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7/13/07  #425
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Stratham author Kathleen Marden, niece of Betty and Barney Hill, poses with her new book "Captured! The Betty and Barney Hill UFO Experience," which gives the true story of the couple's alien abduction.

There were decades during which Kathleen Marden didn't divulge who her aunt and uncle were. She'd witnessed firsthand the circus that engulfed their lives, pro and con. So later when the Stratham resident became a social worker and educator, she decided it was best not to mention her relationship to Betty and Barney Hill.

But her interest and curiosity, as well as her love for the two people at the center of one of the most famous — alleged — UFO abductions, eventually led her back to the subject. Along with Stanton T Friedman, Marden has penned "Captured! The Betty and Barney Hill UFO Experience," which will be released in August by Career Press/New Page Books.

"I was absolutely flabbergasted. But, I had learned in school that none of the planets were inhabited. I never though of anything outside the solar system," she says. "I just assumed we were the only life forms."

Nonetheless she believed them. "I had a great respect for them. My aunt was a well-educated social worker for the state and Barney worked for the Boston Post Office and was active in the civil rights movement, a lifelong member of the NAACP. ...; But I was amazed."

Marden goes on to explain how well established the two were. The importance of laying the ground is evident as she checks off their involvements and accomplishments. She knew these people. They were not crackpots.

Marden's book is intended as a biography of Betty Hill. "It follows her life since 1957 till her death (in 2004). ...; There's a chapter on Betty and Barney's relationship (a bi-racial couple), how it developed." But given the impact of the UFO event on their lives it's the focus. "It changed their world view and changed their life.

Marden recalls, within days of the alleged abduction, she and her family were at the Hills' home looking at evidence. "The tops of Barney's car showed deeply scraped forms ...; which he couldn't explain. They were the size of silver dollars, highly polished, circular, on the trunk of the car. And when Betty placed a compass over the sports it spun and spun." Their watches they'd been wearing had stopped working, "though they'd been running perfectly the night before the event. ... They never operated right again."

They told of a close encounter with a craft, "at the closest point about 100 feet from them. It was disc-shaped, with a double row of rectangular windows, and an intense blue-white light. There was a red light that telescope from each side of it."

For some time the story was kept close and quiet. "They wanted to keep it confidential. ...; But they thought as citizens they needed to report it to Pease Air Force ...; they did on Sept. 20, 1961, the day after arriving home."

Curious, Betty started researching UFOs at the local library. In one book she found reference to NICAP, a private organization located in Washington, D.C., comprised of military personnel, and scientists interested in "the UFO problem, dilemma whatever you want to call it," says Marden. Her aunt wrote the group.

"She described that Barney returned to the car and was afraid ...; that they heard what Betty described as electric beeping and Barney discussed as buzzing, a series of sounds." The latter incident the last Barney recalled till reaching Ashland, N.H., 35 miles south of the field.

Betty retained fleeting memories. Both recalled a roadblock and a huge moon, or red-orange orb silhouetted against the trees. Initially Marden learned most the details a month after the incident when Walter Webb, an astronomer with the NICAP, arrived in October of '61.

News of the abduction broke in 1965. Life for the couple and their relatives changed.

The pair told their story at a NICAP meeting, in Quincy, Mass. "They weren't on any official agenda, but had agreed to stand up and tell ...; what they saw. Apparently it was tape recorded."

One of those in attendance handed the information on to a reporter with the "Boston Traveler." He contacted them and was insistent they talk. They refused and hired a lawyer. "They had a good reputation in the community. ...; They certainly didn't want to be considered crackpots."

This is another important point for Marden. In the past the Hills, Betty in particular, were accused of seeking publicity. It just wasn't that way, says the niece. "Barney was appointed chair of Rockingham County Community Action Program and was also on the state advisory board for economic opportunity board. He was also a N.H. representative to the Civil Rights Commission and legal redress to the NAACP and on the New Hampshire regional board." Betty also held positions in these organizations, and was an envoy to the United Nations through their church.

"So they really had a lot to lose. ...; They took what action they could to prevent it from being told. But they couldn't stop it."

On Oct. 25, 1965, the incident hit the papers with five follow-up articles. "I think not only myself, but the entire family was concerned about it." The reason was simple, "because of the way it would reflect on Betty and Barney and because we were members of the family it would reflect on us as well."

Marden was in high school at the time and initially felt no strong effect. Her brother on the other hand was bullied and beaten because of the story. During college and later entering the work field Marden thought twice about divulging the connection. "I was worried that it would effect my professional career and how people would perceive me. So I only told friends until I retired. ...; I sort of separated myself from the affair for a number of years."

