Exeter Incident
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For decades, people have reported UFO sightings to the police, the Air Force, local officials, you name it. Anybody want to take a guess how many were logged by Project Blue Book from 1947 to 1969? It's 12,618.

That is an insane number. I mean, if you guessed more than 10,000, I am impressed. Now, typically, these are brief encounters, like a set of eerie lights blinking in the night sky. Just a few confusing seconds that leave witnesses asking, what in the world was that?

But one event in 1965 was more than just a quick one-off encounter. The folks living in Exeter, New Hampshire, seemingly had a UFO move into their town, leaving some to wonder, did it have some kind of agenda? Welcome to Conspiracy Theories, a Spotify podcast. I'm Carter Roy. You can find us here every Wednesday. Check us out on Instagram at The Conspiracy Pod. Stay with us.

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- Hello there, I'm Mike Flanagan, and welcome to Spectre Vision Radio's production of "Director's Commentary." "Director's Commentary" is a deep dive into a film through the eyes of the filmmaker or filmmakers who made it. It combines an in-depth interview format with a classic "Director's Commentary" track, the likes of which used to be common on physical media releases, but sadly are becoming more and more rare these days. Filmmakers talking about film with filmmakers for people who love film.

and filmmakers. It was about 2 a.m. on September 3rd, 1965, the Friday morning of Labor Day weekend. 18-year-old Norman Muscarello was enjoying his last few warm summer nights at home. In three weeks, he'd be setting off for the Navy, but a late night out with a friend also meant hitchhiking home to Exeter in the dark.

He'd been walking for miles, hoping for a passing car, when he saw a set of pulsating lights in the sky. At first, Norman paid no mind. He'd seen planes flying by earlier that night. But as his eyes adjusted, he realized these weren't plane lights. This "thing," as he'd go on to call it, was huge. With five bright red lights all in a line, it was flying above him.

and it was strangely silent. It was like the world hit a mute button. The sound of summer bugs, the wind in the leaves, it all came to a dead stop. The craft hovered almost like it was observing Norman. All he could do was stare back, waiting for its next move. As the object's lights pulsed one at a time in a pattern,

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Norman couldn't make out the thing's full shape, but he could tell it was big. He claimed it was maybe 90 feet in diameter. It wobbled in the air for a moment, then it silently sped off as his heart beat faster in his chest. Norman continued walking along the road, questioning his sanity. But when he looked over his shoulder a few seconds later,

he saw the saucer had returned. And it was rushing right towards him. Norman ran across the street. He tripped and fell into a ditch where he stayed frozen in fear. Then, as quick as it had come, it disappeared a second time back into the night. Norman scrambled to his feet when he saw car headlights illuminate the road.

He ran into the street, waving his arms wildly, stopping the oncoming vehicle. The driver offered to take the teenager to the local authorities. It was nearly 2:30 a.m. when a pale-faced Norman burst into the Exeter police station. He spilled his story to the patrolman on duty. Minutes later, Officer Eugene Bertrand arrived to find Norman chain-smoking.

Bertrand had just seen a woman stopped on a bypass about two miles outside of Exeter. When he checked on her, she said she was too shocked to drive. A silent floating craft with vibrant red lights had allegedly chased her for the last 12 miles. Bertrand stayed with her for a while, but he hadn't witnessed any lights or flying objects. So he asked Norman to show him where he'd had his encounter.

At about 3 a.m., the pair arrived back at Dining Farm, where Norman had first seen the craft. Right away, Bertrand saw nothing out of the ordinary. But he wasn't in a hurry. Norman was still visibly shaken, so they walked out into the field. The officer's flashlight bounced off the dark woods beyond. Bertrand tried to placate Norman. It was probably just a helicopter.

And just as the two men began to argue, the horses began acting up. Dogs barked in the distance. And then Norman yelled as he saw the thing rise up from behind the pine trees. Bertrand saw it too, wobbling and floating through the air like a leaf caught in the wind. The strip of lights made the entire farm glow red.

Bertrand was a former Air Force veteran who'd served during the Korean War. He knew this was no helicopter. As the lights moved closer, he reached for his pistol, but then thought better of it. He grabbed Norman by the arm and pulled him back to the cruiser to take cover. Bertrand radioed back to the station, screaming, "My God! I see the thing myself!"

