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- [00:00]
Progressive Insurance
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- [00:19]
Carvana Customer
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- [00:50]
Lowe's Representative
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- [01:25]
McLeod Andrews
Sometimes the quietest towns harbor the loudest secrets. When lights appear in the skies overhead, whispers ripple through a small community. Even the most skeptical find themselves looking up. But what happens when those lights refuse to disappear and even start growing closer and closer and closer? Welcome to Sightings, the series that takes you inside the world's most mysterious supernatural events. Each episode brings you a thrilling story that puts you at the center of the action, followed by a discussion that dives into the accounts that inspired the story and our takes on them. I'm McLeod.
- [02:07]
Brian Sigley
And I'm Brian and welcome back after we took our first week off, though. For those of you who are Q Code plus subscribers, we hope you enjoyed our bonus Listener Story episode just for you.
- [02:17]
McLeod Andrews
That one was a lot of fun and if you'd like to get Sightings ad free and get cool bonus content like a new Listener Stories episode coming at the end of this month. Subscribe to Q code + right now.
- [02:28]
Brian Sigley
On Apple Podcasts, but I'm really excited about today's episode. June gloom is finally over. The ghosts have gone back into hiding, thank goodness. And today we are bringing you a good old fashioned UFO story. The Exeter incident in 1965, New Hampshire.
- [02:46]
McLeod Andrews
So keep your eyes on the skies as we venture onto dark back roads for one twisty supernatural tale that won't be easy to shake. Find out why on this episode of Sightings. My name is Eugene Bertrand and I've been a police officer in Exeter, New Hampshire for going on six years. Before that, I served in the Air Force during the Korean War. So I know a thing or two about aircraft, military and civilian alike. I've seen B47 bombers, fighted jets, helicopters, you name it. Point is, I'm not some starry eyed civilian who mistakes Venus for a flying saucer. Which is why everything that's been going on here in Exeter these past few months is still keeping me up at night. It all began back in early September when I was on a late night patrol shift. Just after 1am I was cruising Route 101 and honestly just enjoying the quiet when I spotted a car pulled over about two miles outside town. I stopped behind the vehicle and approached the driver's window and my flashlight beam illuminated a woman who looked absolutely terrified. I mean genuinely scared stiff and not from car trouble or a close call with some deer. So I asked what the trouble was and she told me she'd been followed not by another car, but by something in the sky, a huge object with bright red lights, and it had chased her for more than 12 miles. Now, I'd like to say I took a story seriously, but back then, goodness, it feels like a year ago, not just months. I guess I was stubborn or closed minded or stupid or all three. I looked around, scanning the darkness above us, but saw nothing unusual. And though the woman kept asking if she should report it somewhere, I didn't know what to tell her so I just asked if she needed medical attention and she said no. So she started a car and went on her way. And I really didn't give it much more thought than that. I just filed it away as another odd encounter and a job full of them. But about an hour later, my radio crackled to life. It was Toland back at the station, asking if I'd noticed anything unusual during my patrol. And the way he asked it, careful, like he wasn't sure he should even be asking, made me immediately think of that woman. So I told him about her story and he went quiet for a long moment. Then he said I should come back to the station. We had a situation. When I walked into the station, I found the young man sitting in one of the chairs near Tolan's desk. He couldn't have been more than 18 or 19, and he was chain smoking like his life depended on it. If I didn't know better, I'd have guessed the kid had seen a ghost. But considering how that evening was going, I was certain he was there for something much, much different. Toland introduced him as Norman Muscarello, a local kid who was about to ship out for the Navy. But that night, Norman had quite the story to tell. He said he'd been hitchhiking home from his girlfriend's place when he saw some kind of craft in the sky. Not just lights in the distance, but something huge and close, with five bright red lights that pulsed in a pattern. The kid said it had swooped down at him, forcing him to dive into a ditch for cover. As I listened, I thought to myself, two UFO reports in one night in quiet little Exeter. It felt to me like someone was playing a prank. But then I looked at Norman again, at that genuine terror in his eyes, and I knew this was no joke. Not to him, anyway. He even begged me to take him back out to the spot where he'd seen the thing so he could prove he wasn't crazy. And I don't know, maybe it was the coincidence of encountering that