So Supernatural - ALIEN: The Exeter Incident

Episode Date: January 13, 2021

After UFO sightings exploded in New Hampshire in 1965, everyone from local police to Air Force officials to the Pentagon began investigating. But no one could conclude what exactly residents had seen — until, perhaps, now.

Imagine you just saw a UFO. Your first thought is probably that no one will believe you. You're not even sure you believe your own eyes. But then you find out it's not just you who saw it. It's your entire town. That's what happened in Exeter, New Hampshire. In 1965, a flying object was witnessed by so many people so many times, there was no question it was real. Everyone demanded an explanation, but when the Pentagon finally came back with answers, it was clear. No one,

not even the U.S. government, could explain away this UFO. This is Supernatural. I'm your host, Ashley Flowers. This week, we're looking at the 1965 Exeter incident. In September of 1965, New Hampshire residents spotted a UFO over the town of Exeter. The Air Force, the Pentagon, and a magazine journalist all launched investigations. But for decades, nobody could explain it. Until possibly now. We'll have more on the Exeter incident coming up. Stay with us.

It's 1965 and nearing fall in Exeter, New Hampshire. Exeter is this picturesque town about nine miles from the Atlantic. Think soft coastal breezes, old brick buildings, and a glossy river where the high school rowing team practices each morning. And even though it's early September, the ground is already coated in orange leaves. But in the wee hours of September 3rd, something unusual appears in the sky. At around 2 in the morning,

an 18-year-old named Norman Muscarello is standing on the side of Route 150, about 10 miles outside of Exeter. He's trying to catch a ride home from his girlfriend's place in Amesbury, Massachusetts. Norman is a high school graduate three weeks away from joining the Navy, and he doesn't own a car, so he's been doing this whole hitchhike thing pretty regularly. But tonight, there's very few cars on the road, so he's forced to walk most of the way. He doesn't mind too much. Route 150 is pretty rural, with a smattering of houses,

endless grass fields, and a canopy of stars. But just a few miles outside of Exeter, Norman sees something weird. It's this row of red lights tilted at about a 60 degree angle. They emerge from the sky in front of him, and they lower quickly until they're hovering just above the ground between two houses, about 100 feet back from the road. The lights are so bright, they illuminate the sides of the houses in the surrounding area, and they flash one at a time in this rhythmic, almost calculated pattern. One, two, three, four, five. Then they begin to move. But the whole time, they stay the same distance from each other,

at the same 60-degree angle. It's as if they're all attached to something. When Norman describes it later, he simply calls it the thing. The lights on the thing are so bright he can't make out what its actual shape is. But he estimates it's bigger than the houses on either side. And it's moving toward him in this swaying side-to-side pattern, almost like a leaf drifting down from a tree. The whole time, it makes zero noise, even as it gets closer and closer, so close that Norman's worried it will hit him, so he dives into the shoulder of the road and ducks down.

The sudden movement seems to startle the thing because it backs off, stopping just above one of the houses. At this point, Norman is terrified. But it's not like he can just run into one of the houses without getting closer to the thing. So he just crouches at the side of the road, watching the lights flash. One, two, three, four, five. Nearly 15 minutes go by. Then suddenly, the thing speeds off and disappears over a line of trees. As soon as it's gone, Norman makes a run for it. He sprints over to one of the houses and bangs on the door, but nobody answers.

Then he sees a pair of headlights coming down Route 150. Norman's so desperate to get out of there, he literally runs into the middle of the road and starts waving his arms. Fortunately, the car sees him and rolls to a stop. The driver and passenger are a middle-aged couple who, as far as we know, haven't noticed anything unusual. But Norman is clearly scared out of his wits, so they drive him to the Exeter police station. When Norman gets to the station, he meets the night duty officer, a guy named Reginald Toland. Toland can see how shaken up this kid is.

Norman's lighting cigarette after cigarette. So he asks him to have a seat and explain exactly what happened. Now Toland's pretty skeptical when he hears about the strange lights in the sky. But he radios out to another officer, a guy named Eugene Bertrand. Toland asks Bertrand if he's heard of anything unusual happening that night. And Bertrand's like, what do you mean by unusual? So Toland tells him about the flying object and Bertrand pauses. And then he says, yes, yes, he has. At 1 a.m., about an hour before Norman saw the thing, Bertrand was patrolling Route 101 on the other side of Exeter to the north. He spots a woman pulled over by the side of the road, so Bertrand walks up to her window to see if she's okay.

