In Episode 470, Jeff Belanger and Ray Auger explore Rt. 150 near Exeter, New Hampshire, looking for the place where Norman Muscarello witnessed a strange, silent craft in the sky with flashing red lights back on September 3, 1965. The UFO was witnessed by police officers and locals who spoke up to journalists and military personnel.
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CREDITS:
Produced and hosted by: Jeff Belanger and Ray Auger
Edited by: Ray Auger
Theme Music by: John Judd
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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:
*A note on the text: Please forgive punctuation, spelling, and grammar mistakes. Like us, the transcripts ain’t perfect.
[DRIVING]
RAY: So we’re driving up Route 150 in New Hampshire. We’ve been making our way north from Amesbury, Massachusetts.
JEFF: Right. We’re just a little bit north of the Massachusetts border in the town of Kensington, New Hampshire.
RAY: It’s a rural road in a pretty area. The houses are spread out, there’s colonial stone walls, and lots of trees.
JEFF: Yes, beyond the nice scenery, you wouldn’t look twice if you were passing through.
RAY: Sure, it looks like a lot of rural New England roads… which brings us to the big question: What are we looking for out here?
JEFF: Ray, we’re not looking for anything on the road… we’ve come to watch the skies, because this was ground zero for one of the most profound UFO sightings in New England history. This week we’re exploring the Exeter UFO incident.
[INTRO]
JEFF: Hello, I’m Jeff Belanger and welcome to Episode 470 of the New England Legends podcast.
RAY: And I’m Ray Auger, thank you for joining us on our mission to chronicle every legend in New England one story at a time. We’re always on the hunt for UFOs, aliens, monsters, cryptids, roadside oddities, and all of the other wicked strangeness that makes our region like no other place. So many of our story leads come from you! Please reach out to us on our website anytime with your ideas.
JEFF: Our website is also the place to see dates for my ongoing story tour, dates to see Ray’s band the Pub Kings, and a link to buy my 2027 Haunted New England calendar featuring the photography of Frank Grace. They make great holiday gifts for the spooky people in your life.
RAY: We’ll go searching for the UFO of Exeter, New Hampshire, right after this quick word from our sponsor.
SPONSOR
[DRIVING IN CAR]
RAY: Okay, Jeff. If we’re exploring the Exeter UFO incident, why are we in Kensington? I mean, I recognize Exeter is the next town to the north of us. And Exeter is a bigger town than Kensington as far as population goes.
JEFF: True. The reason we’re driving up Rt. 150 in Kensington is because this is where all the fuss started. We can pull over right up here.
RAY: Got it.
[CAR STOPS]
[DOORS OPEN/CLOSE]
Jeff: This is about the place where it all began. An unassuming stretch of road on Rt. 150 near a farm.
RAY: Here’s a little more background on the region. The Pennacook Abenaki people lived here for thousands of years. Then, in 1638, an exiled clergyman named John Wheelwright came here from Massachusetts Bay Colony. He was trying to escape the Puritan theocratic rule. He wanted the freedom to preach as he saw fit without government interference. So, he headed north and setup a town along the Squamscott River. Soon, others followed. Early industries including saw mills and other mills powered by the river, then shipbuilding, considering they had the wood and the ocean is close by.
JEFF: Not too different than many other New England towns with access to water power, timber, and ocean.
RAY: No, pretty typical for the region. Today the population is about 16,000 people.
JEFF: Still, this otherwise typical New England town was the site of something extraordinary about 60 years ago. Something so big that every year now Exeter, New Hampshire, holds an annual UFO convention. To find out what happened, let’s head back to the year 1965.
[TRANSITION]
RAY: It’s early September of 1965. Lyndon Johnson is in the White House, John King is the governor of New Hampshire, and “Help” by the Beatles is the number one song on the radio. There’s a big cultural shift happening in America right now. The hippie movement is on the rise, worker’s rights are making headlines, and the fight for civil rights is shaking up the nation. Internationally, the Vietnam War is grabbing a lot of attention.
JEFF: Here in New Hampshire, they too are feeling a lot of those cultural pushes and pulls, but in the smaller towns like Exeter, life goes on the way it has. Some of the problems making national news can feel far away from here. Though not for everyone. Enter 18-year-old Norman Muscarello.
RAY: Muscarello graduated from Exeter High School back in June. He sold his car a few weeks ago because he’s joined the U.S. Navy. He plans to leave for the service in about three weeks.