woman or maybe it was just my curiosity getting the better of me, but I agreed. We drove out to the Kennington town line where Norman had his encounter. Just past the dining farmhouse. I parked by a telephone pole and we sat there in the cruiser, windows down, listening to the night, crickets, the occasional dog. Nothing out of the ordinary. And after about 10 minutes I wanted to call it, but Norman suggested we walk into the field where we'd have better visibility. We'd only been walking a minute or two when the horses at the dining farm began acting up, whinnying like something had spooked them bad. Then Norman grabbed my arm and pointed to the tree line. And what I saw up there defied everything I thought I knew about aircraft. It was dark and massive, easily the size of a house, with five brilliant red lights pulsing in sequence. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Then backwards. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. It moved towards us and I realized it was absolutely silent. No engine noise, no rotor wash, nothing. So my hand instinctively went to my service revolver. But as I gripped the pistol, another thought hit me. What good would a.38 special do against something like this? So instead, I grabbed Norman by the shoulder and hightailed it back to the cruiser. And as we dove inside, I immediately radioed back to station. What we'd seen. And just as I was finishing, the thing shot upward and disappeared into the night, moving faster than anything I'd ever seen before. Now, back at the station, Tolan took our statements. And within an hour, another call came in. Someone in Hampton claimed to have seen the same object, describing identical red lights and impossible movements. So, unsure of what else to do, Tolan made a call to Pease Air Force Base. If anyone knew what was flying around out there, it would be them. Within hours, a pair of Air Force officials met us in the station to interview Norman Toland and me. They asked detailed questions about what we'd seen, took notes, asked us to draw pictures. But I got the distinct impression that they didn't know what to make of our story any more than we did. Over the next few days, I couldn't get that night out of my head. I'd lie in bed repeating it over and over. Those pulsing lights, that impossible movement, the absolute silence of the thing. More calls came into the station, too. People all over reporting similar sightings. But every time I tried to respond to one, I arrived too late. Whatever it was out there seemed to appear and disappear at will. All of the sightings quickly became the talk of the town, even if most people were treating it like some kind of joke. But I wasn't. And neither was Norman. He called me one night when I was lying in bed, unable to sleep. He sounded restless, almost desperate, and wanted to go out looking for the object again. Part of me knew I should let it go, that we were getting obsessed with something we'd never understand. But another part of me needed answers. We met at an all night diner on the outskirts of town, and over coffee and cigarettes, we compared notes about what we'd seen. But as we talked, I noticed a man sitting alone in a back booth. He'd been there when we arrived, but something seemed off about him. It was as if he was trying hard to look like he wasn't watching us. I don't know. Maybe I was being paranoid, but something about the whole situation made me uncomfortable. Norman and I kept talking and soon finished our coffee. But as I drove home, I couldn't help checking my mirrors. That's when I noticed a car behind me, just far back enough to avoid being obvious about it. I took a few random turns and the car stayed with me. Then I slammed the accelerator and took a hard right down a side street, killed my lights and waited. And as the sedan cruised past, I saw the driver craning his neck, looking for me. But who was following me and why. The next several days were quiet. Too quiet, if I'm being blunt. The sighting reports dried up and the town started to return to normal. People moved on to other gossip, other concerns, as people do. Even my own memory of that night in that field started to fade, even if only slightly. Then about two weeks later, I had another encounter. I was driving home from my shift, taking back roads when I spotted a bright red light up ahead. At first I thought it might be a car with a busted tail light, but as I watched, the light lifted up into the air and sped over my cruiser. I pulled over and watched the thing as it hovered some hundred feet overhead. Strangely, it didn't have that pulsing light pattern like the last thing I'd seen in the sky. But I could tell you one thing for certain. This was no airplane. It was shaped like an upside down plate with a bright glow on the bottom and that bright red light on top. It was difficult to gauge the size of the thing, but it swooped over my patrol car a few times, then shot straight up into the night sky and disappeared, leaving me standing there on that empty road with my heart pounding and mind racing. And as I drove back toward town, only one thought kept running through my head. What in Sam Hill was really going on in Exeter?
