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Encounters of the Unknown—Alternate Perceptions Magazine, December 2015


Investigating Alien Encounters in New England with Betty Hill

by: Brent Raynes


It was Wednesday afternoon, July 14, 1976. I sat down with a young couple, both researchers of the UFO phenomenon, at their home in Lexington, Massachusetts, to conduct a tape recorded interview. I was accompanied on this investigation by Betty Hill, the well-known “alien abductee,” as many know her, from Portsmouth, New Hampshire. We were about to hear some really strange but very intriguing tales.

“I wasn’t even aware of UFOs being in existence until I met Josepth Cortrelle (Groveton, NH),” Michael, age 22, began. “After I met him I started remembering things that happened to me when I was a kid. Encounters that I had had with extraterrestrial craft that I just blocked out of my head because I would tell my mom and she would say, ‘Oh, cute little kid,’ and I’d forget all about it because there wasn’t anybody to talk to about anything. I had an encounter in Atlanta, Georgia. I’m not sure exactly what happened. I was out working on my car and it was in the morning and the next thing I knew I work up on the ground and the sun was setting. So I lost a day. I was about 17 at that time. That was the first time lapse I ever had.’

“I had seen things when I was a child. I didn’t think they were UFOs. I just thought they were pretty lights. I was planning on things when I was a kid. After I saw those pretty lights I was sitting there planning on what I was going to do when, flying saucers I called them then, were going to land in the school yard across the street because I knew they were going to do it, and I was thinking of how I was going to deal with them. So I was unconsciously, in a sense, watching things my whole life and when I met Joe Cortrelle all of these things came back to my rememberance that I had forgotten all about. Then I started researching it and then I started having more encounters. Louise (also 22, his fiancé) here had no UFO experience. She didn’t believe UFOs were real when I met her. I started talking to her and come to find out that she was able to understand about anything I was to share with her, and about three months later she was teleported aboard a spacecraft and shown things, and teleported back down.”

Michael next began telling us about his friend Joseph Cortrelle. He explained that Cortrelle had worked for the U.S. government for 18 years but due to health problems left his work in Los Angeles, CA and moved all the way across the country to settle down in Groveton, New Hampshire. “He had his hands in all kinds of technical fields,” Michael explained. He said that he had, for example, been a metallurgist and also had been a federal inspector of boilers.

Then Michael quickly moved on to telling about Cortrelle’s UFO experience. He said that it had happened about 3 or 4 years earlier and came to really shake up his life as his wife left him afterwards and his son had been very disturbed by the encounter.

The encounter occurred one night around 9 p.m. Mr. Cortrelle was in his cabin when he noticed a sensation in his chest, as though he was having a hard time breathing. He stepped out the back door to catch a breath of fresh air when he saw a large glowing oval shaped body of light. At first he thought that it was a swarm of fireflies. He ran some 50 feet in its direction and then seven spheres, approx. 9-12 feet in diameter, came out from it. The spheres had composed the oval shaped area of light. Michael stated the spheres “came upon him in about three seconds, in a military, circular fashion and stopped on a dime.” Cortrelle reportedly screamed aloud, “Why me?” and received back a telepathic reply, “Why not you?” He somehow could tell which sphere was communicating, and that sphere stated that they wished to discuss with him what he knew, what he was doing with what he knew, and that they had information to present to him. He informed them that he wanted to go inside his cabin briefly and get his camera to take some pictures. They informed him though that such pictures would not develop. He went inside anyway and besides grabbing his camera he stuck a gun in his belt and grabbed a rifle. He then emerged from the cabin with his son. The sphere communicated that he (Cortrelle) was still as he had been when he first emerged from the caves. This hurt his ego as he was proud of being very scientific minded and an accomplished inventor.

Next there was projected into Cortrelle’s mind mental pictures that explained human evolution from the cave to the present time and how so-called modern mankind was polluting his environment and not doing things like he should. Cortrelle reportedly, at this point, threw down his gun and rifle ashamed at himself and realizing the truth. The sphere then asked if they could conduct a physical examination of him. He asked if it would hurt, but without answering he found himself being raised about a foot off the ground by a beam of light aimed at his navel area. Every time he attempted to move his body he experienced a sensation comparable to a mild G-force as when in a plane that is banking. He could feel various parts of his body, like blood vessels, being probed, and the patella bone in his knee. Below him on the ground rocks seemed to be glowing, almost pulsating like in different colors.

On different occasions, Cortrelle would start to get scared and the spheres would change color. This had a calming effect on his mind. They informed him that at this point in history they had been able to speak with him in greater detail and degree than any humans previous. He then asked to see their energy source, which they explained was beyond his ability to understand, and initially refused his request. However, they finally granted his wish and as though he was peering into the eyepiece of a microscope the hull of one of the spheres was magnified before his eyes and he heard, “This is our energy source.” He asked to see some mathematics, as he was well versed in advanced math. Again in mental pictures, in an estimated 7 seconds, he was shown, inside his head, all of the math that he knew, followed by 7 more seconds in an array of beautiful lines, numbers, and graphs beyond what he was familiar with. Then it was stopped and he felt that they had communicated to him that they could continue on at this same phenomenal rate for probably months. Allegedly he was also shown that President Nixon would leave office and that someone named Ford would replace him.

Then one of the other spheres spoke up, communicating, “Let’s take him.” Cortrelle started screaming, “Take me where?!” The spheres began closing in. Then a voice said, “Back off.” Then Cortrelle heard, “We’ll get you next time.” Then just as one turns out a light they were gone. Cortrelle kept silent about his strange encounter for about 18 months. Meeting Michael next and sharing his experience with him apparently was the turning point. Then for the next 18 months Cortrelle traveled around the country and lectured about his experience. Local residents in his hometown however were seemingly pretty hostile toward his claims, shooting out windows in his cabin.

Then it was Louise’s turn, Michael’s fiancé, also 22 years of age, to share her story. She recalled how it was in the afternoon around the middle of March 1976 and she was a passenger in a car near or in Bedford, Massachusetts, when suddenly she vanished from the vehicle. In an instant it seemed, she found herself physically aware of sitting on the deck of a circular shaped compartment, which she suspected was the inside of a UFO. The illumination of the room came from the ceiling above. Louise was aware of mental images being projected into her mind, showing her various things. Then the next thing she was conscious of was being about 35 miles from Bedford in Cambridge, beside a pond near Route 2 and Harvard Square. It was still daylight.

I asked Louise about the duration of this experience, to which she replied: “It seemed like, the time I was aboard the craft, didn’t seem like more than 15 minutes, but I have no actual way of telling.”

“They dropped me right at an embankment near a pond, right in the middle of a city where anybody could see me,” Louise added. “I’m just sitting on this embankment asking myself, ‘What am I doing here?’ That was the last, to my knowledge, type of physical contact but I’ve seen a lot of spacecraft since then. It seems like everywhere we go we can’t help but see spacecraft.”

I asked Louise what may have transpired onboard the UFO. She felt that her own thoughts had been quieted down and then mental pictures were projected into her mind. “They showed me like big earthquakes happening,” she noted. “Places like I thought could be California.”

Louise also remarked on how just prior to her apparent teleportation from the car, “I had a hard time breathing. I felt a tightness in my chest.” The driver, described by her as a non-believer in UFOs, wanted nothing to do with the incident and felt that she must have drugged him or something.


Friday, March 29, 2024