[NIGHT SOUNDS FADE IN]
RAY: It’s the afternoon of Thursday, September 2nd. Because he sold his car, Muscarello hitchhiked the roughly ten-miles south from his home in Exeter to visit his girlfriend in Amesbury, Massachusetts.
[NIGHT SOUNDS]
[DOOR CLOSES]
[WALKING ON ROAD]
JEFF: It’s after midnight when Muscarello begins walking north back home to Exeter. Being so late, there aren’t many cars on the road. So he walks along Route 150, sticking his thumb out for a ride when a car does pass.
[CAR PASSES BY]
JEFF: Being so late, he’s not having much luck hitching a ride.
RAY: Can you blame them? At this hour picking up a stranger?
JEFF: I get it. So Muscarello keeps walking. (PAUSE) He’s been at it over an hour and a half when he reaches Kensington, New Hampshire. It’ about 2:00 AM. We’re just a few miles south of his Exeter home. Muscarello is tired, but he’s resigned himself to the fact that he’ll half to walk the whole way home. At least the weather isn’t bad tonight. The skies are clear and the temperature is comfortable. Muscarello keep on…
RAY: What is that?
JEFF: Where?
RAY: Over that way. Those red lights.
JEFF: I… I don’t know. Could it be a firetruck?
RAY: Maybe, but I don’t hear anything. No sirens. But wait… it looks like the red lights are coming from the sky somehow.
JEFF: This is very strange.
RAY: Muscarello is seeing the lights too.
JEFF: Check out how everything around us is glowing red now. The fields, even the house over there.
RAY: I see five flashing red lights in the sky. It’s moving toward us just above the tree line!
[DIVING IN BUSHES]
RAY: Muscarello just dove into a nearby ditch next to the road.
JEFF: There’s a round craft with flashing red lights above us right now. Maybe 80 to 90 feet in diameter. It’s making no sound at all. Totally silent!
RAY: Okay, the craft just shifted directions. It’s now hovering over that nearby house!
[RUNNING THROUGH WOODS]
RAY: Muscarello is now racing toward another farmhouse nearby.
[POUNDING ON THE FRONT DOOR]
RAY: Panicked, he’s pounding on the door of Clyde Russell’s home.
JEFF: There’s lights on inside, but no one is coming to the door. That red glow is still all around.
RAY: The people in the house must be too scared to open their door.
[RUNNING THROUGH WOODS]
RAY: Muscarello is now running back to the road.
JEFF: Look! There’s a car coming.
[CAR DRIVES UP]
JEFF: Muscarello is standing in the middle of the road frantically waving for help.
[CAR STOPS] [IDLES]
[DOOR OPENS/CLOSES]
[CAR SPEEDS OFF]
[DRIVING]
JEFF: The driver takes the scared young man to the Exeter police station a few miles up the road.
[CAR STOPS]
[DOOR OPENS/CLOSES]
RAY: Inside the police station, Muscarello sees officer Reginald Toland working the night desk. The two know each other. Which helps a lot. The visibly shaken Muscarello sits down and tells the officer everything he just witnessed.
JEFF: Here’s what Norman Muscarello DOESN’T know… a short while ago, officer Eugene Bertrand Jr., radioed in to Officer Toland that he had stopped to check on a frightened woman sitting on the hood of her car on nearby Rt. 108. She said she had just seen a huge object with flashing red lights flying above her car and following her. Officer Bertrand stayed with her a few minutes until she was calm enough to drive off. Bertrand thought she was a kook, but now Officer Toland isn’t so sure.
RAY: Officer Bertrand agrees to drive Muscarello back out to the area where his sighting occurred.
[CAR DOOR OPENS]
[CAR DOOR CLOSES]
[CAR DRIVES OFF]
[DRIVING]
RAY: The two head back out to the area by the Russell’s home next to the farm of Carl Dining.
[CAR STOPS]
[DOORS OPEN/CLOSE]
RAY: The two get out of the car and don’t see anything unusual.
[DOGS BARKING]
[HORSES NEIGHING]
RAY: As they get closer to the barn, the animals are clearly spooked. Just as the officer shines his flashlight…
JEFF: Ray… look! The tree line above the horse barn!
RAY: That craft is back! It’s huge, dark, and there’s those flashing red lights!
JEFF: Officer Bertrand just drew his pistol and is aiming at the craft…
RAY: What is THAT going to do?