- [12:38]
Carvana Customer
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- [13:25]
McLeod Andrews
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- [13:29]
Carvana Customer
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- [13:37]
Lowe's Representative
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- [14:13]
McLeod Andrews
September stretched into October. The sightings didn't stop, and if anything, they became more frequent. I'm talking dozens of calls from farmers, teachers, businessmen, housewives, all kinds of people, all describing basically the same thing. A large silent craft with pulsing red lights, usually disk like moving in that same impossible way Norman and I had witnessed. The most interesting account, though, came from a man who insisted on anonymity. He claimed to have watched an Air Force jet approach one of these objects, but the moment the jet got close, every light on the object went dark, as if it knew it was being followed. Then it shot away faster than anything he'd ever seen, leaving the jet circling the empty air like a confused dog. That story convinced me to try again with Pease Air Force Base. I expected the usual runaround. You know how the military can be with sharing information. But I fortunately was connected to a sergeant named Robert Sarvash, who, instead of stonewalling me, was surprisingly candid. He confirmed that, yes, there had been multiple sightings reported to the base, and even admitted in a lowered voice that he'd seen one of the strange objects himself. But he said that any information that was gathered was sent immediately to his specialists at Wright Patterson in Ohio. It was out of his hands, and he couldn't offer anything further than that. After I hung up, I realized that if the Air Force was taking these sightings seriously enough to send them to specialists in Ohio, then there was certainly more going on in Exeter than met the eye. So I started doing research and mapped out every sighting that had come through our stations, plus the ones I'd heard about from other towns in the area. Each location was marked with a red pen, and the pattern that emerged was impossible to ignore. Almost every single sighting, including my own, had occurred near high tension power lines. Not those regular telephone poles you see along most roads, but those massive steel towers that carry electricity across long distances, the ones you can sometimes hear buzzing when you walk underneath them. Could these crafts be drawn to the power lines for some reason? Maybe siphoning electricity even it sounded far fetched but it was the only pattern I could find. So I called the Exeter power department and spoke with one of their engineers. I tried to be casual about it, asking if they'd noticed any unusual power drains or fluctuations in the past month. But the engineer said everything had been normal. No one explained drops in voltage, no equipment failures, nothing out of the ordinary at all. Still, I couldn't shake the feeling there was a connection. So I expanded my research, spending evenings at the library, going through newspaper archives, looking for reports of UFO sightings from other parts of the country. And you know what I found? Time and time again, these sightings seemed to coincide with power outages in the same regions. Sometimes the timing was off by a day or two, but the pattern was hard to ignore. Meanwhile, the sightings continued. I kept digging and kept noticing strange men seemingly watching me out of the corner of my eye. And I mean it when I say I wanted to run up to some of them and shake them and ask them what the hell was happening in and around my town. But I didn't have to, because something surprising happened. The Pentagon decided to weigh in on the whole mystery. In late October, Washington released an official statement claiming that the Exodus sightings were the result of weather inversions in the area. According to their explanation, a layer of cold air trapped between warm layers can make stars and planets appear to move erratically in the sky, creating the illusion of a ufo. I'd been in the Air Force. I knew what planes looked like, what stars looked like, and what a weather inversion looked like. And what was happening in Exeter was none of those things. And if that statement was insulting, what came next was even worse. A few days after the Pentagon's statement, I received a letter from Major Hector Quintanilla at Wright Patterson Air Force Base, the same place that Sarvash had mentioned. It stated that what Norman and I had seen was actually part of Operation big blast, a B47 training exercise that had taken place that night. And that. Oh, that really got my blood boiling. I'd worked with B47s during my time in the Air Force. I knew exactly what they looked like, how they sounded, and how they moved. But what we saw that night had no wings, no tail, and moved like nothing I'd ever seen. The fact that the Pentagon and the Air Force couldn't even get their stories straight told me everything I needed to know. They were scrambling for explanations and seemingly had no more idea what we'd seen any more than I did. And at that point, I was starting to think the search for Answers was useless. And maybe this was how these things went. Strange lights appear, People get scared. The government offers flimsy explanations, explanations. And everyone moved on. Except I couldn't move on. Then, earlier tonight, something changed. Reports started coming in of rolling blackouts across the Northeast. Nothing catastrophic, just brief power failures lasting from a few minutes to a few hours. And with those blackouts came more sightings. I heard about one in Syracuse several hours ago, and another just popped up on the radio that sounds more than a bit familiar. Apparently, a pilot flying over Clay, New York, reported seeing an unidentifiable craft hovering over a power substation just before the lights went dark in that area. But the ship that had lights, all right. Five of them, counting up and down in a repeating pattern. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. It's happening again, but this time on a larger scale. The lights in my house just started flickering. The horses on the property nearby are getting riled up. And as I stepped outside to look up at the sky, the hair on my arm stood on end, like the air itself was electrified. I don't know what's about to happen here in Exeter, but after everything I've learned, everything I've witnessed, I know one thing for certain. Whatever happens next, it isn't going to be normal. And no matter what the Pentagon says this is, no weather inversion.
