NEW DISCOVERIES IN BETTY HILL'S STAR MAP

3. The "Star Map" - What do we Know?

ETTY stood in the same room aboard the spaceship where she was examined before. She was alone with the "leader." He didn't answer her question about their origin but asked her instead if she knew anything about the universe. Betty replied:

"...And I told him no. I knew practically nothing. That when I was in graduate school we were taught that the sun was the center of the solar system, and there were nine planets. And then later, of course, we did make advances. And I told him about seeing, I think I met him at one time, Harlow Shapley; he wrote a book, too. And I had seen photographs that he had taken of millions and millions of stars in the universe. But that was about all I knew. So, he said that he wished I knew more about this, and I said I wish I did, too. And he went across the room to the head of the table and he did something, he opened up, it wasn't like a drawer, he sort of did something and the metal of the wall, here was an opening. And he pulled out a map, and he asked me had I ever seen a map like this before. And I walked across the room and I leaned against the table. And I looked at it. And it was a map-it was an oblong map. It wasn't square. It was a lot wider than it was long. And there were all these dots on it. And they were scattered all over it. Some were little, just pin points. And others were as big as a nickel. And there were lines, there were on some of the dots, there were curved lines going from one dot to another. And there was one big circle, and it had a lot of lines coming out from it. A lot of lines going to another circle quite close, but not as big. And these were heavy lines. And I asked him what they meant. And he said that the heavy lines were trade routes. And then the other lines, the other lines, the solid lines were places they went occasionally. He said the broken lines were expeditions...

"So I asked him where was his home port, and he said "Where were you on the map?" I looked and laughed and said "I don't now." So he said, "If you don't know where you are, then there isn't any point of my telling where I am from." And he put the map-the map rolled up, and he put it back in the space in the wall and closed it."

-- From a transcript of a hypnotic regression session [3].

In a television interview [4] she retells the scene in this way: "I don't know if there was an opening in the wall or just what made out of sight and hide the map. He didn't pull down anything like that" - here Betty made a movement with her hand as if she would pull down a rolled up map - "and it was probably about two by three feet. And it was almost - it was all realistic - like looking at the sky and even some of the objects seemed to be slowly moving. He asked me if I knew where we are on the map and I told him 'no'. And he said, well, if I didn't know any basic information then it will be impossible for him to show me where they were from. And with that he put the star map he pushed something - and the map was gone."

In the dreams some weeks after the incident [5] she saw: "He went over to the wall and pulled down a map, strange to me. Now I would believe this to be a sky map. It was a map of heavens, with numerous sized stars and planets, some large some only pinpoints. Between many of these, lines were drawn, some broken lines, some light solid lines, some heavy black lines. They were not straight, not curved."

"Some went from one planet to another, to another, in a series of lines. Others had no lines, and he said the lines were expeditions. He asked me where the Earth was on this map, and I admitted that I had no idea. He became slightly sarcastic and said that if I did not know where the Earth was, it was impossible to show me where he was from; he snapped the map back into place."

These are Betty's accounts. Now let us emphasize the following facts: after some manipulations of the "leader" at the head of the table, an "opening" appears in the wall. It seems to Betty, as if she could see the "heavens", some of the visible fluorescent points are moving. In Fuller's book, she said under hypnosis that the "leader" pulled the "map" down. Anyway, she has the impression of a three-dimensional arrangement of all the details in the "map". She looks from a distance of about one meter at the "map" which is scattered all over with fluorescent points of various size, colour and brightness [6].

There are no grid-lines in the 3 foot (about 0,9 m) long by 2 foot (about 0,6 m) high "map". In the foreground, there are two big circles which are connected by heavy black lines. From the big circle more distant to the viewers eye some solid lines are coming out and connect some smaller points in different directions and distances which are connected by broken (dotted) lines with some even smaller points.

Upon her question, Betty was told that the heavy lines symbolize "trade routes," the light solid lines connect places they travel occasionally, and the broken lines are "expeditions" they did some time. Betty went on to ask where the homeport of the entities was. Instead of giving an answer, again he asked her: "Where were you on the map?" Betty could not answer this question as much as she would like to, whereupon she was told: "If you don't know where you are, then there isn't any point of my telling where I am from." He made the "map" disappear and with this the "opening" in the wall disappeared, too. Betty asked him to show her the map again, but he refused with a laugh.