psychiatric illness. There was no um hoaxing.
00:30:15
Kathleen Marden
Who would want to go and pay a psychiatrist for visits for six months to hoax something? ah and then and then cut And then keep it secret.
00:30:22
Lee Hatfield
Very good point.
00:30:25
Kathleen Marden
So, yeah.
00:30:25
Lee Hatfield
Yeah, yeah, it's all right.
00:30:27
Kathleen Marden
So anyway, ah there have been many, many things said. um They say that there's no scientific evidence. Well... um There is evidence that has been examined in scientific laboratories, but when they say there's no scientific evidence, they mean that nature and science have not published a peer-reviewed journal on any of the scientific studies that have been done on Betty's and Barney's evidence.
00:31:03
Kathleen Marden
um And so if you want to qualify it in that way, ah which is a very narrow definition, in my opinion, um you can qualify it that way.
00:31:12
Lee Hatfield
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
00:31:15
Kathleen Marden
But Betty's dress was torn in several places.
00:31:16
Lee Hatfield
yeah
00:31:19
Kathleen Marden
um and Completely inexplicable until after the hypnosis sessions with Dr. Benjamin Simon, which, by the way, he did separately and reinstated ah amnesia at the end of each session, so Betty and Barney couldn't share information.
00:31:36
Kathleen Marden
And ah ah so the and in the hypnosis sessions, she remembered, she didn't state it, but she told me after that she remembered how her dress was torn. She remembered how the zipper had been broken, that kind of thing.
00:31:55
Lee Hatfield
Yeah.
00:31:55
Kathleen Marden
It's all in captured, the Betty and Barney Hill UFO experiences, that I wrote with Stanton Friedman.
00:31:55
Lee Hatfield
And like you. Yeah.
00:32:02
Lee Hatfield
Okay. Yeah. And it's like what you mentioned earlier about the binocular strap.
00:32:07
Kathleen Marden
Yes.
00:32:07
Lee Hatfield
get into it Yeah. that kind of So what was the deciding factor that made them decide that, okay, this is the right time. We're going to go and visit this hypnotist.
Revelations Through Hypnosis
00:32:20
Lee Hatfield
what What was the deciding factor for that decision?
00:32:24
Kathleen Marden
Well, they had already gone to visit a psychiatrist in Massachusetts at Ballpate. And ah this was ah like a year after this happened. And he said, I don't want to hypnotize you now because you're going to start to remember more of what happened.
00:32:48
Kathleen Marden
And you'll remember more and more. And they did. But then what Barney was remembering was so deeply distressing. to him that he developed bleeding ulcers.
00:33:01
Kathleen Marden
He ended up in the hospital with these bleeding ulcers. He had a kit to take a leave of absence from work. And he was talking to the psychiatrist. then you know People thought, well, perhaps it was his adjustment moving from um Philadelphia to New Hampshire, going from a black community to a white community,
00:33:26
Kathleen Marden
Marrying a white woman of a Portsmouth had black residents as well and these Air Force Base was right there. So there were plenty of black servicemen but anyway and Finally, that was sort of dismissed. he was making He made a good adjustment to his life in New Hampshire. The the primary cause was what had happened on that night of September 19, 1961.
00:33:56
Kathleen Marden
And ah so he was referred by the psychiatrist to Dr. Benjamin Simon. ah Dr. Simon was very good at treating ah the kind of problem that Barney had with this deep degree of anxiety and really trauma related to this event that he had.
00:34:21
Kathleen Marden
And so Dr. Simon had set up the Mason General Hospital on Long Island in 19, well, during World War two to treat veterans who were suffering from shell shock, conversion hysteria, who were returning from the war and very successfully treated them using deep trans hypnosis. It was a method that he had developed.
00:34:47
Kathleen Marden
And so He earned quite a reputation. He was the head of psychiatric organization. he had taught at Harvard, at Yale, um ah just a really outstanding history.
00:35:04
Kathleen Marden
And so Barney was referred to him because he was the best person to help Barney. And Betty went along with him and said that she would like to be hypnotized too.
00:35:15
Kathleen Marden
And so he said that he would take her as well.
00:35:20
Lee Hatfield
Mole support. I think that's what it's called. so Yeah, I'm not down by myself.
