Exeter incident
Muscarello had graduated from high school the previous June and was three weeks away from leaving for service in the United States Navy.
He had been visiting his girlfriend at her parents' home in nearby Amesbury, Massachusetts, around 10 miles (16 km) southeast of Exeter.
At the police station, Muscarello, pale and visibly shaken, told his story to officer Reginald Toland, who worked the night desk.
Toland radioed police officer Eugene Bertrand Jr., who earlier in the evening had passed a frightened woman sitting in her car on NH 108.
After Bertrand drove Muscarello back to the area of his sighting, they at first saw nothing unusual; however, when they left the car and walked into the field and towards the woods where Muscarello had first seen the lights, some horses in a nearby corral became frightened and began neighing loudly, kicking the fence and sides of a barn; dogs in the area also began barking and howling.
Instinctively remembering his police training, Bertrand dropped to one knee, drew his revolver, and pointed it at the object.
He then decided that shooting would not be wise, so he reholstered the revolver, grabbed Muscarello, and both ran back to the patrol car.
He interviewed a number of people in the Exeter area who also claimed to have witnessed strange lights and unusual objects.
Among them were Ron Smith, a senior at Exeter High School, who told Fuller that about two or three weeks after Muscarello's sighting, he was travelling in a vehicle with his mother and aunt one evening at 11:30.
"[4][5] Before Project Blue Book could send this evaluation to the Pentagon, however, Griffen and Brandt had already issued their explanation of Muscarello and the two policemen's sighting to the press.
"[4] Project Blue Book then issued its own explanation, stating that "Operation Big Blast ... a SAC/NORAD training mission" had been active on the night of the sighting and that it could have accounted for the UFO.
"[4] Quintanilla also added that "If, however, these aircraft were noted by either of you, this would tend to eliminate this air operation as a possible explanation for the objects observed.
The two policemen sent a letter to Project Blue Book in which they stated, "As you can imagine, we have been the subject of considerable ridicule since the Pentagon released its 'final evaluation' of our sighting of September 3, 1965...both Patrolman Hunt and myself saw this object at close range, checked it out with each other, confirmed and reconfirmed that it was not any type of conventional aircraft ... and went to considerable trouble to confirm that the weather was clear, there was no wind, no chance of weather inversion, and that what we were seeing was in no way a military or civilian aircraft.
[10] At one point, an Air Force officer claimed that the UFOs people had been observing were merely lights from nearby Pease AFB.
The very embarrassed officer slunk back into the seat of the staff car and drove off amongst the laughs and jeers of the crowd.
"[11][additional citation(s) needed] In January 1966, Lieutenant Colonel John Spaulding, from the Office of the Secretary of the Air Force, finally replied to the policemen's two letters.
Spaulding wrote that "based on additional information submitted to our UFO investigation officer, Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio, we have been unable to identify the object you observed on September 3, 1965.
[13][14] For the rest of his life, Muscarello insisted that what he had witnessed was real and not an ordinary object; he died in April 2003, at age 55 following a brief illness.
In the article, he claimed to have recognized the flashing red light pattern reported by the witnesses Bertrand and Muscarello: one, two, three, four, five, four, three, two, one.