He and Norman watched as the object hovered about 100 feet above the field for several minutes. Now Bertrand could tell it had no wings and no tail. But what really got him was how this thing made absolutely no noise. That's when Officer David Hunt arrived at the scene, just in time to watch the thing make its way east toward the coast.

As the men stood there, stunned, wondering what they'd just witnessed, a B-47 raced overhead, presumably from Pease Air Force Base nearby. They saw the jet clearly, which at least seemed to clarify one thing. The hovering object with the pulsing lights was no plane.

Only moments after Bertrand and Hunt's sighting, a man called the operator from a phone booth in Hampton, directly east of Exeter. He was frantic, claiming a UFO had come flying directly toward him. But before he could finish giving his statement, the call ended abruptly. By 4:30 a.m., Norman Muscarello's mother was a mess. Dolores hadn't heard from her son in hours.

It wasn't exactly comforting when she saw two police cruisers park outside her apartment, but then Hunt, Bertrand, and Norman all came inside, each paler than the last. They told Dolores about "the thing." As wild as it seemed, they all agreed they'd seen something truly out of this world. They didn't have any proof, but they'd get the chance to gather more.

because that UFO wasn't going anywhere. Pease Air Force Base was about 20 miles north of where Eugene Bertrand and Norman Muscarello first saw the mysterious object. A lieutenant who worked with Bertrand contacted the base to report the sighting, and in a few short hours, Air Force officials were already conducting interviews. Norman claimed a major from the base came to his house along with other authorities.

His mother, Dolores, welcomed them in, but they weren't there for a nice cup of tea. These men meant business. One of them was handcuffed to a briefcase, which he unlocked and left on the kitchen table just slightly out of view. In the living room, the Air Force Major screamed at Norman. According to the teenager, he was told to shut up and not say a word about the sighting to anyone.

Dolores excused herself to make coffee. In the kitchen, she noticed the briefcase open on the table with several documents inside. She couldn't help but flip through them. One document showcased drawings of what looked like a UFO. But the Major appeared in the kitchen doorway before Dolores could take it all in.

Norman later claimed the airmen swore at his mother, but Dolores wouldn't be cowed. She told the Major he was in her house. The briefcase was sitting on her kitchen table. If he didn't like it, he could see himself out. The airmen had other business to attend to anyway. By 1:00 PM, they arrived at the Exeter police station to meet with officers Bertrand and Hunt.

According to Bertrand, they tried the same tactics they'd used on Norman. They threatened the officers to keep quiet, but they were too late. Someone from the local papers had already gotten the scoop. It wouldn't have mattered anyway because more and more witnesses came forward. These people also claimed to see an unidentifiable craft with red lights all over eastern New Hampshire for weeks.

It was only a matter of time before everyone knew about the thing. Now over in New York, investigative author John G. Fuller couldn't ignore that there was a massive story unfolding around Exeter.

He had little experience reporting on UFOs, and frankly, he wasn't much of a believer. But with so many accounts coming out of Exeter and several newspapers reporting on the matter, he figured he'd make the trip north. Maybe he'd even see the thing for himself. On October 20th, about eight weeks after the initial sighting, Fuller arrived in Exeter.

His first order of business: talk to Bertrand and Hunt, they told Fuller. For a while, the station had been receiving a handful of calls a night about the craft. Most were from level-headed, trustworthy folks. One was a 17-year-old named Ron Smith. So Fuller went to speak to the high school senior who was about to join the Air Force.

Ron said about three weeks after Bertrand and Norman's sighting, at around 11:30 p.m., he was driving his mother and aunt home. Suddenly, his aunt pointed to something in the sky. Ron stopped the car for a better look. It was some kind of craft with a bright red light. It hovered over his vehicle, spinning like a top. Then it took off.

Ron's first instinct was to head to the Exeter police station to file a report, but halfway through the drive, he and his family wondered, what if it was just an illusion? So Ron pulled a Yui and returned to the spot. Sure enough, the craft was back. It hovered in the sky.

making a strange, almost purring noise. It was oval, had no wings, and it was huge. Much larger than the B-52s or B-47s that came out of peas. Sightings like Ron's were just the tip of the iceberg. The more Fuller poked around, the more he found people who'd seen something different.

out of this world. Some of them even deliberately searched for it, but he also ran into just as many reluctant witnesses. They seemed leery of speaking to a journalist, scared of what it might do to their reputations. By this point, Fuller had arrived at three theories. One, the government was testing some top secret weapon. Two, this craft came from another country, maybe Russia.