00:35:23
Kathleen Marden
yes
00:35:24
Lee Hatfield
You come too. So when obviously you mentioned earlier that they had two separate um hypnosis sessions.
00:35:36
Lee Hatfield
How far apart were these two sessions for Betty and Barney? Was it in the same week? Was it like weeks apart or hours apart? or Okay.
00:35:44
Kathleen Marden
Well, there were more than two sessions. There were 10 sessions in all. So each of them had five sessions. Um, he would take, uh, generally Barney.
00:35:57
Kathleen Marden
And then a week later he'd take Betty and then he'd go back to Barney and then he'd go back to, to Betty and he reinstated amnesia. So they couldn't, that he, uh, talk to each other and they, uh, were in a soundproof room.
00:36:14
Kathleen Marden
So they did not hear what the other one was saying.
00:36:19
Lee Hatfield
And it's interesting that he reinstated the amnesia because then, yeah, in this day and age, they people would go, oh well, they they compared notes afterwards yeah to to get the stories.
00:36:32
Kathleen Marden
Right.
00:36:34
Lee Hatfield
But if he if he reinstated the amnesia, then that's not that's not possible. Yeah.
00:36:40
Kathleen Marden
That's right. And Dr.
00:36:41
Lee Hatfield
Yeah.
00:36:42
Kathleen Marden
Simon was a skeptic, so he wasn't leading them to a a story.
00:36:46
Lee Hatfield
Yeah.
00:36:46
Kathleen Marden
In fact, he was leading them away from it, trying to convince them there had to be another explanation.
00:36:54
Lee Hatfield
And how related were the two stories at separate times? Was it kind of exactly the same or was Barney saying stuff that Betty didn't and vice versa? how How did the stories compare during the different hypnosis sessions?
00:37:15
Kathleen Marden
Well, I transcribed the hypnosis tapes and I did a line by line comparative analysis of Betty and Barney's statements to Dr. Simon.
00:37:27
Kathleen Marden
Their statements coincided from the beginning of their trip all the way through. ah And for the close the UFO sighting, for the close encounter, for everything.
00:37:41
Kathleen Marden
And then when they were separate, I you know i had to take ah what each of them said about the abduction itself.
00:37:54
Kathleen Marden
There were little discrepancies here and there, which I think sort of came together by the end of the hypnosis sessions. there And I found discrepancies everywhere.
00:38:12
Kathleen Marden
which were just memory problems in the hypnosis sessions, um where you know usually Barney forgot something and or had the the sequence mixed up.
00:38:23
Lee Hatfield
Yeah. Yeah.
00:38:26
Kathleen Marden
And then he would straighten that out later when he realized that he was wrong. so
00:38:32
Lee Hatfield
And it's
00:38:33
Kathleen Marden
But really all in all, ah Betty's narrative was more detailed than Barney's. ah He chose to keep his eyes closed, ah to stay ah very, very still, because he was afraid he would be harmed if he didn't.
00:38:51
Kathleen Marden
um And ah essentially, they had the same types of exams.
00:39:00
Lee Hatfield
and It's interesting what you say about and having small discrepancies because I've i've been lucky enough in the job that I'm doing now to go on interview interviewing members of the public.
00:39:14
Lee Hatfield
And if you interview two people and their story is 100% identical, they're identical they're lying
00:39:25
Kathleen Marden
Mm-hmm.
00:39:26
Lee Hatfield
there There has to be, no exactly, and there has to be natural discrepancies because not everybody has the same memory.
00:39:27
Kathleen Marden
Well rehearsed.
00:39:37
Lee Hatfield
So for there to be discrepancies, yeah, that's a big a big green check in my book as far as I'm concerned because it means it's it's coming from a natural source rather than than a rehearsed source.
00:39:51
Kathleen Marden
Mm-hmm. I agree with that statement. Thank you for saying that.
00:39:55
Lee Hatfield
Yeah, so... You're most welcome. um So last year I interviewed anne Preston Dennett. I'm sure you've met you've met him once or twice.
00:40:05
Kathleen Marden
Oh, sure, I know Preston. Yes, he's a close colleague.