- [20:58]
Brian Sigley
Sightings will be back just after this. Okay, sighting superfans, you already know that the world is a strange and mysterious place. But if you're hungry for even more deep dives into the unexplained, I want to recommend the Belief Hole podcast. Every other week, the three brothers of Belief Hole bring you true stories and in depth research on everything from near invisible sky creatures to sinister mimics that impersonate familiar voices and lure you into the dark. Yeah, gotta look that one up. That sounds pretty awesome. But seriously, whatever supernatural itch you need to scratch, Belief Hole has you covered. I love the research that they do, and their brotherly banter makes me wish that I had brothers of my own to make a podcast with. No offense to you, McLeod, but join me in listening to the Belief Hole podcast. That's B E L I E F H O L E. Available on Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. Check out the show notes for links, and I will see you in the hole.
- [22:02]
Lowe's Representative
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- [22:08]
McLeod Andrews
Unlimited Premium Wireless for $15 a month is back, so I Thought it would be fun if we made $15 bills.
- [22:15]
Lowe's Representative
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- [22:19]
McLeod Andrews
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- [22:24]
Carvana Customer
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Brian Sigley
See mintmobile.com Put us in a box.
- [22:36]
McLeod Andrews
Go ahead.
- [22:38]
Lowe's Representative
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- [23:12]
McLeod Andrews
Welcome back to Sightings. Woo. We're out of June gloom. Warming up in the glow of unidentified flying object lights once again. The thing that's interesting to me about this one is how widespread it is. It sounds like a whole lot of people saw the same thing, kind of like the Mothman, but over a larger geography.
- [23:35]
Brian Sigley
Yeah. This happened over the course of months and over. Well, it was mostly confined to the Exeter area until that big blackout at the end that we'll talk about, which took out most of the northeastern seaboard.
- [23:47]
McLeod Andrews
Whoa.
- [23:47]
Brian Sigley
And interestingly, was accompanied by a lot of UFO sightings at the time. And really cool element of this story is how closely it ties into an episode we did way back at the beginning of the series, the Barney and Betty Hill alien abduction story.
- [24:01]
McLeod Andrews
Oh, yeah. Was this the same area, roughly?
- [24:05]
Brian Sigley
It is indeed. Yeah. Exeter is only about 30 to 40 minutes from where Barney and Betty Hill lived. Where they had their encounter was farther north in New Hampshire.
- [24:15]
McLeod Andrews
And remind me of the timing. They didn't overlap. This wasn't at the same time as Barney and Betty Hill, was it?
- [24:20]
Brian Sigley
It was very, very close. 1961 was when Barney and Betty Hill had their experience. As we're gonna talk about, though, their story came out right in the middle of this whole thing happening.
- [24:31]
McLeod Andrews
Oh, interesting.
- [24:33]
Brian Sigley
Indeed. And then I think some of our favorite elements are gonna pop up. Like the Project Blue Book team is going to show up in here. And it all starts kind of melding in all these kind of slightly older UFO stories.
- [24:45]
McLeod Andrews
Oh boy. I wonder if we're approaching a mega theory.
- [24:48]
Brian Sigley
I guess so. Indeed. So before we dive into that, though, let me just say right off the bat, everything that happened in the story allegedly happened to people in Exeter. The character that you read was a real person was a sheriff's deputy. However, I did give him some qualities of other people. For instance, there was a reporter who is kind of the definitive source. This whole thing kind of swooped into Exeter when all this started happening. Interviewed a lot of people, came up with the whole power grid theory and wrote a book about it. I kind of gave all of his stuff to the character that you read just to make it easy.
- [25:22]
McLeod Andrews
Sure.
- [25:23]
Brian Sigley
To follow what's going on. But all of the sightings that I mentioned were authentic to what the reports are of what happened in Exeter, which is wild to me.
- [25:32]
McLeod Andrews
Yeah. And did it ever go beyond just seeing the lights in the sky and the saucer shaped object or like, did anyone get abducted? Is there ever any reports of interactions?
- [25:43]
Brian Sigley
No, there's no abductions accompanied with this, which I suppose is a good thing.
- [25:47]
McLeod Andrews
Right.
