Get to know New Hampshire’s alien obsession.
Norman Muscarello was hitchhiking back from his lady friend ’s house near Exeter , New Hampshire in the former morning of September 3 , 1965 , when he saw pulsating lighter in the sky . The US Navy recruit froze in his tracks beside the Dining phratry farm on rural Route 150 as the brightness vibrate overhead , disappeared , then return in throbbing crimson burst . “ There was absolutely no auditory sensation , other than the fact that I heard sawbuck in dining ’ field raising holy hell , kicking the barn . cricket just seemed to quit , ” he recalled ina 1980 interview . Petrified , Muscarello run across the street and hid . A few moment later , the light zoomed away , leave the 18 - year - honest-to-god alone on the road .
Bill Smith , a former president of the Exeter Area Kiwanis Club and current chair of the fete , explicate that the consequence embark on as a lecture series , to drop spark on a most strange bit of Exeter chronicle . It has since become a two - day fundraiser for children ’s Polemonium caeruleum , with 100 % of the proceeds from tag and conceding sales agreement benefiting area younker nonprofits and programming . “ It is also a boastful sales daylight for local merchants , ” Smith says . “ For some , it ’s the secondly largest cut-rate sale weekend after Christmas . ”
Exeter ’s store and eatery deck out their windows foreign - inspired decor . Sidewalk chalkboards showcase parole of soundness for surviving an extraterrestrial intrusion ( “ Stock up on tennis balls ” and “ Buy ALL the dainty ” advisesPaws Pet Boutique II ) , and an inflatable extraterrestrial dressed as a sushi chef support outsideOBA Noodle Bar .
Welcome to Exeter, New Hampshire, home of the famed Incident at Exeter.|Exeter TV
Deanna Benoit , owner ofTop Drawer Boutique , has participated in the festivity since their origination . Her display have included a big greenish alien frolic a pink lace bra and panties , lounging sidewise in the front window , and a pair of ETs clad in nightie , clutching suitcases . The sandwich board outside the store read , “ Wear pretty underwear . You never screw if you ’ll be abduct . ”
“ The business residential area really seems to get into it , ” Benoit says . “ Customers love it . They laugh , they stop and take pictures . It generates a lot of buzz . ”
This class ’s keynote speaker is Ralph Blumenthal , aNew York Timescontributor and 45 - year old hand of its coverage team , as well as a grand lecturer at Baruch College in New York , and a summer journalism teacher at Phillips Exeter Academy , a nearby boarding schoolhouse . Blumenthal ’s 2021 account book , The Believer : Alien Encounters , Hard Science , and the Passion of John Mack , chronicle the workplace of a Harvard psychiatrist who documented the experiences of hundreds of the great unwashed who claimed to have had exotic encounter . Mack ’s piece of work was an authoritative development in ufology — AKA the cogitation of UFOs — lending acceptance to what had previously been conceive a fringe orbit .
Expert panels are just the tip of the iceberg here.|Exeter TV
Along with Blumenthal , this year ’s Exeter UFO Festival will feature Kathleen Marden , a leading UFO contact research worker ; Jennifer Stein , a ufology documentarian ; and Paul and Ben Eno , father - son hosts of radio showBehind the Paranormal with Paul & Ben Eno , who contrive to exist - broadcast from the event .
What makes the Incident at Exeter such an enduring example of UFO phenomenon , Blumenthal allege , is that multiple people observed it . After Muscarello reported the sighting to the police , he and two police military officer , David Hunt and Eugene Bertrand Jr. , return to the aspect , where they all witnessed it at the same time . sooner in the evening , a fair sex report to Bertrand that she had been follow in her car on a nearby road by a tumid object in the sky with flash red lights . interchangeable sighting in the region the following sidereal day have led to the Incident at Exeter becoming one of the best - document UFO sightings in American account .
Although a2021 report from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence(DNI ) publicly acknowledged , for the first time , the existence of unidentified aerial phenomenon — UAPs , as they ’re now known — Blumenthal says , “ For many twelvemonth , the United States political science played a very negative use in this , by debunking it , by making it seem that mass who saw UFOs were mentally ill . ” Such was the showcase for the Incident at Exeter , which the US Air Force then declared " nothing more than stars and planets twinkling … ” They explain forth the occurrence as an optical fancy cause by the trapping of warm air beneath a layer of inhuman , dense aviation , or , possibly , even a military training exercise of B-47 aircraft .
Local businesses get in on the ET action.|Exeter TV
The recent declassification of info is a positive step , but it has n’t brought us closer to understanding UFO . The data , say Blumenthal , is not yet scientifically confirmable . But , he adds , “ Something take place , just like in Roswell . The witnesses were moderately unclouded and reliable in what they say . I ’m not making a title that it ’s anything but a mystery , but it ’s a secret deserving investigating . ”
The truth is out there… or possibly in here.|Exeter TV
Ufologists from around the world descend upon Exeter each year for the festival.|Exeter TV
Right this way.|Exeter TV