00:40:08
Lee Hatfield
and hey yeah And when he was telling me about his abduction, he was able to describe the interior of the craft that he was in. Was Betty and Barney able to do the same kind of description or was was that a little bit of a a grey area, so to speak?
00:40:26
Kathleen Marden
No, they described it. They described what they saw in the room that they were in They described the walls, the lighting, the table. They described everything.
00:40:40
Lee Hatfield
So you mentioned that they had multiple hypnosis sessions each.
00:40:48
Kathleen Marden
Yes.
00:40:48
Lee Hatfield
Did they find that after each session session they could, even though the amnesia was put back in, so to speak?
00:41:01
Lee Hatfield
Did they feel better for talking about it after each session? Did their character get stronger, so to speak, or were they still as confused about what had happened?
00:41:12
Kathleen Marden
um I don't think that they felt better after each session. In fact, um Barney started to have nightmares for the first time. He hadn't had nightmares that he could remember about that.
00:41:23
Lee Hatfield
Right.
00:41:26
Kathleen Marden
Betty had some nightmares too. She hadn't had any since five of the five nights after they had their abduction. Or that I should say their close encounter.
00:41:37
Kathleen Marden
She didn't know about the abduction at the time.
00:41:38
Lee Hatfield
Yeah.
00:41:39
Kathleen Marden
You know, so... Yeah, that's what happened.
00:41:44
Lee Hatfield
So let's speak about these nightmares. can How clear were they and what kind of nightmares were they?
00:41:53
Kathleen Marden
um They were sort of disaster type nightmares during the hypnosis where um there there would be loads and loads of UFOs in the sky and everything was burning up and You know, like kind of like a Holocaust.
00:42:13
Kathleen Marden
Things falling.
00:42:17
Lee Hatfield
i I don't know what to say to that. oh It's sort of like, nope. So because i yeah I know that when people do hypnotize and they they have like a regression, you information comes out that the individual wasn't aware of, didn't know about.
00:42:42
Lee Hatfield
So was there any significant points that were coming out during the hypnosis sessions that they'd completely forgot about or yeah like it was pointed out after the session that, wow, this is yeah this this is a like ah a smoking gun. This is a deciding factor kind of thing.
00:43:04
Kathleen Marden
Let me think.
00:43:06
Lee Hatfield
I'll put you on the spot now.
00:43:07
Kathleen Marden
Well, you know, there's something that I want to talk about that I think is important.
00:43:12
Lee Hatfield
okay
00:43:13
Kathleen Marden
During the hypnosis session, Betty remembered that after the um the the examiner had left the room to go examine Barney, who was in a separate room, that she put her dress back on and She started to walk around. The leader told her to look around if she wanted to. And she found, it was like a tablet. She called it a book.
00:43:39
Kathleen Marden
But in the year 2000, I asked her all about that book to describe it to me and to ah sketch the symbols that she saw inside it.
00:43:53
Kathleen Marden
Because she saw rows, vertical rows of symbols. And that was always a curiosity, you know, was, is this part of her imagination or what?
00:44:07
Kathleen Marden
But then Dr. Don C. Donderry from Montreal, from McGill University, psychology department, an experimental psychologist,
00:44:19
Kathleen Marden
worked with Dr. Stuart Appel from the State University of New York and then some students, and they did two studies on alien symbols that Bud Hopkins had collected and kept in his files dating back to the mid-1970s.
00:44:40
Kathleen Marden
And they did these symbols, these studies to compare on a statistical scale how alike and different the symbols were. They had a control group. They had hypnotized a group of students and told them they'd been on on a craft. They saw symbols and they should draw them. So they had all of that data that Dr. Donderry analyzed using the scale.
00:45:06
Kathleen Marden
And what the scientists discovered was that the symbols of those who believe they'd been abducted were so similar and so different than the control groups that they believed that UFO abduction might be real.
00:45:28
Kathleen Marden
So Dr. Donderry contacted me and asked me if it would be all right for him to analyze Betty's symbols. This is a few years later, after my book Captured the Betty and Barney Hill UFO Experience was released. And so I told him, yes, please do.
00:45:48
Kathleen Marden
And he came back and he said that Betty's symbols... where some of Betty's symbols were nearly identical to the symbols that Bud Hopkins had been collecting dating back to the mid-1970s.