As for the third theory, well, he had to admit, the possibility that this was some interplanetary UFO was actually starting to make sense. And sure, there were other claims making the rounds. An Air Force colonel allegedly said people were just seeing strobe lights from the runway at Pease.

News articles popped up suggesting a local advertising plane with flashing lights was to blame, but nobody who'd seen the thing bought these explanations. And when Fuller spoke with the owners of the advertising plane, they assured him the plane wasn't even in the air on September 3rd, or for several days after that.

Now, if this really was some top secret aircraft, Fuller could see why officials might tell Norman and the two police officers to keep quiet about what they saw. But something else stuck in Fuller's mind. During his trip to Exeter, he met with Norman's mom, Dolores. She told him that when men from the Air Force visited her, she had questions for them. She'd been pretty skeptical about Norman's story from the start.

What surprised her though, was that they asked her so many questions. If the Air Force secretly knew what the thing was, she wondered, why would they be hounding her and Norman for answers? It seemed like they were just as clueless as she was. But then, on October 27th, the Pentagon was ready to solve the Exeter mystery.

A spokesperson told reporters the sighting was a high altitude exercise, plus a strange phenomenon known as a weather inversion that can make stars and planets appear to move. Now, I happen to grow up in a town in Montana that had weather inversions, and I can tell you they do not make stars and planets appear to move. I saw it much as a kid, and it just makes it cold and gray.

It was a major blow to officers Bertrand and Hunt. All throughout John Fuller's investigation, he'd heard nothing but glowing endorsements of the two men and their work. Not to mention, Bertrand was an Air Force veteran who'd worked up close with all sorts of planes. He felt strongly that the Pentagon's response was "ridiculous."

And while he always refused to guess at what he saw that night, he knew he hadn't been fooled by stars or military jets. Fuller wasn't satisfied with this explanation either. By now, he'd interviewed nearly 60 people and had hours and hours of tape, but he was still struggling to wrap his head around one part of the story. If the thing was some kind of spacecraft,

What did it want? To answer that question, he had to understand its movements. So Fuller began mapping the sightings. Several were along Route 88, where a series of high-power transmission lines ran.

Now, these aren't the typical telephone poles you see along the side of the road. They're massive metal structures, usually placed in more rural areas. They're meant to transmit power over long distances and often create a strong electromagnetic field. Fuller wondered if the craft was seeking these structures on purpose.

Maybe it was using the energy from these power lines. Out of every theory that had been thrown out there, he thought it made the most sense and it was time to tell the world. But the strange events surrounding the Exeter incident were far from over.

On November 9th, John Fuller was wrapping up his research. Soon, he'd returned to New York to write his tell-all for Look magazine. He had a meeting with the magazine's reps that evening. As he left his hotel room, he noticed the lights flicker on and off. Eh, no big deal, he thought. He arrived at his meeting and ordered a martini. When the waitress returned, she joked that the whole thing must be Fuller's fault.

Fuller politely told her he didn't understand the reference. She was shocked. "You haven't heard? The blackout! The power failure! All over the East!" It was the night of the great Northeast blackout of 1965.

One fifth of the American population from New Jersey up the coast to Canada were without power. People were stuck in subways, elevators, and buildings for hours. Fuller's thoughts raced. The thing had almost always been spotted near power lines. Now those power lines were apparently failing. Was it possible the craft was behind it?

The President of the United States called for an investigation. Teams looked for fires, mechanical flaws, downed towers, anything that could explain what caused these power stations to fail. Well, eventually the whole thing was traced back to a maintenance issue at a station in Ontario. But not everybody was convinced that was the full story. Early in the investigation,

Fingers were pointed at an unmanned substation in Clay, New York. Clay was home to high-voltage power lines that distributed energy to other stations. John Fuller described it as a "superhighway." Around 5:15 on the evening of the blackout, just moments before that part of New York plunged into darkness, a pilot named Weldon Ross was flying over the Clay substation.

He was coming in for a landing when he looked down and noticed a brilliant red orb hovering over the power lines. He claimed it was easily 100 feet in diameter. The sighting was corroborated by at least five other reports in the area. Fuller couldn't help but find the timing incredibly suspicious, especially because the Federal Power Commission agreed to investigate the sightings

then failed to follow up. Fuller probably realized that if the UFO sightings were connected to the blackout, he'd never get official confirmation. He'd seen firsthand how Bertrand and Hunt were treated after their sighting. After the Pentagon's frustrating statement back in October, officers Bertrand and Hunt got a letter from Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, what we now know was the headquarters of Project Blue Book.

