The 2 wildest alien encounters in New Hampshire history
New Hampshire was the eerie backdrop for two of the most famous alien stories. Here’s what you need to know about these strange occurrences.
In the 1960s, New Hampshire became a hotspot for alleged UFO activity. The oddities first began in 1961, when Portsmouth couple Betty and Barney Hill claimed they were abducted and experimented on by aliens. Four years later, several people in Exeter reported seeing an unidentified flying object hovering overhead. The residents all said the same thing: It moved silently, almost as if it were mimicking the slow descent of a falling leaf. Red lights adorned the otherworldly vessel, and even seasoned Air Force veterans in town couldn’t identify what type of aircraft it might be.
People who grew up in the Granite State might already be familiar with both the Hill Abduction and the Exeter Incident. You may have heard fragments of the stories in school, or through word-of-mouth recollections from those who either take these instances as truth or find them to be unverifiable ramblings. Being skeptical about UFOs and aliens is natural. Given that there isn’t any physical proof of extraterrestrial life in our universe, it makes sense to approach these tales with a lack of belief. For the Hills, though, and for the good folks of Exeter, they believed what they saw was real.
And I don’t know about you, but that’s reason enough for me to believe.
The Hill Abduction
In September 1961, Betty and Barney Hill were traveling back to their home in Portsmouth following a trip to Canada. While driving along darkened roads near the White Mountains, the couple claimed to have seen peculiar lights hovering overhead. What happened next was first recalled in fragments, before later being recounted in more alarming detail as the two were put under hypnosis.
Betty and Barney said that, after the lights first appeared, they watched a large spacecraft land in a nearby field. Illuminated in the craft’s window were humanlike creatures. This sighting was followed by two hours of unexplained lost time. Neither Betty nor Barney could say for certain what had happened—all they knew when they got home that evening was that neither of them could recall what took place during that specific stretch of time. Betty’s dress was stained and torn. Barney’s binocular strap had been broken, and his shoes were badly scraped.
They reported the incident to the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP) in October, and Walter N. Webb, a NICAP member and astronomer, met with the couple shortly after. Webb interviewed the Hills for several hours, during which Barney indicated he couldn’t remember certain parts of that evening due to a mental block. The primary details he reported to Webb were the humanoid figures on the unusual aircraft. Webb believed the Hills were telling the truth about what they saw, and that any discrepancies in their claims would largely be due to human error (like not being able to recall the specific time when they pulled their car to the side of the road).
Eventually, the two decided to undergo hypnosis sessions with Dr. Benjamin Simon to help them remember that uncanny evening. During his sessions, Barney told Dr. Simon that he initially ran from the UFO and that he broke his binocular strap as he was fleeing. The couple’s car stalled as they attempted to drive away, and Barney said that six “men” were standing in the road nearby before three came up to the vehicle. He described the beings as having terrifying eyes that bore into his own.
Betty, for her part, said that she couldn’t understand the language the creatures were using, but she recalled being experimented on while she was on their ship. In dreams she had immediately following the incident, she had described the humanlike entities as having dark hair and eyes, blue-tinted lips, and grey skin.
After completing these sessions, the Hills returned to their normal lives. Barney worked for the postal service, and Betty was a social worker. The interracial couple—Barney was Black and Betty was white—were also dedicated NAACP members and played integral roles in the Civil Rights Movement.
Their experience impacted American culture
The way Betty and Barney Hill described both the creatures and their experiences aboard the UFO went on to impact the way modern culture portrayed aliens for decades to come. Because of the Hill’s descriptions, aliens were commonly shown in television shows, movies, and artistic renderings with black eyes and grey skin; they were most often seen performing various medical experiments on abducted humans.
John G. Fuller, who penned the “Incident at Exeter” following his experience there, also authored a book about the Hills, titled “The Interrupted Journey: Two Lost Hours Aboard a UFO: The Abduction of Betty and Barney Hill.” His book was adapted into a popular TV movie, “The UFO Incident,” starring James Earl Jones as Barney and Estelle Parsons as Betty. An upcoming film, “Strange Arrivals,” will revisit the Hill’s story with Colman Domingo playing Barney and Demi Moore playing Betty.
Betty Hill went on to become a prominent figure in UFO research
Barney Hill died suddenly of a cerebral hemorrhage in 1969. In the aftermath of his death, Betty devoted much of her time to studying and collecting UFO research. Some of her journals are accessible through the University of New Hampshire’s Betty and Barney Hill Collection. The collection contains journals ranging from 1967 to 1991 of strange events and sightings that Betty meticulously chronicled, as well as essays and speeches. Betty also wrote a book, the “Common Sense Approach to UFOs,” and you can track its progress through the collection’s papers.
Betty, who was known as the “first lady of UFOs,” died in 2004 at her home in Portsmouth at the age of 85. She maintained the validity of what she and her husband saw until her last breath.