- [25:47]
Brian Sigley
But yeah, this one was just a whole lot of sightings. And I think the other thing that's kind of cool, I kind of get. And this was before close encounters with the third kind. But you know how close encounters with third kind is the, you know, the flashing lights and the whole thing, you know, like the kind of sequence of it all resonated with me in this story too, because the one consistent thing that popped up was people kept seeing this pattern happening in the sky. Like 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. These lights. Which is kind of cool.
- [26:16]
McLeod Andrews
Yeah. And it's interesting. I'm like tempted to immediately jump to like, oh, it's like just military testing, like early drone technology. But like, they're all described as being silent and drones are very loud.
- [26:28]
Brian Sigley
And even if it was some kind of airplane, and there are theories that this could have been some kind of airplane, so many people saw it that described it as non airplane shaped, you know, and our narrator, for instance, he really was an Air Force veteran. He served in the Korean War. He knew what these planes looked like. And he said this was not that.
- [26:47]
McLeod Andrews
Yeah.
- [26:48]
Brian Sigley
So it's kind of neat how it all kind of started snowballing once. It really started with that first kid who was hitchhiking home, saw something in the sky, came into the station freaking out, said he saw the row of red lights and the thing was kind of swooping towards him too. That's another kind of cool.
- [27:04]
McLeod Andrews
Yeah. Him and the woman, though, they actually had encounters where, like, it seemed to come after them.
- [27:09]
Brian Sigley
Yes. And that's something else that's kind of neat about this story is it walks wasn't just some distant object in the sky that people saw and just Pointed at and had a conversation about. This thing was very active. This thing seemed responsive in a way, especially when these military jets started flying towards it, which must have been a really cool sight to see, I'll bet.
- [27:28]
McLeod Andrews
So, obviously, it seems like there's a lot of encounters and a lot of stories about these sightings. How do we. What's the provenance of these sightings? How we. What's the documentation? How do we know about it?
- [27:39]
Brian Sigley
Well, in addition to all of the news reports that were happening around the time, I think the kind of the definitive source about this story is a book written by that reporter I mentioned. His name is John Fuller. Conveniently, he also wrote the book about Barney and Betty Hill. That book was called the Interrupted Journey. This book is called Incident at Exeter. And he interviewed all of the key players involved. He's the one who came up with a theory about the power grids. He was a real skeptic. And he heard about this was going on in Exeter, went up and started.
- [28:09]
McLeod Andrews
Investigating, basically interviewing people.
- [28:11]
Brian Sigley
Interviewing people. And just wanted an explanation for this. And he was the one who really started pushing the Air Force Force to be like, what is going on here?
- [28:18]
McLeod Andrews
Yeah. So do you know what a weather inversion is? I mean, it got. We got a little bit of it in the story, but.
- [28:25]
Brian Sigley
So a weather inversion basically is what happens when a layer of a different temperature air is kind of sandwiched between two other layers of air and it can cause some weird optical phenomena. Although people who have really looked at this said it can't cause stars and planets to move, you know.
- [28:43]
McLeod Andrews
Right. It sounds like. So either the government is covering up what it knows or covering up the fact that it has no idea?
- [28:50]
Brian Sigley
I'm inclined to think the latter, although is it plausible that there was some kind of military testing going on that this was related to, and they're just trying to keep under wraps that they had this weird craft?
- [29:01]
McLeod Andrews
I think it's plausible. I mean, I think it's plausible if you take away the craft part of it, maybe if it's actually like they're doing some experimentation with, like, more optical phenomenon or like. Or some other technology that isn't like a craft, but some sort of. I don't know.
- [29:19]
Brian Sigley
I don't even know what to think there with that, because meanwhile, like, Fuller, the reporter was casting a wider net and he figured out this whole power line connection, which this is the first time I've heard about that in a UFO story, which I think is kind of cool.
- [29:33]
McLeod Andrews
Yeah, I mean, like, topping off their batteries.
- [29:35]
Brian Sigley
Topping off their batteries.
- [29:36]
McLeod Andrews
Off of them. Yeah, that seems far fetched to me. But it is curious, like, what else they could be doing? Like, you would assume that an advanced civilization that's visiting us would have incredibly advanced information technology and computing capabilities and that somehow. I don't know if they were able to, like, glean information off of power stations or something. I don't know.
- [30:01]
Brian Sigley
That's what I was thinking, too.
