Type: Government Investigation
Source: United States Air Force Project Blue Book
The 1965 Exeter UFO Incident occurred on September 3, 1965, in Exeter, New Hampshire, when 18-year-old Norman Muscarello and two police officers, Eugene Bertrand and David Hunt, witnessed a large, silent, disc-shaped object with five red lights hovering over a field. The sighting was investigated by the U.S. Air Force's Project Blue Book, which initially dismissed the event as twinkling stars caused by a temperature inversion or misidentified military aircraft from nearby Pease Air Force Base during Operation Big Blast.
Project Blue Book investigators, including Major David Griffin, noted that the witnesses were "stable, reliable persons" and that no probable cause could be identified at the time. Despite subsequent attempts to attribute the sighting to B-47 bombers or the KC-97 Stratotanker refueling operations, the witnesses rejected these explanations, citing the object's silence, proximity, and erratic movement. In January 1966, the Air Force officially stated it was "unable to identify the object," cementing the case as a classic example of a Close Encounter of the First Kind popularized by journalist John G. Fuller's best-selling book, Incident at Exeter