The Exeter Incident
The White Mountains aren’t the only corner of New Hampshire that has an extraterrestrial story to tell. Four years later, in September 1965, residents from the Exeter area reportedly saw something strange. The first telephone call came on September 3 from a woman who claimed to have seen a flying object pass overhead while she was driving down Route 101. She said the object had red lights that flashed in an odd pattern. Roughly two hours after she placed her call, 18-year-old Norman Muscarello walked into the Exeter police station.
The young Naval recruit was badly shaken as he told officers about an unidentified flying object he saw over Kensington while he was walking down Route 150. He recalled seeing lights in the night sky, which he initially thought belonged to a plane. The red lights, which appeared in a straight line, pulsed on and off in a pattern: One, two, three, four, five, four, three, two, one. The occurrence scared Muscarello, and he flagged down a passing car to bring him to the police station.
After telling his story, Muscarello brought Officer Eugene Bertrand back with him to where he reportedly saw the UFO. Bertrand had recently spoken with two women stopped in a car outside of Exeter who claimed that an unidentified flying object with pulsing red lights followed them for 12 miles. Between this report and Muscarello’s obvious distress, Bertrand wanted to get to the bottom of the incident, and the only way to do that would be to see the aircraft for himself.
The two men waited outside the farm where Muscarello first spotted the UFO passing overhead. It appeared, silently and suddenly, and alarmed Bertrand as much as it had initially scared Muscarello. As an Air Force veteran, Bertrand was familiar with a wide array of aircraft as an Air Force veteran, but even he had never seen anything like this, as it didn’t appear to have wings or a tail. He radioed back to the station, and fellow officer David Hunt joined the two men shortly thereafter. Hunt also witnessed the unusual flying object. After the three men returned to the station and filed a report, the Exeter police chief reported the situation to Pease Air Force Base in Newington.
The Air Force gets involved in Exeter
The Air Force opened an investigation into what would come to be known as “The Exeter Incident.” Major David H. Griffin, who was the Base Disaster Control Officer and a Command Pilot at Pease, filed an official report following the investigation. He wrote, “At this time have been unable to arrive at a probable cause of this sighting. The three observers seem to be stable reliable persons, especially the two patrolman. I viewed the area of the sighting and found nothing in the area that could be the probable cause. Pease AFB had 5 B-47 aircraft flying in the area during this period but do not believe they had any connection with this sighting.”
Major Griffin noted in the report that “the object was erratic in movement and would disappear behind trees and houses in the area. It would then appear at a position other than where it disappeared. When in view it would act as a floating leaf.” His description matched not only what Muscarello, Bertrand, and Hunt claimed to have seen, but it also aligned with reports that had been cropping up across eastern New Hampshire for weeks.
Despite the mounting number of witnesses, an Air Force spokesperson told reporters that what people were seeing was an aircraft performing a high altitude exercise. As for the pulsating lights, the spokesperson explained that a weather inversion can sometimes make stars appear to move, and the case was effectively closed. Investigative journalist John G. Fuller wasn’t as convinced as Air Force personnel—Fuller had been interviewing witnesses since the initial reports came in about what Muscarello, Bertrand, and Hunt saw.
In particular, Fuller felt that Bertrand and Hunt were reliable individuals whose accounts of that evening should be taken more seriously. Bertrand and Hunt were inclined to agree with him. In December 1965, the two officers penned a letter to Project Blue Book, a long-running investigative program operated by the Air Force that was dedicated to UFO sightings.
Bertrand wrote, “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.”
They added, “We would both appreciate it very much if you would help us eliminate the possible conclusion that some people have made in that we might have A) made up the story, or B) were incompetent observers. — We appreciate the problems the Air Force must have with a lot of irresponsible reports on this subject, and don’t want to cause you any unnecessary trouble. On the other hand, we think you probably understand our position.”
Project Blue Book did not respond to the initial letter, but the two men were persistent and sent another. Then, in January 1966, Lieutenant Colonel John Spaulding finally replied. Lieutenant Spaulding worked in the Office of the Secretary of the Air Force, and he said they were ultimately “unable to identify the object you observed on September 3, 1965.” Spaulding added, “In 19 years of investigating over 10,000 reports of unidentified flying objects, the evidence has proved almost conclusively that reported aerial phenomena have been objects either created and sent aloft by man, generated by atmospheric conditions, or caused by celestial bodies or the residue of meteoric activity.”
The aftermath
Time passed, and Bertrand, Muscarello, and Hunt maintained that what they saw that early September morning was real—even if they were unable to explain what it was, exactly, that they saw. Norman’s brother, Thomas Muscarello, has spoken about Norman’s claims several times over the years, particularly after Norman’s death in 2003. Thomas believes his brother’s story and wishes that others did as well. He said that Norman faced intense ridicule for the rest of his life, and it wasn’t until the creation of the annual Exeter UFO Festival that Thomas felt like his brother finally got the recognition he deserved.
Speaking with Seacoastonline in 2012, Thomas summed up New Hampshire’s history with extraterrestrials best: “A lot more people are getting their eyes opened. It’s like my brother said, ‘With all the galaxies, how can we be so naive to believe we’re alone?'”
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