They arrived at the field on Route 150 at around 3 A.M. No wind and perfect visibility. At first, the two saw nothing. Before long, however, horses and dogs on the farm became restless. The two then saw a slowly rising object approaching them—silent, brilliant, and roundish. It wobbled toward them “like a leaf fluttering from a tree.” Red light bathed the area. Bertrand radioed to the station, “My god, I see the damn thing myself!”
The object hovered near the police car about three hundred feet away, one hundred feet in the air, silently rocking back and forth. It was too bright to make out any definite shape, but the two clearly saw pulsating red lights that dimmed from left to right then right to left in a 5-4-3-2-1, then 1-2-3-4-5 pattern. Each cycle took about two seconds. The object hovered for several minutes, and all was silent but for the horses and dogs. Then, according to Bertrand, it “darted,” turned sharply, slowed down, and began to move away. As this happened, another patrolman, David Hunt, pulled up. He, too, saw the pulsating lights, heard the animals, and saw the object moving and rocking. Bertrand returned to the station “all shook up,” in the opinion of the desk chief. He later said that at one time the lights came so close, he fell on the ground and started to draw his gun. He also stated that the lights of the object were always in a line and at a sixty-degree angle, and that when the object moved, the lower lights were always forward of the others.
After daylight, the police station called Pease AFB to reconfirm the incident. By 1 P.M., two air force officers arrived to interview the three witnesses at length. Although they appeared “interested and serious,” they made little comment and returned to their base.
Journalist John Fuller investigated this case during the next month. He quickly learned that the incident was not an isolated one in the area. The local population was in a buzz about UFOs, and a huge gap existed between media coverage and local perceptions. Newspapers near Boston and Exeter ascribed the sightings to a “flying billboard” owned by the Sky-Lite Aerial Advertising Agency of Boston. Raymond Fowler told Fuller that his NICAP subcommittee routinely checked with Sky-Lite regarding possible UFO misidentifications and learned that no Sky-Lite flights were flown between August 21 and September 10. Moreover, the company rarely flew down near Exeter, and the plane’s lights in no way matched the description of lights of the Exeter incident.
On the other side were the witnesses. One woman said to Fuller:
We’ve often seen them come along these lines [referring to power lines]. And right here by the poles one of these crafts came right down over my car, dropped down four or five feet off the ground. You could see a metal surface and the orange-red and white lights on it. Right there by that tree there.
He learned that many of the sightings in the area were occurring near electric power lines. Few could make out much beyond the very bright lights, though at least one person, using binoculars, said it was the shape of a football.
When an official report reached the Pentagon later in September about the incident in Exeter, an officer in army intelligence was said to turn to a colleague and remark: “I hope it’s one of ours.”61
The Pentagon gave its official determination of the spate of sightings on October 27, with a press release that gave two basic explanations. Some stemmed from a high-altitude Strategic Air Command exercise out of West-over, Massachusetts. The Exeter sighting was caused by weather inversion, a layer of cold air trapped between warm layers, which caused the appearance of stars and planets to dance and twinkle. “We believe,” said the Pentagon’s spokesman, “what the people saw that night was stars and planets in unusual formations.”
Many people considered this explanation to be a joke. Police officer Bertrand said:
[I]f they want to turn out ridiculous statements like that, that’s their business. I know what I saw; they don’t.... I know for sure it had nothing to do with the weather. I know for sure this was a craft, and it was not any plane in existence. I know for sure it was not more than a hundred feet off the ground.62
