Exeter incident
From the UAP Encyclopedia, the open encyclopedia of UFO and UAP history · 🛸 Case
Contents 5
| Type | Case |
|---|---|
| Also known as | Incident at Exeter, Exeter UFO incident |
The Exeter incident was a UFO sighting in the early hours of 3 September 1965 in Kensington, New Hampshire, about 5 kilometres south of Exeter, by an 18-year-old hitchhiker and two local police officers. Popularised by John G. Fuller's bestselling book Incident at Exeter (1966), it became one of the best-known sightings of the 1960s.[1][2]
The sighting
At about 2 a.m., Norman Muscarello was hitchhiking home along Route 150 when he saw a large object, which he estimated at 80 to 90 feet across, with five bright, pulsing red lights, hovering silently over a field and moving toward him. Frightened, he went to the Exeter police station. Officer Eugene Bertrand returned with him to the field, and soon afterwards they saw a dark object "as big as a barn" with flashing red lights rise from behind trees about 100 feet away. Officer David Hunt arrived and also saw the object move away.[1][3]
Air Force explanation
The Pentagon first attributed the sighting to stars and planets seen through a temperature inversion, and Project Blue Book suggested that the witnesses had seen aircraft from "Operation Big Blast", a Strategic Air Command and NORAD exercise involving B-47 bombers. The officers objected that the sighting came nearly an hour after the exercise had reportedly ended and that they knew what aircraft looked like. In early 1966 an Air Force officer wrote to them that the Air Force had been unable to identify the object.[1][4]
Incident at Exeter
Journalist John G. Fuller investigated the case and dozens of other sightings in the area, publishing Incident at Exeter in 1966, which became a New York Times bestseller and helped fuel public pressure that led to the 1966 House hearing and the Condon Committee. Fuller later wrote The Interrupted Journey about the Betty and Barney Hill case.[1][2]
Later analysis
In 2011 investigator Joe Nickell and retired Air Force Maj. James McGaha argued in Skeptical Inquirer that the witnesses had seen a KC-97 aerial refuelling tanker, whose lights on the refuelling boom flashed in a pattern matching the descriptions. Supporters of the case dispute this. Bertrand died in 1998, Muscarello in 2003 and Hunt in 2011. Exeter now holds an annual UFO festival.[1][5]
References
- Exeter incident — Wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org · archived copy
- John G. Fuller, Incident at Exeter (1966) — Internet Archive · archive.org · archived copy
- "UFOs in New Hampshire", New Hampshire Magazine (2015) · nhmagazine.com · archived copy
- Project Blue Book, initial report on the Exeter sighting — Internet Archive · archive.org · archived copy
- J. Nickell and J. McGaha, "Exeter Incident Solved! A Classic UFO Case, Forty-Five Years 'Cold'", Skeptical Inquirer (2011) · skepticalinquirer.org · archived copy
This page was last edited on 31 October 2026. Articles are written in our own words from the sources listed under References; disputed claims are attributed to the people who made them.
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