The woman seems terrified, but she's doing her best to keep it together. And she explains that she's just been trailed by a huge flying object. It followed her for about 12 miles, and it had the same flashing red lights as Muscarello's object. She says that when she reached an overpass, the object took off ridiculously fast and disappeared. Now, Bertrand is an Air Force veteran who served during the Korean War. He is tough and level-headed, not one to get caught up in flights of imagination. So at the time, he dismisses the woman as eccentric. But when he gets the call from Toland, he decides it's worth heading back to the station for a chat. When he gets there, he meets Norman, who insists that he saw something unusual.

He practically begs for someone to go out into the field with him and see if they can spot it again. Eventually, Toland decides to send Bertrand out with Norman. Because if anyone can distinguish between a UFO and a military aircraft, it's an Air Force veteran, right? So it's nearly 3 a.m. at this point. There's very few cars out on Route 150. And the sky is clear, warm, and windless. Bertrand pulls over by a nearby telephone pole

and waits with Norman for a few minutes. But nothing happens. Bertrand figures it should be about time to head back to the station, but Norman wants to wait just a little bit longer. He suggests that they walk out into a nearby field. Maybe they'll catch a glimpse of it there. Bertrand radios Toland to say there's nothing there but that he'll be away from his car for a few minutes, and then they walk out into the field with a flashlight. Up ahead, to their left, there's an old colonial home. On the right is a farmhouse, and just beyond the farmhouse is a corral with several horses and a few livestock. Bertrand is about to reassure Norman that he probably just saw a plane when all of a sudden the horses in the corral start acting up. They're kicking and

whinnying as if something is agitating them. So Bertrand looks up at the sky and that's when he sees it. To their left, just beyond the colonial house, and floating about 30 feet above the cluster of trees, is a row of five red lights. They flash one at a time. One, two, three, four, five. Then in reverse order. Five, four, three, four, five. Then in reverse order. Five, four, three, two, one. The beams are so bright, they illuminate the entire area. Like, the sides of the two houses and the field are coated in this eerie blood red color. And they can't tell what these lights are attached to,

but to Bertrand, it seems like some sort of round object. It is absolutely silent, and it's moving towards them. Bertrand is terrified. He instinctively reaches for his gun. Then he takes a breath, thinks for a moment, and decides it would be better to make a run for the car. So Bertrand grabs Norman, they sprint back to the police cruiser, hop inside, and look out the window. For several minutes, they watch as this thing hovers in the distance. It's just rocking back and forth, with its lights still flashing, one at a time. Then it darts further away. The movement is so erratic and sudden that Bertrand knows without a shadow of a doubt,

this is not an Air Force vehicle. Coming up, Exeter explodes with UFO witnesses. Now back to the story. Bertrand is frantically radioing Officer Toland when a nearby patrolman named David Hunt overhears their conversation on the wire. Hunt drives to where Bertrand is and joins him and Norman out in the field. He gets there just in time to glimpse the craft before it swerves over the trees and flies out of sight in the direction of the field. He gets there just in time to glimpse the craft before it swerves over the trees and flies out of sight in the direction of the ocean. Soon after, they both see and hear a B-47 whoosh through the sky, a completely different craft from the hovering object with red lights.

Back at the station, Officer Tolan gets another call. This time, it's from a person who's just spotted the UFO over in Hampton, a town that lies between Exeter and the ocean. At this point, five people have seen this thing. So Toland calls the Hampton police, who then call the nearby Pease Air Force Base. In the morning, Air Force officials come to the Exeter police station to interview Norman, along with Bertrand, Toland, and Hunt. They're asking a bunch of questions, and one official acknowledges that the police officers are very credible witnesses, but that's about it. It's like the Air Force is intent on gathering information, but they don't really know what to make of it, or if they do, they won't say.

