Alien mood rings, alien magnets, alien rubber balls, alien earrings, alien figurines, alien lamps and alien fuzzy pens line the shelves of the Indian Head Resort gift shop on a highway running through Lincoln, N.H.
The extraterrestrial creatures come in all shapes, sizes and colors. Some resemble “E.T.” Others mimic the Little Green Men from “Toy Story.” All of the merchandise is capitalizing on a cherished bit of local lore: a couple who claimed they were abducted by aliens while driving back from their honeymoon in 1961.
Betty and Barney Hill said they were seized on a stretch of U.S. Route 3 by gray aliens with long bodies and large heads. Their tale was one of the first U.F.O. stories to capture national attention, inspiring the 1975 movie “The U.F.O. Incident,” starring Estelle Parsons and James Earl Jones. A new movie, “Strange Arrivals,” is being developed with Demi Moore and Colman Domingo.
The simple version of the Hills’ story — if reported U.F.O. sightings can be simple — is that a strange, bright light began to follow them on the dark roads in the White Mountains, eventually hovering above their car, a 1957 Chevrolet Bel Air. By the time they got home to Portsmouth, N.H., they could not account for hours of their journey. Betty’s dress was torn. Their watches no longer worked.
What actually happened to the Hills, who are now deceased, is unknowable. But their story has turned a mile-long stretch of remote road into the Area 51 of New England.
In the lobby of the Indian Head Resort, a plaque resting on an easel recounts what the Hills said happened that September night. Outside the hotel parking lot, the State of New Hampshire has commemorated their tale with an official green historical highway marker, which includes their description of a “brightly-lit cigar-shaped craft.” (The sticker depicting Santa in a sleigh with two green aliens is not state-sanctioned.) A few minutes down Route 3, a painting of a bigheaded, long-limbed creature greets those who come in peace to the Notch Express gas station.
Notch Express doubles as a makeshift museum. Among the energy drinks, windshield washer fluid and family-size bags of Lay’s chips are alien plush toys and rubber figurines. An inflatable green creature hangs from the ceiling. Next to the A.T.M. and cases of beer, printer paper stapled to black poster board tells the Hills’ story. More modern references to U.F.O.s are displayed above the fridges.
During his six years behind the cash register, Tim Virge has heard about all kinds of eccentric encounters. The job makes for far more interesting conversation, he said, than his previous gig at Walmart.
“Some people have seen a fire in the sky,” Virge said. “Some of them claimed they’d seen ships, and it would just appear and then it would be gone seconds later.”
After the Hills’ story became public, people from across the country wrote to the couple about their own experiences. Those letters, as part of a robust archive of materials, live about 90 minutes away from the gas station at the University of New Hampshire.
There, Elizabeth Slomba, the special collections librarian, wheels out a metal cart carrying a dozen file boxes. In one is Betty’s ripped purple dress, wrapped in tissue to preserve the fabric. Manila folders hold diary entries, handwritten notes and intelligence reports.
The Hills, as the highway marker notes, filed an official report with Project Blue Book, an Air Force investigation into U.F.O.s that ended in 1969. It did not find definitive evidence of any extraterrestrial activity.
The alien encounter described by the Hills unfolded after honeymoon stops in Montreal and Niagara Falls. When they returned home, perpetual anxiety and nightmares led them to seek hypnotherapy treatment, trying to piece together what had happened that night. Barney, a postal worker, recalled being taken aboard an aircraft and subjected to medical tests. Betty, a social worker, remembered being shown maps of outer space, written in an unfamiliar language.
After The Boston Traveler newspaper reported their sighting a few years later, the Hills entered the national spotlight. Look magazine promoted an article about Elizabeth Taylor and one about the Hills — “Aboard a Flying Saucer” — on its cover. Betty went on “The Phil Donahue Show.”
After Barney died in 1969, at 46, Betty spent decades as a spokeswoman for their story, until she died in 2004 at 85. She commissioned star maps, paintings of aliens and a ceramic bust of an extraterrestrial she named Junior, which lost a piece from the back of its head when it fell off her mantel.
Slomba, who has worked with the archival collection since it was donated in 2006 by Betty’s niece, Kathleen Marden, said that something about the Hills’ story was intrinsically tied to the place where it was set: tensions about poverty, a mixed-race marriage (Betty was white and Barney was Black) and the civil rights activism the Hills engaged in, all in a predominantly white state.
“Some people hold their marriages together by going in for home renovations,” Slomba said. “Some people hold their marriages together by going in for alien abductions.”
Slomba, who refrains from saying whether she believes the Hills’ story, said the archive could be a place for everyone.
There are the staunch critics, who think the Hills invented everything. There are the scientific skeptics, who want to test Betty’s dress for foreign substances. And there are the soul-searchers, who are looking for answers for what they describe as their own extraterrestrial encounters.
Gloria Spanos, the manager of the Indian Head Resort gift shop, said Betty’s experience validated her own.
As a teenager in the late 1960s, Spanos said, she, her sister and some friends saw an orange light descend on the ocean at Salisbury Beach in Massachusetts, just south of the border with New Hampshire. It did not have a reflection, she said, and moved closer and closer before evaporating.
A painting Betty commissioned shows a similar scene — an orb that looks as if it is on fire, in a dark, wooded area. “It was the first time that I heard anybody describe an orange glowing ball,” Spanos said.
Today, the conversation about U.F.O.s goes far beyond paintings. “The Age of Disclosure,” a documentary that contends the government has covered up alien visits, was recently screened for some members of Congress. In one Reddit forum about U.F.O.s, visitors regularly post videos of bright lights and moving objects from across the world. The “Strange Arrivals” podcast, the inspiration for the upcoming movie, has produced three seasons.
Within the past 10 years, Matt Braga, a 47-year-old who lives in Massachusetts, has consumed all kinds of alien lore. He is not convinced that U.F.O.s are real, but he loves the concept of them. He has a tattoo of a crop circle on his left forearm, a pattern that theorists have linked to alien behavior.
“I love the idea that there’s something greater than just humanity in our consciousness,” he said, “and that there is something greater than what we know out there.”
So when Braga had to drive his 12-year-old son to a hockey tournament in Jay, Vt., he knew the perfect detour. Heading out of Notch Express, he had snacks for the road, a full tank of gas and a red rubber alien.
Michaela Towfighi is a Times arts and culture reporter and a member of the 2025-26 Times Fellowship class, a program for early career journalists.
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