JEFF: I guess Bertrand agrees with you. He just put his pistol back in its holster.
[RUNNING THROUGH FIELD]
JEFF: Bertrand and Muscarello are racing back to the police car to take shelter.
[RADIO SQUAK]
JEFF: Officer Bertrand calls for back-up. At the very least, I think Bertrand wants another witness here.
RAY: The object is moving silently toward us. It seems to be swaying back and forth.
JEFF: But it’s not making a sound. It’s maybe 100 feet in the air. The lights are pulsing, first from right to left, then from left to right.
[CAR PULLS UP]
JEFF: Officer Hunt just arrived on the scene.
RAY: Are you seeing this!?
JEFF: Hunt’s mouth is hanging open. I guess he sees it.
RAY: Okay, the craft is now rising up and is moving out beyond the tree line.
[LARGE JET FLYING OVERHEAD]
JEFF: Wait… What is that!?
RAY: It looks like a military aircraft. Some large bomber. But it’s definitely a plane. I can see the red and green lights on the wings.
JEFF: It must have scared off the craft.
[CAR DOORS CLOSE]
[CAR DRIVES OFF]
JEFF: The three men drive back to the Exeter police station and file their reports on what they witnessed.
RAY: In the coming days, the police report what happened to nearby Pease Air Force Base. Their testimonies are written down, and the air force base confirms they had five B-47 aircraft flying in the area that night, but no one would confuse the B-47 with this strange, silent craft. The officer at the air force base asks Muscarello, Bertrand, and Hunt not to talk to the press. But it’s too late. They had already been interviewed by the Manchester Union-Leader. The story is out… and that takes us back to today.
[TRANSITION]
JEFF: This report would make its way into the famous Project Blue Book, the U.S. Air Force effort to chronicle UFO experiences in the United States.
RAY: What was the official explanation?
JEFF: There were two. The initial explanation was that there was a temperature inversion that night, and the witnesses just saw twinkling stars in the sky and were confused.
RAY: Come onnnn…. Police don’t draw their pistols to potentially shoot at stars.
JEFF: Yeah, that explanation offended the witnesses quite a bit. As if they’ve never been outside at night before. The second explanation came later. The government said they were conducting an operation called Project Big Blast, and maybe the witnesses mistook Air Force plans for a UFO.
RAY: Again, there was no confusing the B-47 bomber than flew overhead with that strange craft. (BEAT) New England-based author and journalist John G. Fuller was the first to gather testimony from many witnesses in the Exeter area following the sighting. He would go on to publish a book in 1966 called Incident at Exeter that would propel this story into the national and then international spotlight.
JEFF: Fuller spoke to many other witnesses who saw this craft. We also need to realize that just four years earlier, Betty and Barney Hill had their UFO abduction experience near Franconia Notch, New Hampshire. The whole region was experiencing something profound in the skies.
RAY: Each year now in Exeter they hold a large UFO conference. The event draws in enthusiasts from all over.
JEFF: That’s the thing, isn’t it? We’re here on Rt. 150, over 60 years after the fact, but we’re drawn to places like this because something big happened here. The witnesses faced ridicule for speaking up, but they saw something they couldn’t explain, and so they spoke. Today we know there are countless UFO witnesses out there today… including yours truly. I’ll share my story in After the Legend in just a minute. Though like me, these guys were not aviation experts, we do know what we’re used to seeing in the sky flying overhead. We know birds, blimps, hot air balloons, small planes, large planes, drones, and everything in-between. We also know when something looks out of place. Unidentified. Flying… Object.
[OUTTRO]
RAY: And that takes us to After the Legend where we dig deeper into this week’s story and sometimes veer off course.
JEFF: After the Legend is brought to you by our patreon patrons! Thank you patrons for being the backbone of everything we do here. Our patrons get early ad-free access to new episodes, they get bonus episodes and content that no one else gets to hear, they get access to our entire archive of shows, and they help the cause quite a bit. It’s just $3 bucks per month, but if there’s enough of you, that little bit goes a long way to help with all of our expenses. To sign up go to patreon.com/newenglandlegends.
To see some pictures from this week’s story, click on the link in our episode description, or go to our website and click on Episode 470.
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We’d like to thank our sponsors, thank you so much to our patreon patrons, and our theme music is by John Judd.
Until next time remember… the bizarre is closer than you think.