Pros
- Excellent overview of the Betty and Barney Hill experience
- Kathleen Marden provides some details about the personal lives of Betty and Barney that provide context and support for the experience
- Friedman lends his authority and credibility to the book, explaining why critics of the Hills are wrong
Cons
- Doesn’t provide any new piece of evidence that might otherwise further substantiate or verify the actual abduction
- Doesn’t really provide any answers to the entire abduction phenomenon—actually raises more questions than gives answers
The book, written by the niece of Betty and Barney Hill, Kathleen Marden and a notable and respected researcher Stanton Friedman, provides some background information on the Hills that lend a lot more credence to the characters. As a result, both Betty and Barney’s experience feels a lot more legitimate.
Those who are reviewing UFO literature will come across the same events most other researchers come across: Kenneth Arnold, Betty and Barney Hill, John Mack’s book, Abduction, Walton, and other encounters like Rendlesham Forest, Shag Harbour, and the events at the US nuclear missile facilities. The Hills are unique because they are perhaps the first abduction experience publicized and taken seriously.
If you’re going into this book looking for answers to abductions, aliens, and the purpose or meaning of life, then you’ll be sorely disappointed. This book provides no answers to the whole abduction or alien phenomenon. Instead, the book is a detailed and objective accounting of Betty and Barney’s lives leading up to and after their abduction.
Captured! The Betty and Barney Hill UFO Experience Review
Captured! The Betty and Barney Hill UFO Experience provides a lot of context for who the Hills are and how they came into their experience.
If you’re reading this review or even this book, then it’s likely you’ve started your journey like so many people who are curious about the whole alien and UFO phenomenon.
And once you read one book about the subject, you’re likely to want to read more. There never seems to be enough information out there, and each book you read only drives you to want to read more. In a sense, you’ve opened up a Pandora’s box that will frustrate you.
Most reports about this UFO experience focus on the tape recordings, or they cover only the UFO abduction. However, this book provides readers with important context that reveals the personalities and characteristics of both Betty and Barney. Readers are presented with a fairly detailed description of the events leading up to the abduction and the days that immediately followed.
The first section is devoted to a brief biography of both Betty and Barney Hill. What readers learn is that this couple is intelligent, respected among their family and peers, and they’re not prone to fantastic ideas. Marden reveals that her relatives are very grounded. Indeed, Betty’s education and profession is in nursing, and Barney was at one point in the military.
While Betty and Barney aren’t necessarily considered credible observers in the way an air force pilot is, they’re presented as honest and respected members of their community. This is important because the Hills have a lot to lose in terms of reputation and standing in the community—they have absolutely nothing to gain from making up this encounter.
I don’t believe the Hills ever benefited financially from their experience, though I’m not completely sure here. This may be different from someone like Travis Walton, who not only wrote a book, but had a movie released about his experience. Still, neither the Hills or Walton became wealthy from their experience. If anything, their published experiences cemented them in public view as people with the stigma of aliens attached to them.
This book pieces together the events leading up to the abduction and after: there’s no sign that Betty or Barney were inebriated, nor is there any sign of drug use that would have resulted in hallucinations. Both alcohol and drugs have been used to discredit the accounts of many abductees.
What’s fascinating are the details about the events that unfold on the ship. The description of the aliens are often overlooked in reports because such descriptions undermine or seem to invalidate the experience. But Marden and Friedman don’t ignore criticisms that contradict the experience; instead, Friedman refutes many of the criticisms about the Hill abduction, and his defense of the Hills leaves very little doubt to the truthfulness or validity of their abduction experience.
I imagine Stanton’s part of the book deals with the more scientific background and history relevant to the Hills’ experience. There’s a lot in the book that discusses the scientific context of the UFO phenomenon.
For those who want to read well-researched and published abduction experiences, there are few books as well researched as Captured! The Betty and Barney Hill UFO Experience. Friedman and Marden do an excellent job of giving readers the background they need and reporting the experience in an objective manner.
It’s up to the readers to make an informed judgement about whether or not the abduction was real. And after that? Who knows what other information you’ve loosed from that Pandora’s box that is the alien abduction phenomenon.