Meanwhile, a police report goes out over the radio, and in response, the Exeter Police Department receives multiple calls from multiple witnesses claiming they also saw the object. But in the days that follow, the Air Force stays silent. At any rate, a couple weeks pass and the hype dies down. Nobody comes forward with any more sightings beyond September 3rd. But Norman and Officer Bertrand can't just forget about it. Norman goes out night after night looking for the thing, and Bertrand says he can't fall asleep without thinking about it. Then, in mid-September, another object appears. A high school senior named Ron Smith is driving on Drinkwater Road,

about a half mile from where Norman first saw the UFO, when suddenly Ron sees something in the sky. He swerves to the shoulder to get a better look. Ron says the craft is bigger than a B-52 or a B-47 craft and low enough to the ground that it can be easily distinguished. It's flat, but not completely flat, and he describes the shape as an upside-down plate, so kind of like your typical flying saucer. The bottom is glowing white, and there's a bright red light on the top.

Ron doesn't say anything about rhythmic flashing lights, so it's unclear if it's the same thing Norman, Bertrand, and Hunt saw, but it moves the same way, sort of wavering back and forth. Only Ron notes that it also appears to be spinning. The object swoops over his car once, then back. Then it does the whole thing over again, and again and again and again, almost like as if it's toying with him.

This totally freaks Ron out, so he puts the car in drive and takes off toward Exeter. But somewhere along the way, he starts to second guess himself. Like there's no way what he saw was actually real. So Ron turns around and goes back to the same spot. And sure enough, the thing is still there. Only this time, it passes over his car once before speeding away. Right after it disappears, Ron notices a glow coming from behind a nearby hill. It's not the same red as the light he'd seen on the top of the craft. Instead, it seems like the multicolored lights of almost like a landing strip.

But as far as Ron knows, there isn't one in the immediate area. At this point, he is past being scared. Ron's exhilarated, fully committed to solving this mystery. So he drives toward the hill to go check it out. But the moment his car reaches the top, the field on the other side goes dark. Ron doesn't want to venture any further since he doesn't know what's down there, so he turns around and heads back. But then, suddenly, the lights behind him turn on.

It's as if they turned off the second he tried to see what they were. Ron heads back to Exeter and reports this information to police. It's unclear whether they hand it over to the Air Force, but either way, his story is just the tip of the iceberg. Over the next several weeks, more and more UFO sightings flood the station. All over Exeter, people are reporting seeing a metallic object in the sky, and almost all of them describe it as saucer-shaped with a dome on top. A few other people report seeing these bright orange-red balls floating above their houses, which is this weird phenomenon that sometimes happens in connection with UFO sightings. The cases become so widespread that everybody in the Exeter area wants to see a UFO for themselves. Night after night, people line up along Route 88 or Route 101, the highways with the most sightings, and most of the

time they witness exactly what they've been hearing about. Witnesses report a flying object that wavers from side to side as it hovers before darting out of sight. They even talk about the flashing light pattern that Norman noticed. At this point, it's October, a month since the first sighting, and the case has already attracted the attention of at least one UFO skeptic named John G. Fuller. Fuller is a columnist for the Saturday Review, which is this magazine for men, sort of like GQ. He first catches wind of the Exeter incident in mid-September via a police report on the UFO that Norman, Bertrand, and Hunt saw. Fuller finds it strange that this particular UFO has been cited by multiple credible witnesses, so he decides to crack the case himself. He travels to Exeter to interview Norman, Bertrand, and Hunt, along with countless other people around Exeter. And he finds that most of these witnesses do seem credible.

Eventually, Fuller starts just randomly asking people in town if they'd seen a UFO, and most of them say yes. Almost all of them describe it the same way. Dome-like shape, a pattern of red pulsating lights, absolutely silent, kite-like motion. The sheer volume and consistency of these reports is jarring. And Fuller notes that many of the witnesses never filed an official police report because that's how commonplace this UFO has become. Now, again, Fuller is a skeptic.