- [30:03]
McLeod Andrews
Maybe they're really not even thinking about us or humans all that much. They're just kind of like, oh, okay, there's something. There's something here. There's like, we checked it out and, like, there's definitely something here. So that's worth marking down and revisiting to see if there's more detail we can discover.
- [30:19]
Brian Sigley
Yeah, no, that's. That's a really interesting theory. I mean, when I first read the power line thing, I'm like, oh, this is. This is kind of ridiculous and probably just a coincidence, but the blackout that happened at the end of this story. That happened. It was November 9, 1965. It was known as the. The Northeastern. Oh, sorry. It was known as the Great Northeast Blackout. And the power grid across New England and into Canada went down and kind of rolling blackouts through the entire region. And that night, the sightings expanded far beyond that little part of New Hampshire. There were reports in Syracuse, New York, there was another report of a pilot and five others who saw this giant red ball of light that was 100ft wide hovering again over a power substation. Whoa. Even in New York City, people saw weird things in the sky. I've read in several sources that a Life magazine photographer took a picture of New York City during the blackout and saw the outline of a silver shape in the sky. There is, of course, a famous photo of that blackout with the moon, which looks silvery. So I don't know if that's what they're referring to, but I didn't see anything unusual. But this whole blackout and these sightings kind of captured the world's attention again because this came right on the heels of the Barney and Betty Hill alien abduction story coming to light at the end of October, no more than two weeks before this blackout happened.
- [31:45]
McLeod Andrews
Hmm.
- [31:46]
Brian Sigley
It's kind of interesting, and I think that is a good way to lead us into theories on this.
- [31:51]
McLeod Andrews
Yeah, please. Because I actually don't have that many. I mean, like.
- [31:54]
Brian Sigley
Well, I get a little bit of skeptical gecko vibes going right now. So hit me with your skeptical gecko.
- [31:59]
McLeod Andrews
I don't know. I mean, like, this is A interesting one, if anything, kind of for lack of detail. It's like it's a bunch of people saying they saw something and the government doesn't have a satisfying answer. I mean, there is, obviously there's the mass hysteria is not the right word.
- [32:16]
Brian Sigley
But like ufomania, maybe.
- [32:18]
McLeod Andrews
Ufomania, perhaps like Barney and Betty Hill appearing in the midst of all this is proof that it was just on everybody's mind and people were looking for connections. I don't know. I, I, no, I, yeah, I'd love to hear theories that are out there beyond what I can cook up.
- [32:37]
Brian Sigley
Yeah, I have one. And it only came about in 2011. But to piggyback off of what you were just talking about, that, that does resonate with me though, the idea that this kind of exploded in the popular attention. We have what started as a few little sightings in New England, for instance, that gained enough steam basically that the Pentagon did a press conference about it and released this statement. Then in the middle of it, Barney and Betty Hill's story came out, I should say not willingly by them. A reporter caught wind of conversations they were having with their therapist or with some UFO group or something and blasted their story out there kind of against their permission. And the fact that this all was kind of in the public consciousness at the time when this giant blackout happened and people obviously, what are they going to do during a blackout? They're going to go outside or they're not going to sit in their house in the dark outside, look up. You're going to have people who say they see things. But you know, I think having a pilot in the sky seeing 100 foot wide.
- [33:42]
McLeod Andrews
Yes.
- [33:42]
Brian Sigley
Bright red glowing object is a lot.
- [33:45]
McLeod Andrews
Yeah, it sure is.
- [33:48]
Brian Sigley
But speaking of those lights, as I said, there is a theory here for what people might have been seeing and it has to do with that pattern that we talked about and that appeared in the story that 1, 2, 3, 4, 554-3-2 one of lights in a line kind of doing this repeating on and off thing. There is an airplane called a KC97 refueling tanker that has that exact light pattern on it.
- [34:15]
McLeod Andrews
Well, okay, that's pretty convenient.
- [34:20]
Brian Sigley
Yes, it is indeed. The plane was built in the 50s. It was used by our military through the late 70s. This was right in the smack metal of it. And this was not a secret plane. So the government had no reason to hide it necessarily. Which is why, I wonder, why did the government not say, oh, it's this plane, it has this exact light pattern on it, you know.
- [34:45]
McLeod Andrews
Right.
- [34:45]
Brian Sigley
Instead they came up with all of these other excuses that weren't that. That weren't the obvious one. Yeah.