00:46:01
Kathleen Marden
So I found that really quite extraordinary too.
00:46:05
Lee Hatfield
Very, very. And yeah, how fascinating would it be if we could actually translate those? it would it That would be, so that's your next book to translate all those all those symbols.
00:46:18
Kathleen Marden
ah I'm not smart enough to do that, I'm afraid. but then i It was when I formally...
00:46:25
Lee Hatfield
So after all this that happened within your family, at what point in your life did you decide, I'm going to look into this and I'm going to commit light my life to it, so to speak?
00:46:44
Kathleen Marden
entered into a ves in investigation. I had been investigating it kind of casually for many years. But then in 1991, I joined the Mutual UFO Network and I trained to become a field investigator. And I used those skills to begin my investigation of Betty's and Barney's case.
00:47:07
Kathleen Marden
And I did this for many, many years. And... And so that's that's the way that I have all of this information. And then I met Stanton. I knew Stanton Friedman. I'd met him for the first time back in the 1970s. But um he was speaking at an event that I was attending. And I spoke to him and told him about the book that I was writing and asked him if he'd be interested in writing about the star map.
00:47:38
Kathleen Marden
And um so we talked and talked. He came and he saw Betty's collection that I had at my house at that point. And after he looked at everything and at my work, he decided that he was going to tell me all about his scientific knowledge of the star map, which, you know, I needed him to do because I certainly didn't have, I was not an astronomer, nor was Stanton, but he was a physicist.
00:48:06
Kathleen Marden
And there were astronomers and astrophysicists and statisticians who who looked at Betty's star map and um Marjorie Fish's identification.
00:48:17
Kathleen Marden
of the stars on Betty's map. So I learned a great deal about that as well. And even more since Stanton has passed away because now I'm the one who has to speak about it.
00:48:29
Lee Hatfield
right and it is this the am i am i going to say it correct the z to reticoolie system is that this
00:48:36
Kathleen Marden
I call it Zeta Reticuli.
The Zeta Reticuli Star Map
00:48:38
Lee Hatfield
okay okay okay yeah
00:48:39
Kathleen Marden
So did Stanton. I mean, I followed Stanton's lead.
00:48:43
Lee Hatfield
so what do we know about that location
00:48:47
Kathleen Marden
Oh, it's a little over 39 light years away. It's in um an area of our galaxy where there are there's an abundance of exoplanets um that ah around stars that these exoplanets could be life-bearing planets.
00:49:09
Kathleen Marden
um and There was an update on that map, and you'll see that too, in Captured, my book, um by ah it it was actually a student of astrophysics who did this as a class project and used something ah like 2,500, well over 2,000 computer models and was highly skeptical.
00:49:40
Kathleen Marden
But at the end said that Marjorie Fish's identification was the closest of any place in our galactic neighborhood.
00:49:52
Kathleen Marden
um There was only a a problem that this young astrophysicist believed that there were a couple of stars that might have been a better match than the stars that Marjorie identified.
00:50:09
Kathleen Marden
And it wasn't like just looking at a constellation in the sky. um There were certain properties about these stars. They were all in a plane.
00:50:21
Kathleen Marden
So if you want to go from one star system to another, you're not jumping back and forth and back and forth. The light years, you are just skipping from one to another.
00:50:36
Lee Hatfield
right
00:50:37
Kathleen Marden
ah So that's very a very important thing to consider. Also, they discovered that all the stars on Betty's map were sun-like stars, the ones connected by lines, and all of the sun-like stars in that volume of space were on Betty's map.
00:50:54
Kathleen Marden
So that was quite extraordinary.
00:50:57
Lee Hatfield
Yeah. And for somebody like that to be able to create these maps, like you say, unless they're a physicist, ah yeah an astrologist, yeah it's going to be nigh on impossible.
00:51:12
Kathleen Marden
Mm-hmm.
00:51:12
Lee Hatfield
So yeah where did this information how How did this information get into Betty's brain? There's got to be something that happened because you're not just going to start drawing star charts and they're going to be exact like thousands and thousands of light years away.
00:51:29
Lee Hatfield
So something must have happened for her to be able to replicate this star system.
