On a September night in 1965, a teenager hitchhiking home through southern New Hampshire changed the way Exeter, New Hampshire, would remember itself—and invented a holiday its descendants still keep. Sixty-one years later, the town marks that strange night every Labor Day weekend with neon-green alien faces in storefront windows, an alien costume parade through downtown, trolley rides to the incident site, and two full days of speakers inside Exeter Town Hall. The Exeter UFO Festival, now produced by the Exeter Area Kiwanis Club, is equal parts civic fundraiser, folk-history pageant, and serious conference on unidentified aerial phenomena—and it is anchored, always, to one of the most famous and best-documented UFO sightings in American history.
The story begins just after two o'clock on the morning of September 3, 1965. Eighteen-year-old Norman Muscarello, who had graduated from Exeter High School the previous June and was about three weeks away from reporting for service in the United States Navy, was walking along New Hampshire Route 150 from Amesbury, Massachusetts, back toward Exeter. He had recently sold his car, so he walked and hitched when rides were available. A few miles outside Exeter, in the neighboring town of Kensington, he noticed five flashing red lights in the distance and assumed they were emergency vehicles. As he drew closer, he realized the lights were hovering above the treetops, illuminating a nearby field and two farmhouses in a brilliant red glow. Muscarello, who estimated the object to be eighty to ninety feet wide, was terrified. It made no sound at all. When it began drifting toward him, he threw himself into a ditch by the roadside. He ran to a neighboring house and pounded on the door for help; the family inside later admitted they had heard him but were too frightened to answer. Finally, he flagged down a passing car, and the couple who stopped drove the trembling young man to the Exeter police station.
Night-desk officer Reginald Toland knew Muscarello and was struck by his genuine distress. Toland radioed fellow officer Eugene Bertrand Jr., who told a strange story of his own. Earlier that evening Bertrand had stopped to help a frightened woman parked on Route 108 who said a "huge object with flashing red lights" had followed her car from Epping to Exeter, hovered over her, and then flown away. Bertrand had considered her a "kook" at the time. After hearing Muscarello's nearly identical account, he drove the young man back to the Kensington field to investigate.
As the two men walked across the field toward the woods where Muscarello had first seen the lights, horses in a nearby corral began kicking and neighing frantically, and dogs all around started to bark and howl. Then, slowly, an object rose from the trees beyond the corral. Bertrand described it as "this huge, dark object as big as a barn over there, with red flashing lights on it." The object swayed as it approached, silent. Drawing on his police training, Bertrand dropped to one knee and drew his revolver—then decided against firing and instead grabbed Muscarello, and the two men sprinted back to the patrol car. They watched the object hover about a hundred feet away and a hundred feet up, rocking back and forth while its pulsing red lights flashed from right to left and back in quick cycles, before it finally climbed over the trees and disappeared. A third officer, David Hunt, arrived in time to see it too. The three men filed separate reports, and the Exeter police chief contacted nearby Pease Air Force Base. The Air Force sent officers to interview them, the Manchester Union-Leader got to three of them first, and the story went national.
The attention was amplified by a journalist named John G. Fuller, a columnist for the Saturday Review who came to Exeter to investigate personally. He interviewed Muscarello, the officers, and a remarkable number of residents with their own accounts of strange lights in the autumn of 1965—a senior at Exeter High School riding with his mother and aunt, a woman who called the police station to describe an orange ball nearly "as big as the harvest Moon" hovering outside her window before dawn. The Air Force investigated the case, and though skeptics have offered terrestrial explanations, the incident remains unexplained to many.
The festival that commemorates that night did not arrive for decades, and when it did, it was as much about building community as about unexplained phenomena. The energy of Kiwanis volunteers finally produced a full festival on September 5, 2009—the inaugural Exeter UFO Festival, a daylong celebration designed around the theme "free, fun, family and raising money for charity." Event organizer Dean Merchant, a historical researcher and journalist from Stratham, was a driving force, and UFO researcher Kathleen Marden, a New Hampshire author and lecturer, helped shape it. From the start the festival mixed "frivolous and fun" activities with serious presentations by nationally and internationally respected researchers, exactly as it still does today.
It remains, above all, a charity endeavor. All profits from the festival benefit deserving children and families served by Seacoast charities and organizations, and by extension the Exeter Area Kiwanis Club's broader work in the community. That mission has given even skeptics a reason to come.
The 2026 edition, scheduled for Saturday, September 5, and Sunday, September 6—the heart of Labor Day weekend—adds an extra layer of history. This year marks the 65th anniversary of the alleged 1961 abduction of Barney and Betty Hill, the other great New Hampshire UFO story. The Hills' niece, Kathleen Marden, who serves as trustee of their estate and family archivist, is the festival's keynote speaker, delivering a presentation on the Hill abduction's anniversary. The speaker schedule runs both days in Exeter Town Hall, with a two-day pass for the full series. The roster includes sessions on topics ranging from meditation and alien contact to Brazil's 1996 Varginha case, the Roswell deathbed confessions, a history of UFO sightings on classic sitcoms, and the U.S. government's response to UFOs and UAPs since 1947. Sunday closes with a panel discussion featuring all the speakers.
For families, the festival offers the lighter side of extraterrestrial life. There is face painting, a kids' "UFO Crash Site," an alien costume contest and parade, and even an alien pet contest on Saturday afternoon. Alien belly-dancing demonstrations and hula-hoop lessons take place in the Town Hall Common park, and trolley rides carry visitors out to the site where Muscarello saw the lights. Merchants and restaurants across town join the celebration with alien-themed products and menu items, and a souvenir shop by the town hall sells the festival's T-shirts, mugs, posters, and tote bags. The two-day event is dedicated in 2026 to the memory of John C. Perkins, a fellow Kiwanis member and friend who died since the last festival.
But the residents of Exeter long ago embraced the paradox. The festival doesn't exist to settle the question of what hovered over that Kensington field in 1965—its organizers happily acknowledge that it won't change anyone's mind. It exists to gather the town, to raise money for its children, and to keep alive a story so strange and so well documented that it refuses to fade away. Every Labor Day weekend, believers and skeptics alike remember the frightened teenager who, on a quiet September night more than half a century ago, looked up and saw the lights.