It was written by then-major Hector Quintanilla, the program's director, who wanted to shed some more light on the sighting.

Quintanilla said Norman and the officers saw an Air Force operation called "Big Blast," an airplane training exercise that ran between midnight and 2 a.m. on September 2nd. He then requested more info from the officers, quote, "before a final evaluation of your sighting can be made." It didn't make Bertrand or Hunt feel much better about the situation.

The officers promptly responded, and they had plenty to say.

They wanted to address some inconsistencies, like, um, the time and date Quintanilla mentioned didn't line up with their sighting at all, which happened around 3 a.m. on the 3rd, not 2 a.m. on the 2nd. And even worse, their reputations were on the line. Their jobs relied on honesty and accuracy. Now, people thought they were lying.

The Pentagon finally responded the following February. Surprisingly, they had changed their tune, stating, "We have been unable to identify the object you observed." But they added, "19 years of UFO reports had pretty much all boiled down to manufactured objects, atmospheric conditions, or celestial bodies." Oh, and they regretted any inconvenience this caused the officers.

Well, this seemed like the end of the road for Bertrand Hunt and John Fuller. If the government knew what was really behind the Exeter incident, they weren't talking. At least, not yet. In April 1966, Fuller's friend and colleague Raymond Fowler made one final Hail Mary on his behalf.

Fowler was a member of the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomenon, a private organization that consulted for the FBI.

During that month's congressional hearing, Fowler brought the Exeter incident to lawmakers' attention. This didn't generate any concrete answers, but the moment did go down in UFO history. It marked the first time UFOs were openly discussed in a congressional meeting. And, in a way, it carved out space for future discussions on the subject.

The Exeter incident raised public awareness of UFOs and put Congress on record discussing them. But there's so much about the event we still don't know. Of course, that doesn't and shouldn't stop others from trying to find answers.

In 2011, a special report in the Skeptical Inquirer was published with the title, Exeter Incident Solved. It was written by investigative author Joe Nickel and James McGaha, a former Air Force major. When McGaha heard about the sighting in Exeter, he knew immediately what the men must have seen back in 1965.

A military refueling plane called the KC-97. He even visited an old KC-97 at a museum, since he hadn't seen one in person for a while. And there they were. A row of five red sequencing lights like the ones Norman Muscarello saw.

These planes can link mid-air with another plane to refuel, and they would most likely be used in an exercise like Big Blast. This could look pretty strange from the ground. Their bright red lights could have reflected off the opposing jet, and their shape would be baffling, especially in the darkness. People might mistake the joined craft for a UFO.

Nickel and McGaha added, although Major Quintanilla said the exercise ended an hour before Bertrand and Hunt's sighting, the planes may have been out later than planned, which would explain the B-47 the men saw right after the thing. And they seem to suggest the date of Big Blast started on the 2nd, but continued on into the morning hours of the 3rd. It is a plausible explanation.

As for John Fuller, he was no longer a skeptic when he left Exeter. He never really bought the theory that everyone had seen a plane, possibly because Officer Bertrand had actually worked specifically with KC-97s while serving in the Air Force. The only thing Fuller could really conclude after hearing countless reports

was that he believed the government needed to order a serious investigation into the matter and report its findings to the public. And that's something we've seen happen more and more these days. Like the Congressional hearing on UAPs in July 2023. So maybe Fuller was right about one thing. In his words, "Truth isn't likely to remain hidden forever."

Thank you for listening to Conspiracy Theories, a Spotify podcast. New episodes come out every Wednesday and be sure to check us out on Instagram at theconspiracypod. Among the many sources we used, we found the book Incident at Exeter, Unidentified Flying Objects Over America Now by John G. Fuller, extremely helpful to our research.

Do you have a personal relationship to the stories we tell? Please send a short audio recording telling your story to conspiracystories at spotify.com. Until next time, remember, the truth isn't always the best story. And the official story isn't always the truth.

Conspiracy Theories is a Spotify podcast. This episode was written by Lori Marinelli, edited by Wendelin Sobrozo, Angela Jorgensen, and Mickey Taylor, researched and fact-checked by Chelsea Wood, and sound designed by Spencer Howard. Our head of programming is Julian Boisreau. Our head of production is Nick Johnson, and Spencer Howard is our post-production supervisor. I'm your host, Carter Roy.

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