The Exeter Incident
The account
A silent object with pulsing red lights frightened a young man and two police officers on a country road.
What investigators found
The Air Force attributed the case to aircraft on a military exercise and atmospheric effects, a version the officers disputed.
The story
In the early morning of September 3, 1965, a shaken young man named Norman Muscarello walked into the police station in Exeter, New Hampshire. He said an object with pulsing red lights had approached him on a country road. An officer drove back to the spot with him and, shortly after, a second officer also reported seeing the lights over a field.
The case became famous through the book Incident at Exeter by journalist John Fuller. The Pentagon explained the reports as aircraft from a military exercise and stars distorted by the atmosphere. The officers responded publicly that they knew what airplanes looked like and that this was something different. The episode became one of the best-remembered police-witness cases in the United States.