Today the incident and the research regarding UFO sightings is a part of her life. "I'll tell you why. When I left my profession back in the early '90s I was spending more and more time with my aunt. And something I'd always wanted to do was investigate ...; to find out in my own mind if it had happened, or if Barney had absorbed Betty's dreams." (Barney passed in 1976).

While Betty was still alive Marden started what she describes as intensive research. She mapped out distances, looked at landmarks, even took Betty along with her several times. "I had the opportunity to ask lots of questions. ...; I think what cemented it for me was when she gave me the hypnosis tapes."

"While you can't really confirm without outside verification, what I was looking for was the independent corroborating information. And I believe I found that." It was in the inconsequential things, she says. Marden explains that when the Hills underwent hypnosis, the doctor imposed amnesia after each session, in part to keep them from exchanging ideas. In 1996 Marden transcribed the tapes and started comparing them with one another and with Betty's dreams. She feels the two accounts often corroborated one another.

"During part of the hypnosis I do believe Betty was mixing dreams with other things, a combination of fantasy and reality. I don't think so with Barney."

Betty Hill appointed Marden trustee and executor of her estate. After Betty's death in 2004, Marden compiled two permanent archival collections for the Milne Special Collection and Archives Department at the UNH Dimond Library. One is the Hills' civil rights collection, comprised of documents, letters, photographs and newspaper articles pertaining to Betty's and Barney's social and political activities. The UFO collection contains all of all the correspondence, articles, and other material from Betty's extensive files, including new material, Betty's dress, and the forensic paintings of her captors by N.H. artist David Baker. They will soon become available to qualified researchers.

"I read every letter she'd written, letters from researchers, serious scientists ...; whose identities will never be revealed. They're studying it quietly. I had her diaries, her memories. The book is based on all this information." There are also hours of tape from interviews between Marden and Hill, with the niece often playing devil's advocate.

After retiring from her professional life, Marden became more involved in the UFO world. She was on the board of the international group Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) for 10 years, till resigning recently. She was MUFON's director of field investigators, the arm that trains and tests field investigators, "people qualified to investigate after UFO sightings."

The upshot of her own family's sighting? "I do believe there is enough evidence to say I think they probably were (abducted)," says Marden. And yes, she does believe in UFOs, though she's very skeptical of most claims.

"I'm very interested in the subject. I'm not a person that is going to go out advocating or proselytizing about UFOs. I think of myself as taking more of a curious, social-science-perspective look at this sort of thing. I find abductions fascinating interesting and perplexing. ...; but unless you show me evidence, I can't say yet it happened."

Source: Seacoastonline
http://www.seacoastonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=
/20070708/ENTERTAIN/707080308

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RIO BRANCO, Brazil — Perhaps it is nothing more than a legend, as skeptics say. Or maybe it is real, as those who claim to have seen it avow. But the mere mention of the mapinguary, the giant slothlike monster of the Amazon, is enough to send shivers down the spines of almost all who dwell in the world’s largest rain forest.

Amazon tribes relate tales of confronting the mapinguary. A statue depicting the fearsome creature has been erected in remote Rio Branco, Brazil. Tales of mapinguary encounters are common in Rio Branco.

The folklore here is full of tales of encounters with the creature, and nearly every Indian tribe in the Amazon, including those that have had no contact with one another, have a word for the mapinguary (pronounced ma-ping-wahr-EE). The name is usually translated as “the roaring animal” or “the fetid beast.”

So widespread and so consistent are such accounts that in recent years a few scientists have organized expeditions to try to find the creature. They have not succeeded, but at least one says he can explain the beast and its origins.

“It is quite clear to me that the legend of the mapinguary is based on human contact with the last of the ground sloths,” thousands of years ago, said David Oren, a former director of research at the Goeldi Institute in Belém, at the mouth of the Amazon River. “We know that extinct species can survive as legends for hundreds of years. But whether such an animal still exists or not is another question, one we can’t answer yet.”

Dr. Oren said he had talked to “a couple of hundred people” who had said they had seen the mapinguary in the most remote parts of the Amazon and a handful who had said they had had direct contact.

In some areas, the creature is said to have two eyes, while in other accounts it has only one, like the Cyclops of Greek mythology. Some tell of a gaping, stinking mouth in the monster’s belly through which it consumes humans unfortunate enough to cross its path.

But all accounts agree that the creature is tall, seven feet or more when it stands on two legs, that it emits a strong, extremely disagreeable odor, and that it has thick, matted fur, which covers a carapace that makes it all but impervious to bullets and arrows.