He just wants to find a rational explanation. And the one entity that does seem like they know something is the Air Force. Coming up, the U.S. government gives their take on the Exeter incident. Now back to the U.S. government gives their take on the Exeter incident. Now back to the story. As UFO sightings pick up in the Exeter region, the Air Force definitely seems interested. Officials are patrolling the Exeter area, asking questions, and occasionally residents will notice a UFO being tailed by an Air Force plane. One person even observes a jet plane, probably from the Air Force, flying right up to the UFO. But the lights on the UFO immediately go out, as if it knows it's being followed. Then it whizzes

off, but the jet plane remains in the same spot, circling and circling, like it's studying the patch of air where the UFO was. It's enough to make people think that the Air Force knows something, or at least they're gathering valuable information. Now, Fuller is warned against contacting the Air Force. He's told by an official at the NICAP, the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena, that the Air Force isn't going to release any information, but he decides to just give it a shot. So Fuller calls the Pease Air Force Base and he's put through to a man named Sergeant Robert Sarvash. Sarvash confirms over the phone that there's been a large number of sightings reported. He even whispers about a reporter he knows that's

seen one himself. But he says that any information that they gather is sent to a bigger base in Dayton, Ohio for a team of scientists to analyze. Any conclusions would have to be released straight from the Pentagon. Fuller thanks Sarvash, but he's basically hit a dead end. Because the Pentagon's official stance is that they'll only ever release information on a need-to-know basis. Which is just like the classic government response to UFOs. Whether they know something or not, they usually won't say. But Fuller is still determined to crack this UFO case, with or without the Pentagon's help. To do that, he's trying to find some sort of connection between the sightings, and eventually he notices a pattern. Almost all of the sightings occur near the region's high-tension power lines. Buller doesn't know what to make of this at first.

One person he talks to speculates that the object could be hovering over the power lines to charge its batteries or something, like almost like it's siphoning electricity. And that sounds like a really cool theory, but when Fuller speaks with a couple of engineers at the Exeter and Hampton power departments, they haven't noticed any change to the power line's voltage. Still, Fuller sees power lines come up time and time again. There's over 70 mentions of them in his interview transcript, so he's determined to prove this means something. As he studies UFO sightings across the world,

he finds multiple instances of power outages that happened alongside a UFO sighting in the same region. But those are just coincidences. They probably mean nothing. But then, on November 9th, 1965, just two months after the Exeter incident, the power grid almost entirely breaks down. Fuller is staying at a motor inn in Hampton near Exeter, and he's headed downstairs to meet

a few local riders for dinner when he notices the lights flickering. He doesn't think much of it until a few minutes later when a waitress mentions there's massive rolling blackouts being reported all around the Northeast U.S. Fuller watches on TV as power companies across the country scramble to get the power back on. Meanwhile, there are more UFO sightings. In Syracuse, New York, about 350 miles away from Exeter, a pilot and five other people see a big ball of red light about 100 feet in diameter

hovering just over two of the New York Power Authority's biggest lines. In New York City, one woman sees some sort of red streak in the sky. Another person spots a sort of silver dome-shaped object floating up and down and even sideways. And a Life magazine photographer snaps a picture of New York City during a blackout, but when he develops it, he sees some sort of silver object hovering above the cityscape. At this point, people across the East Coast are demanding an explanation. And it's not just the Life magazine photo they're worried about. Because just a few weeks before the massive power outage, the Barney and Betty Hill story comes out.

Now, you've probably heard about this story, at least in passing. In 1965, Barney Hill is a leader in the NAACP with an IQ of 140. and Betty's a social worker for the state of New Hampshire. Both are highly regarded individuals, not ones to risk their reputation. But with all of the UFO sightings going on, they've decided it's time to share their experience from four allegedly on september 19th 1961 barney and betty are driving down route 3 in new hampshire when they find themselves being chased by a ufo betty describes it as pancake shaped with a band of lights around the base and barney notices a row of windows around the outside. The UFO keeps following them, and eventually they hear a weird electronic peeping sound. They feel a tingling sensation run through their bodies,

and then they completely black out. When they wake up, they are 35 miles from the spot where they lost consciousness. Their wristwatches have stopped working, but they piece together that a full two hours have passed, and the UFO is nowhere to be seen. Over the next few years, Betty tries to make sense of what happened that night. She reads books by the NICAP, and she even reports the UFO sighting to the Air Force, but she hears nothing back. Meanwhile, she suffers from terrible nightmares, and Barney experiences anxiety and develops ulcers. So eventually, Betty hires a hypnotist, and after weeks and weeks of sessions,

the Hills uncover their memories of what happened that night. Supposedly, after they lost consciousness, the UFO actually landed on their car and strange gray aliens brought them on board the ship. Barney and Betty were brought to separate examination rooms where the aliens removed their clothes, took samples of their hair, skin, and nails, and probed them with needles. And okay, like all of this sounds absolutely wild, but Barney and Betty thought so too.

