During the morning following this extraordinary night of sightings, another encounter occurred which, if not a hoax, was even more amazing. On August 3, 1965, Los Angeles County Highway Accident Investigator Rex Heflin took four clear Polaroid photographs of a hat-shaped UFO near a lonely stretch of road near Santa Ana, California. The object was silent, said Heflin, and a beam of white light seemed to rotate underneath the object. He tried to communicate with his supervisor, but the radio went dead while the object was present, a fact corroborated by Heflin’s supervisor. Back at his office, he put the pictures in his desk drawer. A few days later, one of Heflin’s coworkers sent the pictures to UPI, where photo analysts concluded them to be genuine. Shortly after Heflin received them back a few weeks later, he was approached by a man claiming to be from North American Air Defense Command G-2 (NORAD), who demanded the prints. Unfortunately, Heflin gave them to the man, and the mysterious caller and photos were never seen again. The air force and NORAD both denied having the photos or any involvement with the matter. Copies of the photos existed, however, and were widely published. Heflin told reporters he was willing to take a lie detector test to prove his pictures were authentic. A number of UFO writers concurred with the air force assessment that the event was a hoax, but (1) the fact that the photos were Polaroids, (2) many particulars of the photos themselves seem hard to hoax (such as evidence of an air current creating dust directly below the object), and (3) the perspectives from which Heflin took the pictures do not easily lend credence to the hoax scenario, and no one ever indicated how Heflin could have done it.
Two years later, on October 11, 1967, Heflin was visited by a strange group of men in air force uniforms. Suspicious, he obtained their names and other information. His visitors, in turn, asked him about the photos and such things as the Bermuda Triangle. He saw their car parked in the street; inside was a figure in the back seat and a violet glow, which looked like instrument dials. Heflin believed he was being photographed or recorded. Meanwhile, his FM radio made several loud blips. Others investigated this, but no one ever learned who the men were, except evident imposters.59
Landings and close encounters were being reported in North and South America throughout August 1965. That month, the air force inquired further into the possibility of submitting UFO files to the Academy of Sciences, or some similar body. Before long, events reached a crescendo that enabled the air force to realize its dream of unloading the UFO problem.60
THE INCIDENT AT EXETER
UFO activity continued at a gallop’s pace in September. On September 3, 1965, another monumental case occurred, this time in the small town of Exeter, New Hampshire. At 2:24 A.M., eighteen-year-old Norman Muscarello, just a few weeks away from joining the navy, arrived at the Exeter police station in a state of near shock. He had been hitchhiking on Route 51 from Amesbury, Massachusetts, to his home in Exeter about twelve miles away. Since there was little traffic at that hour, he walked most of the way. At 2 A.M., he said, he reached Kensington by an open field between two houses and saw an object coming out of the sky directly toward him. It was as big as or bigger than a house, he said, between eighty and ninety feet in diameter, with brilliant, pulsating red lights around an apparent rim. It wobbled and floated toward him without a sound. Muscarello dived in terror into a shallow shoulder off the road, and the object backed off slowly, hovering over the roof of one of the houses. As it backed off some more, Muscarello ran to the house and pounded on the door, screaming. No answer. A car drove by, and Mucarello ran out into the road and convinced the couple to drive him to the police station. Muscarello was so adamant that the desk officer agreed to send someone back with him.
Just then, patrolman Eugene Bertrand, an air force veteran who had fought in Korea, arrived at the station, reporting that about an hour ago near Route 101, he had come across a car parked on the bypass with a woman at the wheel, who was trying to regain her composure. She claimed that a huge, silent, airborne object had been trailing her car. It was only a few feet away, with brilliant flashing red lights. Then, according to the woman, the object took off at tremendous speed toward the stars. Bertrand thought she was a kook and calmed her down but did nothing else. Now, hearing Muscarello’s story, the two left for the scene of Muscarello’s encounter.