“The only way you can kill a mapinguary is by shooting at its head,” said Domingos Parintintin, a tribal leader in Amazonas State. “But that is hard to do because it has the power to make you dizzy and turn day into night. So the best thing to do if you see one is climb a tree and hide.”

Geovaldo Karitiana, 27, a member of the Karitiana tribe, claims to have seen one about three years ago, as he was hunting in the jungle near an area that his tribe calls “the cave of the mapinguary.”

“It was coming toward the village and was making a big noise,” he said in a recent interview on the tribe’s reservation in the western Amazon. “It stopped when it got near me, and that’s when the bad smell made me dizzy and tired. I fainted, and when I came to, the mapinguary was gone.”

Mr. Karitiana’s father, Lucas, confirmed his son’s account. He said that when his son took him back to the site of the encounter, he saw a cleared pathway where the creature had departed, “as if a boulder had rolled through and knocked down all the trees and vines.”

Though the descriptions of the mapinguary may resemble the sasquatch of North America or the yeti of Himalayan lore, the comparisons stop there. Unlike its counterparts in the Northern Hemisphere, the creature is said not to flee human contact, but to aggressively hunt down the hunter, turning the tables on those who do not respect the jungle’s unwritten rules and limits.

“Often, the mapinguary gets revenge on people who transgress, who go where they shouldn’t go or harvest more animals or plants than they can consume, or set cruel traps,” said Márcio Souza, a prominent Brazilian novelist and playwright who lives in Manaus, in the central Amazon, and often draws on Amazon history and folklore in his works.

Amazon folklore, in fact, is full of fanciful creatures that are used to explain unwelcome or embarrassing phenomena. The boto, for example, is a type of dolphin that is said to be able to transform itself into human form, wearing a white hat to cover its air spout, and seducing and impregnating impressionable young virgins.

When a hunter or woodsman gets lost in the jungle, he often blames the curupira, a mischievous red-haired elf who has feet that face backward and takes delight in making trails that lead travelers astray. And when an experienced navigator inexplicably disappears or drowns in calm waters, he is usually said to have fallen victim to the iara, a cross between a siren and a mermaid.

Scientists link the current mapinguary legends to the Megatherium, one of the largest mammals ever. It vanished thousands of years ago.

“If you’re a rubber tapper and you’re returning to camp empty-handed, you’d better have a pretty good explanation for your boss,” said Marcos Vinícius Neves, director of the government’s department of historical and cultural patrimony in Acre State, where a statue of a mapinguary has been erected at a public plaza here in the capital. “The mapinguary is the best excuse you could possible imagine.”

Mr. Souza, the writer, counts himself among those who believe the mapinguary is a myth. The deforestation of the Amazon has accelerated so rapidly over the last generation, he argues, that if the creature really existed, “there would have been some sort of close encounter of the third kind by now.”

Partly for that reason, most zoologists scoff at the notion that it could be real.

The giant ground sloth, Megatherium, was once one of the largest mammals to walk the earth, bigger than a modern elephant. Fossil evidence is abundant and widespread, found as far south as Chile and as far north as Florida. But the trail stops cold thousands of years ago.

“When you travel in the Amazon, you are constantly hearing about this animal, especially when you are in contact with indigenous peoples,” said Peter Toledo, an expert on sloths at the Goeldi Institute. “But convincing scientific proof, in the form of even vestiges of bones, blood or excrement, is always lacking.”

Glenn Shepard Jr., an American ethnobiologist and anthropologist based in Manaus, said he was among the skeptics until 1997, when he was doing research about local wildlife among the Machiguenga people of the far western Amazon, in Peru. Tribal members all mentioned a fearsome slothlike creature that inhabited a hilly, forested area in their territory.

Dr. Shepard said “the clincher that really blew me away” came when a member of the tribe remarked matter of factly that he had also seen a mapinguary at the natural history museum in Lima. Dr. Shepard checked; the museum has a diorama with a model of the giant prehistoric ground sloth.

“At the very least, what we have here is an ancient remembrance of a giant sloth, like those found in Chile recently, that humans have come into contact with,” he said. “Let me put it this way: Just because we know that mermaids and sirens are myths doesn’t mean that manatees don’t exist.”

Even so, the mystery of the mapinguary is likely to continue, as is the search.

“There’s still an awful lot of room out there for a large sloth to be roaming around,” Dr. Shepard said.

Source: NY Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/08/world/americas/08amazon.html?_r=3&ref=
world&oref=slogin&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

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Conspiracy Journal - Issue 425 7/13/07
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