Editor’s note: This is the first of three articles to appear throughout 2021 on the 60th anniversary of the alleged alien abduction of Betty and Barney Hill of Portsmouth and adapted from a book in progress by the author.
"The Interrupted Journey" was a smash hit. John G. Fuller’s book about Betty and Barney Hill’s alleged 1961 alien encounter, released in 1966, quickly sold upward of 300,000 copies, thrusting the Portsmouth, New Hampshire couple into the limelight. A former television script writer, failed playwright, and popular magazine columnist, Fuller would write a number of bestsellers based on paranormal topics, including three books that fueled the mid-1960s UFO craze. His coverage of the Hill case, based largely on transcripts of the couple under hypnosis, was also widely read in Reader’s Digest, Look magazine, and serialized in newspapers across the nation.