The Exeter Incident

In the early hours of September 3, 1965, near Exeter, New Hampshire, 18-year-old Norman Muscarello and, subsequently, police officers Eugene Bertrand and David Hunt observed a large silent object with brilliant pulsing red lights maneuvering low over a field and treeline. The case became famous through journalist John G. Fuller's book Incident at Exeter, and through the Pentagon's fumbled attempts to explain it.

Muscarello, hitchhiking home at night, was frightened by the object near a farmhouse and flagged help. Officer Bertrand, who earlier that night had checked on a distressed woman driver who said a red-lit object had followed her car, drove Muscarello back to the field. There both watched the object rise from behind trees, described as at least 80 or 90 feet, with five pulsing red lights in sequence, rocking silently, close enough to light the field. Officer Hunt arrived and observed it as well. Animals in the area were reportedly agitated.

Three primary witnesses within minutes, the earlier independent driver report, and additional area reports that night and that season. No photographs.

The Pentagon initially suggested the witnesses had seen a B-47 exercise ("Big Blast") or twinkling stars; the officers publicly objected, noting the exercise had ended before the sighting and that they knew aircraft. In an unusual retreat, the Air Force wrote the officers acknowledging the case unexplained. Blue Book carried it as unidentified.

Decades later, skeptics Joe Nickell and James McGaha proposed the object was a KC-97 tanker's refueling-boom lights in sequence, viewed at an angle that hid engine noise and shape. Proponents answer that a lumbering tanker at close range over a field is not silent, does not hover and rock, and would not have fooled an officer who served in the Air Force. The explanation has not achieved consensus even among skeptics. Exeter endures as the classic close-range police case the official machinery conceded.