- [34:51]
McLeod Andrews
Unless it was like connected to some sort of like classified operation where it's like, well, if you tell people that there's a fueling plane flying around, then you have to explain like what it's fueling or it's up to. And like, what it's up to is not something we want people to know about.
- [35:03]
Brian Sigley
That's valid. Because if it was fueling those B47s or something like that, which it did do, they did acknowledge that those B47 trainings were happening. But maybe there was something else that could have been in the air. Refueling. Also with this refueling plane, it does make sense that other planes were seen approaching it because they need to refuel.
- [35:23]
McLeod Andrews
Right, right. Oh, wow.
- [35:26]
Brian Sigley
But, but again, like, it still bumps with me that it seems if it's such a plain and obvious answer and that no one figured this out until 2011.
- [35:36]
McLeod Andrews
Yeah.
- [35:37]
Brian Sigley
Regardless of whether or not, you know, it is an airplane is a ufo, I still think it's a really interesting and compelling story because it brings together so many of kind of the highlights of that era of UFO lore in a way.
- [35:52]
McLeod Andrews
Yeah. I mean, the fact that it overlaps with Barney and better Hill is very.
- [35:56]
Brian Sigley
Enticing and not just time wise, but Barney and Betty Hill lived 30 minutes from this place. Yeah. You know, it's pretty cool. And then you've got the government involved and the weird explanations. It's just very emblematic of that era of UFO intrigue. But listeners, we'd love to hear what you think about this. Shoot us a message on Instagram itingspod or find us on Spotify. You can leave a comment there. We read those, we respond to those. We've got lots of people responding to each other's comments, which is a new feature that's on Spotify and which we love.
- [36:27]
McLeod Andrews
Oh, whoa. I haven't seen that yet. I have to check that out.
- [36:30]
Brian Sigley
Yeah, it's really great.
- [36:32]
McLeod Andrews
So, Brian, where are you abducting us to two weeks from now? See what I did there. It's not quite an abduction story. It's a little bit of a stretch, but I think it's a pretty good segue.
- [36:41]
Brian Sigley
That was good. That was good. That was a good segue. Yeah. Just a reminder, listeners, we are taking next week off and every other week for the next few weeks to give ourselves some time to work on some awesome stuff. But in two weeks, we've got a really cool story coming your way. This one is really unique, I think, because it straddles the line between a spooky story and a story of the unexplained. It involves communication with the other side. And I think that's really all I want to say about it, because I don't want to spoil it for everyone, other than to say it's a really compelling phenomena that I think we're going to have a lot to dig into.
- [37:16]
McLeod Andrews
On all right, I'm seeing crystal balls.
- [37:19]
Brian Sigley
Ah, interesting. We're not going quite that psychical in the whole thing, but it's pretty cool. So listeners, check us out in two weeks, same time, same place, place right here on Sightings.
- [37:32]
McLeod Andrews
See you then.
- [37:35]
Brian Sigley
Sightings is hosted by McLeod Andrews and Bryan Sigley. Produced by Brian Sigley, chase Kinzer and McLeod Andrews written by Brian Sigley Story music by Madison James Smith Series music by Mitch Bain Mixing and mastering by Pat Kicklater of Sundial Media Artwork by Nuno Cernatos. For a list of this episode's sources, check out our website@sightingspodcast.com Sightings is presented by Reverb and Q Code. If you like the show, be sure to subscribe on your favorite podcast platform so you're first to hear new episodes every week. And if you know other Supernatural fans, tell them about us. We'd really appreciate it.
- [38:17]
Progressive Insurance
This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever think about switching insurance companies to see if you could save some cash? Progressive makes it easy to see if you could save when you bundle your home in auto policies. Try it@progressive.com Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states.
- [38:36]
Brian Sigley
I'm Dallas Taylor, host of 20,000 Hz, a lovingly crafted podcast about the amazing world of sound. From music and video games to science and history, the world of sound is full of great stories. The TIE Fighter was made with a car passing by a microphone on wet pavement and then layered on top of that are these elephant growls.
- [39:03]
Lowe's Representative
You can choose between snares, you can start chopping up the Amen break and rearranging the individual beats into other configurations.
- [39:12]
Brian Sigley
And this barely scratches the surface. We've all also revealed the hidden stories behind the most iconic sounds to ever be created to unlock your sonic world. Follow 20,000HZ right here in your podcast player.