It's not until 1965 when all the weird stuff is going on that they feel compelled to share their story at a UFO lecture in Dover, 30 minutes from Exeter. Over 400 people attend, and the Q&A lasts well over an hour, with many sharing their own experiences. The lecture basically convinces the whole town that they really are seeing a UFO. In the meantime, it seems like the government is finally ready to take some preventative measures. Because on October 27th, about a week and a half before the Hills gave their talk, the Pentagon releases a statement. They claim the Exeter sightings are the result of a weather inversion in the area. That's basically when a layer of cold air is trapped between two warm layers, which can make stars and planets appear to be moving in the area. That's basically when a layer of cold air is trapped between two warm layers,

which can make stars and planets appear to be moving in the sky. So basically, the Pentagon is saying that this is all an illusion. Now, this is obviously kind of an absurd theory. There's no way dozens upon dozens of people mistook twinkling stars for an intelligent aircraft at close range. It's honestly kind of offensive to the witnesses. And remember, officers Bertrand and Hunt saw this thing too. Bertrand is former military. Hunt is a well-respected member of the police force. They know a plane from the night sky. The bigger problem is the U.S. government isn't even

being consistent because a month after the Pentagon releases their statement, Bertrand and Hunt receive a letter from a major over at the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Greene County, Ohio. That's the place where UFOs are investigated. The major has a totally different excuse to offer. He says that they must have gotten mixed up in a training operation involving B-47 planes, one that took place on September 2nd and went into the wee hours of September 3rd. Now this kind of lines up, right? Like Officer Bertrand and Norman both saw a B-47 bomber shortly after the UFO reappeared. But again, Bertrand is an Air Force veteran. He knows what a bomber looks like. He's probably flown one. What he saw before the B-47 wasn't a military plane.

Now, the letter he and Hunt received isn't dated, so there's no way of knowing whether the Air Force reached this conclusion before or after the Pentagon's statement about the weather. But Bertrand and Hunt are irritated by the inconsistency. They write a response to the major basically saying like, no thank you, we saw what we saw. And eventually they get a response straight from the Pentagon. It says that they are unable to affirmatively identify the flying object, but they believe it is, quote, either created or set aloft by man, generated by atmospheric conditions, or caused by celestial bodies or the residue of meteoric activity, end quote. Essentially, they're saying

it could be anything but a UFO. After that, Bertrand and Hunt have no choice but to just give up. The trail goes cold, but sightings continue into the following year. Meanwhile, Fuller returns to Connecticut where he writes a few articles on the Exeter incident. In 1966, he publishes a best-selling book which revives national interest, but there aren't any new theories. Until 2011.

That's when scientists and longtime UFO consultants James McGehee and Joe Nickel release a special report that could explain what happened in Exeter. It has to do with the sequencing red lights, that 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. It turns out there is a military aircraft with five very bright red lights that flicker on and off in that exact sequence. It's a KC-97 tanker, an Air Force refueling plane that would have been used at places like the Pease Air Force Base in New Hampshire. It was probably used in the B-47 exercise that occurred the night of September 2nd. And even if the exercise was technically over, there could have been tanker planes left in the sky, which also explains why

the craft was sometimes seen with Air Force jets trailing it. This was probably how they were refueled. So all of this starts to make a lot of sense, especially because this isn't a well-known aircraft. It's for refueling, not fighting. Even if you had been in the Air Force like Bertrand, you might have forgotten about it. But if it really was a KC-97, why in the world couldn't the Pentagon identify it? They should have looked at their own plane inventory and matched the red lights in a heartbeat. It also doesn't explain the saucer shape most people reported, or the random blackouts all over the northeast, or the glowing orange balls that popped up around Exeter. Then there's Barney

and Betty's abduction. If their story has any truth to it, we have to believe that UFOs exist. The government may not want to believe it or admit it, but it's definitely possible. In the end, the best explanation is sometimes the most incredible one. And that doesn't make it any less real. Thanks for listening. I'll be back next week with another episode. For more information on the Exeter UFO, we found Incident at Exeter by John G. Fuller extremely helpful to our research. To hear more stories hosted by me, check out Crime Junkie and all AudioChuck originals.