The Exeter encounter: a silent object with pulsating red lights reported by a teenager and two police officers (1965)
Norman Muscarello and officers Eugene Bertrand and David Hunt reported a silent object with pulsating red lights near Exeter, New Hampshire. Project Blue Book cited aircraft, a temperature inversion and a military exercise; a final Air Force letter said the object could not be identified.
- Case number
- TU-1965-900001
- Date
- 3 September 1965
- Location
- Kensington, near Exeter, New Hampshire, USA
- Coordinates
- 42.947° N, 70.956° W
- Shape
- light
- Colour
- Unknown
- Witnesses
- 3
- Status
- unresolved
Case summary
In the early hours of 3 September 1965, Norman Muscarello, 18, reported a large object with flashing red lights hovering above trees near a farm in Kensington, close to Exeter, New Hampshire. At the police station he told his account to officer Eugene Bertrand, who had earlier that evening been approached by a woman reporting a red-lighted object that had followed her car from Epping.
Bertrand drove Muscarello back to the site and called officer David Hunt as backup. All three reported seeing a large, silent object with pulsating red lights rise from the trees, sway and hover roughly 100 feet away at about 100 feet altitude before departing; farm animals in a nearby corral were reported agitated. A B-47 was heard overhead soon afterwards, which Hunt said was clearly distinguishable from what they had watched.
The Air Force investigated through Pease AFB. Major David Griffin wrote that he could find no probable cause and considered the observers reliable, but junior officers briefed the press first, telling reporters the witnesses had seen stars and planets distorted by a temperature inversion. Blue Book then cited a Strategic Air Command exercise, Operation Big Blast, and local B-47 flights. Bertrand and Hunt disputed this in letters, noting the exercise had ended an hour before their sighting. In February 1966 an Air Force Secretariat letter replied that the object could not be identified.
Nearby strategic sites
- Cape Cod Space Force Station — 137 km away