Editing Grey alien (section)

===Barney and Betty Hill abduction===
The conception remained a niche one until 1965, when newspaper reports of the [[Betty and Barney Hill abduction]] made the archetype famous.<ref name="SaganDemon">{{cite book|first=Carl |last=Sagan |author-link=Carl Sagan |title=The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark |page=102 |publisher=Ballantine Books |year=1997 |isbn=0-345-40946-9 |quote=The Hill case was widely discussed. It was made into a 1975 TV movie that introduced the idea that short, gray, alien abductors are among us into the psyches of millions of people.}}</ref> The alleged abductees, Betty and Barney Hill, claimed that in 1961, humanoid alien beings with grayish skin had abducted them and taken them to a [[flying saucer]].<ref name="SaganDemon"/><ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.newspapers.com/newspage/81331739/ |title=The Unexplained (column) |last=Spraggett |first=Allen |date=January 10, 1972 |website=newspapers.com |publisher=York Daily Record |location=York, Pennsylvania |page=22 |access-date=April 24, 2021 |quote=Betty and Barney Hill claimed to have been taken aboard a flying saucer for two hours by 'humanoids' with grayish skin and wrap-around eyes, subjected to physical examinations, and then released unharmed with the suggestion that they would remember nothing of what had transpired. ... 'The humanoids were about five feet tall,' Betty Hill told me when I asked what they looked like. 'They had gray, metallic-looking skin. No noses, just nostrils. And their mouths were only slits. The eyes extended right around to the sides of their heads.'}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.newspapers.com/clip/19025149/hill/ |title=Betty Hill Recounts 'The UFO Incident' |last=Chatenever |first=Rick |date=January 19, 1978 |website=newspapers.com |publisher=Santa Cruz Sentinel |location=Santa Cruz, California |page=14 |access-date=April 24, 2021 |quote=She describes the beings as 'about four and a half feet tall, humanlike in body appearance, with large eyes, small noses and no lips, ears or facial hair.' They had thin slits for mouths, she goes on, and their skin had a gray tone to it.}}</ref>

In his 1990 article "Entirely Unpredisposed", Martin Kottmeyer suggested that Barney's memories revealed under hypnosis might have been influenced by an episode of the science-fiction television show ''[[The Outer Limits (1963 TV series)|The Outer Limits]]'' titled "[[The Bellero Shield]]", which was broadcast 12 days before Barney's first hypnotic session. The episode featured an extraterrestrial with large eyes, who says, "In all the universes, in all the unities beyond the universes, all who have eyes have eyes that speak." The report from the regression featured a scenario that was in some respects similar to the television show. In part, Kottmeyer wrote:

{{blockquote|text=Wraparound eyes are an extreme rarity in science fiction films. I know of only one instance. They appeared on the alien of an episode of an old TV series ''The Outer Limits'' entitled "The Bellero Shield." A person familiar with Barney's sketch in "The Interrupted Journey" and the sketch done in collaboration with the artist David Baker will find a "frisson" of "[[déjà vu]]" creeping up his spine when seeing this episode. The resemblance is much abetted by an absence of ears, hair, and nose on both aliens. Could it be by chance? Consider this: Barney first described and drew the wraparound eyes during the hypnosis session dated 22 February 1964. "The Bellero Shield" was first broadcast on 10 February 1964. Only twelve days separate the two instances. If the identification is admitted, the commonness of wraparound eyes in the abduction literature falls to cultural forces.|author=Martin Kottmeyer|source=''Entirely Unpredisposed: The Cultural Background of UFO Reports''<ref name="Magonia">{{cite web |last1=Kottmeyer |first1=Martin |title=Entirely Unpredisposed: The Cultural Background of UFO Reports |url=http://magoniamagazine.blogspot.com/2013/11/entirely-unpredisposed-cultural.html |website=Magonia Magazine |date=January 1990 |access-date=5 March 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210624135546/http://magoniamagazine.blogspot.com/2013/11/entirely-unpredisposed-cultural.html |archive-date=24 June 2021 |url-status=bot: unknown }}</ref>}}

Carl Sagan  echoed Kottmeyer's suspicions in his 1997 book, ''The Demon Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark'', where ''[[Invaders from Mars (1953 film)|Invaders from Mars]]'' was cited as another potential inspiration.<ref name="SaganDemon" />