DID BARNEY AND BETTY HILL ABDUCT MY AUTOGRAPH BOOK?

A Personal Mystery

As we were wrapping up a recent video chat, Hilary announced she had something she needed to tell me. Like any good mother, I inhaled and prepped for bad news.

“Ok, what is it?”

“Never mind, I don't think I can deal with it right now,” she said.

Lest my daughter catch sight of my eyes rolling to the back of my bony orbit, I squinched shut my newly-lifted eyelids, and tried to keep my words measured and nonchalant.

“You don’t want to know?” my daughter asked.

Breathe, I said to myself. Focus and breathe, Lynn, and whatever you do, don’t say the wrong thing.

“I will be glad to know when you want to tell me.”

“Mom-m-m, You are so good at boundaries when I don't want you to actually utilize them!”

I exhaled, unclenched my eyes and clamped down on my tongue.

“A couple of weeks ago,” Hilary continued, “Ryan (her husband) greeted me with ‘I have something bad to tell you. Lemon chewed your little photo book. There are bites taken out of it.’ “

“My little photo book,” Hilary said, " I don't have a little photo book.”

“Yes you do,” her husband insisted. “This one.”

(photo is a reenactment) (lol)

“RYAN, THAT’S MY MOTHER’S AUTOGRAPH BOOK! FROM THE 1960’S! HOW COULD YOU LET THAT HAPPEN? MY MOTHER’S GOING TO BE SO UPSET. SHE’S HAD THAT BOOK SINCE SHE WAS 12 or 13. I DON’T KNOW HOW I CAN EVEN TELL HER THIS.”

“So why do YOU have it?” he asked.

“Because she wanted me to take a picture of it for a Substack.”

I tried to interrupt my daughter’s story, but words and angst were streaming out of her mouth as if she were confessing to a major crime.

“Hilary, Hilary, Hold on. That’s NOT my autograph book.”

“WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?”

My face awash in merriment, my chest heaving, by now I could barely speak. “That’s not mine. I bought that on Ebay. I haven’t seen my autograph book since Annie gave it to Betty and Barney Hill.”

“Are you kidding me? That’s not your autograph book? This has been weighing on me!”

“Let’s save it for the pod,” I said.

She took a breath. “Yes,” she agreed. “Save it for the pod.”

That’s right; for the sake of keeping our latest crazy story vibrant and authentic for our podcast, we shut up and hung up.

The next day we recorded our latest episode which again tossed me into hysterics, because Hilary kept finding holes in my investigatory theories.

Here are the facts (sort of): In the mid-sixties my mother was finishing her teaching degree and taking a sociology class in Portland, Maine. Her close friend Gloria lived in New Hampshire and knew Barney and Betty Hill, who were famous, self-proclaimed alien abductees. Late one evening In the fall of 1961, on a rural road south of Lancaster, New Hampshire, the Hills claimed they were cruising along in their 1957 Chevrolet Belair with their dog Delsey when Betty noticed what she thought was a shooting star. Then she realized it was flying upwards and they stopped the Belair, grabbed binoculars, got out of their car and watched the strange lights. When they returned to their car the unidentified flying object hovered over them for 30 miles or so. During regressive hypnosis in 1963, they each described being taken to a spaceship by several humanoid figures dressed in black. These figures had large heads, pitch black eyes, and blue lips, and according to the Hills, some of these aliens performed medical exams on them.

Barney and Betty were an interracial couple and they were Civil Rights activists. For her sociology class, my mother was writing a paper on interracial marriage and thanks to Gloria, she twice got to interview Betty and Barney.

The second time my mother saw them was just prior to their appearance on Art Linkletter’s House Party, a popular mid-afternoon talk show on CBS. I begged my mother to give my little red autograph book to Betty and Barney so they could get Mr. Linkletter’s autograph for me. My mother said she would, but I never saw my little red book again.

Through the years I’ve developed an affection for personal mysteries, especially a personal mystery with a celebrity connection. You’re probably thinking how many people have a life mystery complete with a celebrity thread? Well consider this; I’ve stalked researched a few exes in my time and more of them than you might think have had celebrity connections. One of my exes appeared on The Dick Cavett Show. Another claimed he once dated a Kennedy and still another fathered an Olympian. Not quite Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, but close. (I’m using the term “ex’ loosely, as in I might have had just one date with the guy.)

I tracked down Gloria’s son and sent him a letter. I hadn’t seen him since I was six years old and I’m sure he thought I was nuts (which come to think of it, could be the title of my memoir), but he kindly responded that while he’d heard of the Hills, his mother had died long ago and he had no information for me. So the case remained cold, yet I persevered.

In short order I discovered online that Betty and Barney Hill’s personal papers and artifacts are stored at the University of New Hampshire and that they include notebooks, diaries, military reports, speeches, star maps, pictures and paintings of aliens (including a paper mache alien head), Betty Hill’s abduction dress, and the busted bust of an alien named Junior.

But no little red autograph book.

No autograph from Art Linkletter.

“Mom, You actually think that your autograph book landed in Betty and Barney Hill’s archive? At a university?”

Point well taken, but you never know.

My next investigatory move was to contact Betty’s niece, Kathleen Marden. A UFO investigator and researcher, Marden has authored several books including Captured! The Betty and Barney Hill UFO Experience. Trustee of Betty’s estate, she’s the one who assembled Betty’s archival collection. She, too, must have thought I was nuts, but she responded quickly and kindly and said she didn’t recall seeing my mother’s paper or my autograph book in Betty’s collection.

Good detectives know to keep momentum going, so I switched focus and started searching for the exact date the Hills appeared with Art Linkletter. I needed this date to determine for sure how old I was when my autograph book disappeared at Betty’s and Barney’s. I’m not ready to divulge my highly honed detective strategies, so I’ll spare you the details, but it actually took me a couple of months to track down a single photograph of Betty and Barney with Art. The caption on that photo helped me narrow down their appearance date to December 12, 1966, at 2:30 pm. For what it’s worth, I was 13 years and four months old when my autograph book vanished.

Autograph books have been popular for hundreds of years and in the early Twentieth Century they surged in popularity and included poetry, sayings and various types of drawings, complete with flourishes and details, which means that some autographers may have kept the books for a while.

Perhaps Betty and Barney kept my album for longer than they intended because they were writing poetry for me – or drawing me star maps and extraterrestrials? Or maybe Art Linkletter poached my book for his show Kids Say The Darndest Things. Maybe Art wanted to do some drawing too. Perhaps my book somehow got jostled out of Betty’s bag at the show? Or maybe – just maybe – my mother, who would have been all of 32 at the time, never passed my book along, thinking she didn’t want to bother Betty and Barney with a school girl’s silly quest.

THE STORY BEHIND THE STORY

Just after Hilary inserted the images in this piece, I did the final read through and I was confused because she had not included the picture of the book I bought on Ebay specifically for this purpose. I could not figure why she instead substituted the picture of a dog biting into a page with the Hills’ signatures.

The answer to this mystery is (Choose one):

1. Hilary misplaced the autograph book.

2. Aliens found their way to Hilary’s living room.

3. Her dog ate it.

ONE MORE RELATED TIDBIT

In the early 90s, my brother was at a highway rest stop and found himself side by side with Art Linkletter. After they both washed their hands, my brother looked at him and said (Choose one):

1. Where’s my sister’s autograph book?

2. My kid says the darndest things, too.

I told you we’re all just Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon.

Watch or listen to the full episode here.