00:51:37
Kathleen Marden
Yeah, I mean, could be. I mean, there's like one one chance in 10,000 that she could have done this um as confabulation and and gotten ah what she came up with and there was a match.
00:51:40
Lee Hatfield
Yeah.
00:51:54
Kathleen Marden
But I don't know about that specific match with the stars being in a plane and and all of the the special characteristics.
00:52:06
Kathleen Marden
that those stars have. In that timeframe, back in the seventies, scientists, astronomers believed that stars like Zeta Reticuli one and two, which are a binary star system, could not hold planets in a stable orbit because they were too close together.
00:52:26
Kathleen Marden
Well, later they discovered that yes, they could. So, um And some people are still saying, using the binary star system, excuse.
00:52:38
Lee Hatfield
yeah so unfortunately we lost barney in 19 just going to check 1969.
00:52:38
Kathleen Marden
um
00:52:48
Kathleen Marden
Yes.
00:52:49
Lee Hatfield
see i've got i've got my information i've got the information here it's just like oh i just need to quick read it how did
00:52:49
Kathleen Marden
Three real hemorrhage.
00:52:57
Lee Hatfield
the loss of Barney affect Betty with regard to their experience? Did she open up more? Did she close in more? How how did that kind of affect her?
Betty's Continued Research
00:53:10
Kathleen Marden
Well, let me first say that there was more than just Barney's death. she There was a psychological operation taking place against Betty. I moved into her house, and I saw it myself. The house was being entered repeatedly, and weird things were being done to freak her out.
00:53:32
Kathleen Marden
Somebody was trying to push her over the edge, but she was a very stable individual and tough as nails. And they couldn't do that, but ah that changed her.
00:53:45
Kathleen Marden
She became more committed to what happened to her, to seeking answers, to doing experiments. um Her health failed.
00:53:56
Kathleen Marden
But you can imagine with all the stress of constantly being bombarded by people who are assaulting your character, who are lying about you, who are all over the place talking about what a nut you are, that it is going to take a toll on you.
00:54:14
Kathleen Marden
She ended up leaving her.
00:54:14
Lee Hatfield
hundred percent
00:54:16
Kathleen Marden
She was a social worker for the state of New Hampshire. She left that position early. for health problems. And so devoted more time to UFOs. she helped She became an investigator, investigated some abduction cases, helped um a lot of the abductees, the early abductees, such as Travis Walton, Charlie Hickson, Calvin Parker,
00:54:44
Kathleen Marden
Three women from Kentucky, um a few of those people who were able to get in touch with her seeking help. So she became a resource for people and an investigator and experimenter.
00:55:01
Lee Hatfield
And I'm assuming that the fact that she became an an investigator, you kind of grasp that with open arms and arms and thought, that's what I want to do too.
00:55:13
Kathleen Marden
Yes, i you know, it wasn't Betty's investigations. It was um the the other investigators who came, like Jacques Fillet, like, um of I'm trying to think, different investigators from NICAP who came to our house, um who I saw in action, Dr. James Harder, University of California,
00:55:40
Kathleen Marden
At Berkeley, he was an engineer there. And people like that really impressed me. And I thought, boy, someday i want to do that because this is becoming more and more fascinating.
00:55:57
Lee Hatfield
And that's it. And it's it's a subject that continues to give. yeah It's not a case of yeah you read a book, you open the first page, and then when you get to the last page, you close it. it just there's that There's more and more information like coming every single day with regard to yeah UFOs, UAPs, USOs. yeah And it's like you say, it just continues to give, continues to give. And until we literally get...
00:56:25
Lee Hatfield
like Independence Day kind of happening. Yeah, we get in big space ship. Yeah. And and it comes to a point where people go, oh, OK, they are real. Then there's always going to be these these stories coming in. And like say, each time somebody tells a story, we're going to be getting that more and more information.
00:56:45
Kathleen Marden
Yes. Yeah. And I trained, ah i was the founder of MUFON's experiencer research team, which is now resource team, and ah did that job for 10 years.
00:56:59
Kathleen Marden
And when I left, we had 45 people who were talking to experiencers. We sort of ran it as a triage kind of unit, and they would have an investigation if they wanted one.
00:57:13
Kathleen Marden
by the investigative groups from the states. And oh of it was really a great experience. I have retired from doing that. Now I'm older and time to time to slow down and spend more of my twilight years with my husband.
