Now Brewing: Ameri-Scares New Hampshire: Ghosts From the Skies

INCIDENT AT EXETER

Around 2:00 AM on September 3, 1965, a young man named Norman Muscarello was hitchhiking to his home in Exeter, New Hampshire from nearby Amesbury, Massachusetts. With so few cars traveling at that hour, he was forced to walk most of the way. About five miles south of Exeter, he saw strange, flashing lights appear in the sky. Naturally enough, he at first believed the lights must be from a plane or a helicopter. However, the airborne object made no sound, and its unusual, erratic movements resembled those of no conventional aircraft. When the object suddenly zoomed toward him, he became frightened and dove into a ditch to hide. Eventually, the brilliant object soared away to the east, toward Hampton. When a car finally came along, he flagged it down. The driver took him to the police station in Exeter, where Muscarello told the officer on duty, Reginald "Scratch" Toland, everything he had seen.

A short time earlier, a police officer named Eugene Bertrand had met a woman on the road who also claimed to have seen a mysterious, brilliant object in the sky. She told Bertand this UFO had followed her for several miles down a dark, deserted highway. Bertrand initially dismissed the woman's claim, but now intrigued, he decided to take young Muscarello back to the place where he claimed to have seen the flying object. Soon after the two men arrived, the lights reappeared, this time rising from behind a grove of nearby trees. It wasn't long before another police officer, David Hunt, appeared on the scene. As the three men watched, the object hovered, zoomed, and fluttered wildly in midair. All three witnesses agreed that the object's aerobatic maneuvers surpassed the capabilities of any conventional aircraft.

For several weeks afterward, numerous people in the area reported seeing strange lights in the sky. US Air Force investigators offered a variety of “natural” explanations for the UFOs. They suggested that witnesses might be seeing airplanes they simply didn’t recognize, or strangely magnified stars — due to unusual atmospheric conditions — or even lights from nearby Pease Air Force Base (now closed). However, in the face of so much evidence and no satisfactory answers, the Air Force filed the Exeter sightings under "Unexplained."

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The passage above is a summation of an article titled "Outer Space Ghost Story" by John G. Fuller, which I discovered in the pages of Reader's Digest — the May 1966 issue — when I was about seven years old (right about the time the issue came out). My grandmother owned a huge collection of Reader's Digest issues, and I loved perusing them, especially the ones with stories about ghosts, the Loch Ness Monster, and flying saucers. Needless to say, I have since acquired a copy of the issue in question, as well as several others of special interest. The image above illustrates the Reader's Digest story. Fuller's piece originally appeared in Look magazine, and his bestselling book, Incident at Exeter, is one of the most well-known chronicles of UFO phenomena.

When researching legends, folklore, and historical events from the various states for the Ameri-Scares series, the Exeter story is one that came foremost to mind. After revisiting the myriad UFO stories from that time period, I felt it would be the perfect background for the Ameri-Scares New Hampshire book. I recently turned in my latest entry — Ohio: Fear the Grassman — and I'll be moving on to the New Hampshire book in short order. I'm tentatively titling it New Hampshire: Ghosts From the Skies.

I think it will be a fun one — hopefully as much for readers as for me.

From Danville to Durham: Big Flood, Big Fun

I headed to Martinsville after work on Friday, spent a relaxing evening, and on Saturday morning, headed back to Greensboro by way of Danville, where I hoped to snag a relatively new geocache. As I was heading into Danville by way of US 58, I found the highway closed at a point very near the cache location. After some massive storming on Thursday, apparently the water levels in the area have risen well past flood stage. After a considerable detour, on my approach to the cache, down a long hill, I could see the Dan River rising higher and rushing faster than I had ever seen it. It's hard to make out the water level in the photo above, but the bridge on the left typically has about double the clearance above the river that you see here.

At ground zero, which is near a medical facility barely above the river level, I saw that the river had flooded a portion of the parking lot. This was more than 24 hours after the big storms, and the water had evidently receded somewhat. The hint for the cache indicated I needed to look for a small evergreen at the edge of the parking lot, and, to my chagrin, I could find no small evergreen at that location. What I did find was lots of cut evergreen branches littering the ground. Well... fart! I figured at this point, the cache must have vamoosed. However, about that time, a young lady who worked at the nearby facility, who was obviously on a smoke break, wandered over and asked if I was looking for "the little bottle somebody had placed out here." I said I was. She told me the evergreen tree had been cut down a few days earlier, but someone had moved the "bottle" to a different spot. She then pointed it out to me. Well, what do you know! Saved by a muggle! And I had been on the verge of writing off this side trip as a wasted venture. I explained geocaching to her, which she appeared to find amusing, and then off I went.

