no.10 - Zeta Reticuli

In the entire history of mankind, there has never been a story subjected to more cut-rate reenactments and craptastic special effects than Barney and Betty Hill's now legendary tale of alien abduction.

They were the first alien abductee case, ever. Or at least they were the first people to remember being abducted. Or at the very least, the first people to come forward after being abducted. Or, perhaps, at the very, very least, they were first people to believe they had been abducted by extraterrestrials.

In my youth, I watched as a pre-Darth Vader James Earl Jones and his wife were abducted in the made for T.V. movie, "The U.F.O. incident" about the Barney and Betty Hill case. I was glued to their tale as it was repeated, again, on an episode of the short-lived "Project U.F.O" series. On "In Search of..." I watched grainy interviews and glimpsed their awkward drawings by the Hill's themselves. Each of these productions, and many more to follow were accompanied by an incompetent reenactment usually involving terrible, dated even for the time effects, or, worse, no effects at all, leaving all the action off-screen.

Yet, despite their awful production values, each reenactment had something to offer. Separately they were nothing. Together they created an archetype.

I truly wanted to believe the Hill's story. They believed it themselves! Who would not want to believe in intelligent beings visiting us from outer space because the intelligence we have here on Earth is, let's face it, disappointing.

My friend Ralph and I planned for what we hoped would be our eventual close encounter. In the mid to late 1970's flying saucer landings were so common that they happened both in the worlds of the Brady Bunch and C.H.I.P.S - it was only a matter of time before they came to us and we were prepared.

If either of us was abducted, we'd leave our sneakers behind in the shape of a V or, if a stick were present, a triangle. This was our way to let each other know that the disappearance was extraterrestrial in nature. To our credit, neither of us pranked the other, though I admit I was tempted.

Of course, neither of us could have actually been abducted by aliens. Abduction implies being taken against one's will. I would have raced, barefoot, like a greyhound at the dog tracks my father loved to get on board a U.F.O. They need not have bothered with their floaty space ray thingy. I really wanted to talk to these guys and explain that I was ready for whatever future-space-knowledge they wanted to impart. If they had a spare phaser, I'd be cool with that too.

It had not yet come out that aliens were alleged sexual deviants fiddling with reproductive organs.

I loved the idea of getting away from Earth. I'd aways loved space and I felt more at home with the idea of traveling between stars than I did living in the suburbs.

But in spite of my plans and my hopes, all that bad blue-screen and terrible acting must have left a subliminal impression on me that it was a fiction. What a shame. All the cracks and seams in their story began to show.

Barney and Betty's description of the aliens darn well nails the make-up effects for an episode of "The Outer Limits" - one which, coincidentally aired the week before the incident. Betty's Star Map of Zeta Reticuli was shown to be painfully random.

Even as reports of abductions became more common, and the myth of Roswell grew to eclipse the so-called "Zeta Reticuli incident" no one ever produced a single piece of concrete evidence and I was left stranded here on Earth with no way "home".