On the night of Sept. 19, 1961, Barney and Betty Hill were driving on a rural highway to their home in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. By all accounts, the Hills were an exemplary couple: he a postman, she a social worker, active in their community and in the civil rights movement. On an isolated road snaking through the White Mountains, the couple later recounted, they saw a bright object that appeared to be following their car. They arrived home around 5 a.m., unable to account for two hours of the night but feeling that something terrible had happened to them.

It took a while, but the Hills eventually remembered the life-altering event that befell them on that lonely stretch of highway: They’d been abducted by aliens.