I took a different route back toward US 29 to head south to Greensboro. But... hang it all! Just shy of the exit to the highway, I come upon several feet of standing water and a bunch of cones blocking the road. From here, the only way to the highway was another lengthy detour. So, I decided to bite the bullet and see if I could make it through the water obstacle. Suffice it to say I did, though I ended up having to perform a slight — and fortunately simple — repair to the trusty Toyota once I got past this new, temporary lake.

From near the geocache site, the view looking east

The view looking south

The view looking west

The obstacle I faced on the way to US 29. Made it!

After successfully quitting Danville, I headed back home to Greensboro for a brief respite between travels. Then I picked up Kimberly at Casa di Brugger, and off we went, bound for Durham and long-overdue visit with my former next-door neighbors and fellow geocachers, TravelinFarmFam, a.k.a. Paul & Jamie. Since they left Greensboro, their family has grown by two much younger members. During the intervening years, I've seen Paul several times, when he's come to deal with issues at their house next door, but I haven't seen Jamie since they left here in 2013, and I had never met their wee little offspring before.

It would be safe to say it wasn't long after our arrival at Casa di FarmFam that the first bottle of wine popped its cork. Things haven't changed too much with Paul & Jamie because, way back when, they owned magical wine glasses. Those are glasses that magically refill themselves when one is looking away. Apparently, they still keep some of these marvelous items on hand because, even after drinking a prodigious amount, the wine level in my glass never really diminished. I must have looked away several times. Wonderful and strange, isn't it?

For dinner, Paul grilled some of his famous burgers — bison, this this go-round. Paul has always been an admirable grill master, and he once again proved his prowess, as did Jamie with some delicious roasted vegetables and risotto. And I must tell you that these fine youngsters up and introduced me to Paqui ghost pepper tortilla chips. For them, the Paqui chips were a little too hot to enjoy, and Ms. B. got the hiccups after trying her first sample. However, I found these to be the most perfect chips I've ever enjoyed, and I was happy to finish the bag for our friends, so that none of these incredible contents should go to waste. The Paqui people sponsor the "One Chip Challenge," and I've actually craved the opportunity to try one of those hot-ass bastards. In fact, I just ordered a sampler package of Paqui chips from Amazon.com. Because, well, I kind of had to, didn't I? Anyhoo, we ended up watching some YouTube show with a hot, HOT chicken wing challenge, featuring numerous hot sauces, most of which I have already tried and survived. The viewing made for good fun. And it has done flung a cravin' on me... hence the ordering of the surpassing hot goodies mentioned above.

This morning, Jamie prepared a fabulous breakfast, and then the lot of us took off to do a little geocaching. Kind of like old times, except for the pair of wee young additions to the gang. We found a few caches, didn't find a couple, and then, with great sadness, we parted ways. About the time Ms. B. and I hit the highway, we decided we would need some lunch before we got home. So, we hauled ourselves over to Hillsborough BBQ Company, which has long been a favorite lunchtime destination, particularly for those of us out geocaching. And  — how fortuitous! — there is a relatively new geocache (Kiersten's Birthday Cache [GC8J2DD]) just across the road from the restaurant, which of course I have now claimed.

There's a new Ameri-Scares novel brewing upstairs, this one for the state of New Hampshire, chronicling a reprise of the famous UFO sightings near the town of Exeter in the year 1965. I first learned of these events when I was about six or seven years old, from an issue of Reader's Digest that my Grandparents owned (my grandmother collected years and years' worth of Reader's Digest issues). It was an article called "Outer Space Ghost Story," by John G. Fuller, and it immediately caught my youthful attention. A while back, on eBay, I found that particular issue plus a couple of others, which featured articles on the Loch Ness Monster and the Haunting of the George & Dragon Inn in England. So, of course, I now have copies of my own. "Incident at Exeter" seemed a perfect subject for a new Ameri-Scares novel, so I may take some of the brainstorming I've already done and begin composing an outline this evening.

So, this weekend saw me relaxing in the extreme to being remarkably productive. But it's about zoomed past now, and tomorrow it'll be back to the office and a full week of work. I so need a break from the break.

Till tomorrow and beyond.