File 024 · 3 September 1965

Exeter, New Hampshire

Exeter, New Hampshire, United States

Opened 9/4/2026

Ledger illustration of the file — not a photograph of the object. Ledger illustration of the report. A New England roadside field at night. — Night Ledger illustration of the file

LightsHynek CE1officialArchive5 witnesses

Standing

Unidentified

On the public record, and still open. A claim, paper, or film — not a finding that it was ours, and not a finding that it was not.

What was claimed

An 18-year-old and two police officers watched a large, silent object with pulsing red lights move along a field at treetop height.

What is on the record

This file is a working record — a report, not a verdict. Official paper, if any, is linked where we have it.

Norman Muscarello was hitchhiking on Route 150 when a set of five bright red lights rose from the trees and passed over him. He ran to the Exeter police station. Officer Eugene Bertrand, who had already spoken to a frightened woman in a car, drove Muscarello back to the field. The lights returned, illuminating the officers and the boy, then drifted toward a farmhouse.

Officer David Hunt arrived in time to see it depart. Pease Air Force Base took the report. Blue Book offered a refraction of the planet; the officers rejected it. John G. Fuller’s book made the night national.

Three sober witnesses, two of them armed policemen, at close range, with no sound but dogs barking: that is the Exeter file.

Could this have been ours?

The known sky, that night.

Satellites were already up. The station was not. Starlink was not.

Always

Venus and the bright planets

A fixed brilliant point. Does not streak. Does not hover over a street then leave. Often the first misread light in a rural report.

Always

Aircraft, balloons, meteors

Landing lights, flares, lanterns, reentries, fireballs. They are on the known sky. They do not close a file by themselves — they are what a serious look has to hold the claim against.

Orbit · Space — the desks for lights that are already named.

Sources

Exeter police / Incident at Exeter

Paper on this file

Official or public documents that belong with this case — not a verdict.

ScientificUnclassified

1968

Condon Report — Scientific Study of Unidentified Flying Objects

University of Colorado / U.S. Air Force · United States

Edward Condon’s Air Force-funded study concluded that further extensive study of UFOs was not justified, while several individual cases in the same volume remained unexplained.

Related files

Same craft, same place, same years. A neighbor in the catalogue — not a conclusion.

LightsFrom the net

Same craft · Same country · October 2026

Blue light over southwest Bakersfield

Southwest Bakersfield, California · United States

Unidentified

Four neighbors described a blue light that blinked, vanished, and moved up and down. The sheriff had no matching calls and named drones as a possibility.