3-minute reading time

Raymond E. Fowler. (1979). The Andreasson Affair. Random House Publishing Group.

On the evening of January 25, 1967, Betty Andreasson was in her kitchen at South Ashburnham, Massachusetts. Her seven children, mother, and father were in the living room. At about 6:35 p.m., the house lights suddenly blinked out for a moment. Then, a pulsating reddish-orange light shined in the kitchen window. Betty calmed the frightened children while her father rushed to look out the kitchen window. He saw a group of strange-looking small creatures approaching with a hopping motion.

The leader was about five feet tall. The others were about four feet tall. All had large pear-shaped heads, wide catlike wraparound eyes, and diminutive ears and noses. Their mouths were immobile slits that reminded Betty of scar lines. Each wore a coverall blue uniform adorned with a Sam Browne-type belt. An insignia of a bird was affixed to their sleeves. Their hands had three digits. (Later, on the craft, they were gloved.) They wore boot-like attire on their feet. They floated rather than walked.

Betty’s initial fright was immediately calmed by an overpowering sense of friendship.

Betty’s initial fright was immediately calmed by an overpowering sense of friendship. When she displayed concern for her family’s welfare, the creatures temporarily released her eleven-year-old daughter, Becky, from this strange state of unawareness to assure Betty that she was all right.

Then Betty was taken outside and brought on board a small craft resting on the side of a hill that sloped into the back yard. The machine was about twenty feet in diameter. It looked like two saucers, one inverted upon the other, with a small superstructure on top. The small craft accelerated and apparently merged with a larger parent craft, in which

Later that night, a 10:40 p.m., Betty was returned home by two of her alien captors. At home, she found her family still in a state of suspended animation. One being had stayed behind to watch over them during her absence. Then the beings put the family — still under some type of mind control – to bed, and the aliens left.

Several times, the aliens had told Betty that certain things had been locked in her mind. She was instructed to forget them and her UFO experience until the appointed time. She consciously remembered only a fraction of the strange encounter; the power failure, the colored light flashing through the window, and the aliens entering the house.

Betty, a devout Christian, interpreted the creatures as religious or angelic in nature. The subject of UFOs was largely unknown to her. Her education had been limited to ten years of schooling, her basic interests included family, church, and community-related activities. Not until much later did she think of her experience as a possible UFO encounter.

In 1975, Betty responded to a local newspaper story about UFO researcher Dr. J. Allen Hynek, who was soliciting personal UFO experience information from the public. Betty’s letter contained such few data, however, that it was filed and forgotten until an investigation in January 1977.

During a twelve-month investigation, they conducted an extensive character-reference check, two lie-detector tests, a psychiatric interview, and fourteen lengthy hypnotic regression sessions. Under hypnosis, Betty and her daughter relived a consistent, detailed UFO experience with genuine physiological reactions. Their three-volume, 528-page report led to the conclusion that the witnesses were reliable and sane individuals who sincerely believed the experience had really occurred.