00:57:28
Lee Hatfield
yeah
00:57:32
Kathleen Marden
But ah I remain active doing interviews, television shows, movies, yeah stuff like that.
00:57:35
Lee Hatfield
oh yeah yeah and one one thing that i enjoy telling people is at the beginning of last year when i first started doing a podcast i was speaking to a guy from the uk a guy called philip kens kinsella that if you yeah and
00:57:49
Kathleen Marden
Oh, I know Philip. Yes.
00:57:51
Lee Hatfield
And but he's talking and he was trying to remember a date and he goes, oh, yeah, that's about the time that I was abducted.
00:58:03
Lee Hatfield
And I went, Philip, you can't just drop that into conversation. So Philip's going to be coming back to talk about that sometime.
00:58:10
Kathleen Marden
la
00:58:11
Lee Hatfield
But he said, oh, yeah, so i just just drop it into conversation.
00:58:12
Kathleen Marden
Yes.
00:58:15
Lee Hatfield
So. We are coming towards the end. Unfortunately, i could talk to you all night. But there's one thing that I found out that I'm really intrigued about.
00:58:26
Lee Hatfield
All I'm going say is two words, and I'm hoping you know what I talk about, strange arrivals.
00:58:33
Kathleen Marden
Yes. Yeah.
00:58:36
Lee Hatfield
Demi Moore and Coleman Domingo are going to be playing Betty and Barney.
00:58:39
Kathleen Marden
Yeah.
00:58:43
Kathleen Marden
Yes. um I don't know anything about that, only that it's going to happen. um They've never consulted with me. No one's ever contacted me. so And they say that it's going to be a work of fiction.
00:58:57
Kathleen Marden
So I hope it that it doesn't, you know, distort the information even more than it's already been distorted in the media.
00:59:05
Lee Hatfield
Yeah.
00:59:08
Lee Hatfield
Yeah. And to hear you say that is extremely disappointing, because yeah we both know what Hollywood is like.
00:59:16
Kathleen Marden
Oh, yes.
00:59:17
Lee Hatfield
And for unfortunately, they bend the truth just a little bit.
00:59:22
Kathleen Marden
Sometimes more than a little.
00:59:22
Lee Hatfield
So
00:59:24
Kathleen Marden
I wasn't.
00:59:26
Lee Hatfield
I was being polite. You could go.
00:59:28
Kathleen Marden
i wasn't
00:59:29
Lee Hatfield
So, so Kathleen, ah where can people get your books and where can they find more information on Betty and Barney?
Further Resources and Conclusion
00:59:39
Kathleen Marden
All of my books are available in all formats on Amazon, um most of them on ah barnes at Barnes & Noble and other book online bookstores. ah You can learn more about Betty and Barney by going to my website at Kathleen-Martin.com or um by reading Captured, the Betty and Barney Hill, UFO experience updated for this 60th anniversary and the book was by nuclear physicist and ufologist Stanton T Friedman and myself
01:00:19
Lee Hatfield
Oh, I'm going to have to go out and get one now. you You've sold me. I will add it to my collection of paranormal books.
01:00:26
Kathleen Marden
Well, great I want to see it on the bookshelf the next time I talk to you
01:00:31
Lee Hatfield
OK, I will order it and I'll take a photograph and I'll send it to you to go, look, I've got the book. Kathleen, it has been an absolute pleasure. I've thoroughly enjoyed talking to you. I was so excited when you said that you would come on the podcast because we don't get these stories very often. So for you to come on and to share all about Betty and Barney, I thank you.
01:00:55
Kathleen Marden
My pleasure.
01:00:55
Lee Hatfield
And for now, yeah, it's like, out yes i'll I'll say it's been your pleasure, but it's been my pleasure to have you as well. But for now,
01:01:03
Kathleen Marden
Oh, thank you so much.
01:01:04
Lee Hatfield
You enjoy that Florida weather. And let's not mention how wet and cold it is in Canada right now, because i'm going to argue. But you have a great rest of the evening. And thank you once again.
01:01:16
Lee Hatfield
Take care.
01:01:17
Kathleen Marden
Yes, thank you so much.