Exeter, New HampshireSeptember 1965

At about 2:24 a.m. on September 3, 1965, eighteen-year-old Norman Muscarello was hitchhiking south on Route 150 between Amesbury, Massachusetts and his home in Exeter, New Hampshire when he saw a large, dark object rise from a field and approach the road. The object had a row of bright red lights along one edge, pulsing in sequence rather than blinking together. Muscarello dove into a ditch and waited for it to pass before running to a nearby farmhouse for help.

When the homeowner did not answer, Muscarello flagged down a passing motorist who drove him to the Exeter Police Department. He arrived white-faced and visibly shaken. Officer Eugene Bertrand Jr., who had earlier that night spoken with a woman who reported being followed by a similar object on a separate stretch of New Hampshire highway, agreed to drive Muscarello back to the location.

Bertrand and Muscarello arrived at the field around 2:55 a.m. As they walked in with Bertrand's flashlight, an object rose silently from behind trees on the far side. Bertrand later described it as roughly the size of a house, with a row of rotating red lights along one edge. He drew his service revolver but then put it away, instinctively realizing it would have no effect, and pulled Muscarello back to the patrol car. The object hovered over the field for several minutes before drifting away to the southeast.

Officer David Hunt arrived as the object was leaving and observed it at a distance. Bertrand and Hunt's joint report, filed with the Exeter Police Department and forwarded to Pease Air Force Base, became the foundation of the Project Blue Book investigation that followed. Major Hector Quintanilla, the chief of Blue Book at the time, initially attributed the sighting to a high-altitude Strategic Air Command exercise called Operation Big Blast that had been conducted in the region earlier that night.

When Bertrand and Hunt pointed out that Big Blast had ended several hours before their sighting, Quintanilla ordered a more thorough review. The Air Force's eventual finding, after months of correspondence with the Exeter officers, was that the case could not be identified. The case file documents the officers' repeated written objections to the initial Big Blast explanation, internal Air Force correspondence about how to handle the pushback from a uniformed police department, and inquiries from journalists and members of Congress.

NARA's catalog entry for this case does not currently include digital scans. The incident became widely known after author John G. Fuller published "Incident at Exeter" in 1966, which compiled the police reports, witness statements, and follow-up sightings in the surrounding weeks. The case remains officially listed in the Project Blue Book final tally as one of the program's unexplained incidents.