September of 1965: UFOs over New Hampshire.
Greetings. The Incident at Exeter.
The Exeter, New Hampshire events from the 3rd of September in 1965 were a highly publicized series of UFO sightings that occurred approximately 5 miles (8 km) south of Exeter in the neighboring town of Kensington. Although multiple independent sightings had been made in the area by numerous witnesses in the weeks leading up to the incident in question, it was the events that transpired on September 3rd which eventually became the most well-known, involving a local teenager and two law enforcement officers.
On September 3rd, at approximately 2:00am local time, 18-year-old Norman Muscarello was hitchhiking to his home in Exeter along New Hampshire Route 150. Muscarello, a recent high school graduate, was a few short weeks away from leaving for service in the United States Navy. He had been visiting his girlfriend at her parents' home in nearby Amesbury, Massachusetts, a small community approximately 10 miles (16 km) southeast of Exeter. Since he had recently sold his car, Muscarello would hitchhike to and from Amesbury, but at that hour of the morning there was little traffic on the highway, and Muscarello had walked a substantial part of the distance home.
After reaching Kensington, a few miles outside Exeter, Muscarello noticed five flashing bright red lights in the distance, which he initially believed to be the lights of a police car or fire engine. As he drew nearer, he was startled to see the lights were hovering in the air just above the treeline and illuminating a nearby field and two houses in brilliant red light. One house belonged to the Dining family, who were not at home at the time, the other to a family named Russell. Muscarello estimated the object to be about 80 to 90 feet (24 to 27 meters) in diameter. He became terrified as the unidentified object, which was completely silent, began to move steadily towards him. In a panic, Muscarello dived into a nearby ditch beside the road. Subsequently the lights changed direction and began hovering over the Dining farmhouse whereupon Muscarello sprinted to the Russell's house, and began pounding on the door and yelling for help. No one answered. During the investigation of the events of September 3rd, it was revealed that the Russells heard Muscarello at the door, but were too frightened to open it. The unidentified object then slowly moved away and disappeared over the trees of the nearby woods. Seeing the headlights of an approaching car, Muscarello ran into the road and forced it to stop. The couple in the car immediately drove the frightened teenager to the Exeter police station.
At the police station, a pale and visibly shaken Muscarello told his story to officer Reginald Toland, who was assigned to the night desk on that particular evening. Toland knew Muscarello, and was impressed by his obvious fear and genuinely agitated state. Toland radioed police officer Eugene Bertrand Jr., who earlier in the evening had a happened upon a frightened woman sitting in her automobile on the side of NH 108. When Bertrand stopped to ask if she needed assistance, the woman told him that a "huge object with flashing red lights" had followed her car to Exeter from Epping, 12 miles (19 km) away, and hovered over the car before flying away. Bertrand considered her a "kook," but did stay with her for several minutes until she had calmed down and was ready to resume her nighttime journey.
After arriving at the police station and hearing Muscarello's story, Bertrand decided to drive to the Dining farm with Muscarello to investigate the field where he had claimed to have seen the unidentified lights. After Bertrand drove Muscarello back to the area of his sighting, they initially saw nothing out of the ordinary, but that would soon change. When Bertrand and Muscarello exited the patrol car and walked into the field in the direction of the woods where Muscarello had first seen the lights, some horses in a nearby corral became frightened and began neighing loudly, kicking the fence and the sides of the barn. Dogs in the area also began barking and howling. Bertrand and Muscarello then saw an object slowly rise from the trees beyond the corral. Bertrand described the UFO as "this huge, dark object as big as a barn over there, with red flashing lights on it." The object moved silently towards them, swaying back and forth. Instinctively remembering his police training, Bertrand dropped to one knee, drew his revolver, and pointed it at the object. He then decided that shooting would not be the wisest course of action, so he reholstered his revolver, grabbed Muscarello, and they both ran back to the patrol car. Bertrand radioed another Exeter policeman, David Hunt for assistance, and while the two waited in the car for Hunt to arrive they continued to observe the object. According to UFO historian Jerome Clark, Bertrand and Muscarello "observed the object as it hovered 100 feet away and at 100 feet altitude. It rocked back and forth. The pulsating red lights flashed in rapid sequence, first from right to left, then left to right, each cycle consuming no more than two seconds; the local animals continued to act agitated." The object was still there when Hunt arrived a few minutes later and he also watched it. Finally, the object rose over the trees and disappeared. Hunt soon heard the engines of a B-47 bomber as it flew overhead, and he later told journalist John G. Fuller that "You could tell the difference" between the UFO and the bomber, "there was no comparison." The three men drove back to the Exeter police station and immediately filed separate reports on what they had observed. Bertrand then drove Muscarello home and told his mother about the incident.
The sightings by Muscarello, and Officers Bertrand, and Hunt received national publicity. John G. Fuller, a regular columnist for Saturday Review at the time, was in Exeter investigating the sightings. Fuller conducted multiple interviews with a number of people in the Exeter area who also claimed to have witnessed anomalous lights and unidentified flying objects. Among them was Ron Smith, a senior at Exeter High School, who told Fuller that about two or three weeks after Muscarello's sighting, he was travelling in a vehicle with his mother and aunt one evening at 11:30pm. According to Smith, he, his mother and aunt all saw an unidentified object. Smith stated that the unknown had "a red light on top and the bottom was white and glowed. It appeared to be spinning. It passed over the car once and when it passed over and got in front, it stopped in midair. Then it went back over the car again." Fuller also spoke to police officer Toland at Exeter's police station. Toland informed Fuller of a number of calls he had received from Exeter-area residents regarding sightings of anomalous lights and unidentified objects. A typical example of the type of calls Toland had received came from Mrs. Ralph Lindsay. According to Toland "she called in here early, just before dawn. She said it was right out her window as she was calling. It was like a big orange ball, almost as big as the harvest Moon, and it wasn't the Moon either. All the time she was talking to me, her kids were at the window watching it. Now why would people go to all this trouble—people all over the area—if they weren't seeing something real?"
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