It does not take much for something odd to show up in my feed, and today was no different.
This morning it was something about the Exeter UFO Festival coming up this September in Exeter, New Hampshire. It is not just a random event either. The whole thing traces back to September 3, 1965, when an 18-year-old reported a UFO hovering over a field, and even the responding police officers said they saw it too. That one event turned into national headlines and, decades later, a full weekend festival with speakers, activities, and yes… plenty of people dressed as aliens.
If you want to take a look at it yourself:
Exeter UFO Festival official site
https://exeterufofestival.org/
So now I have UFOs on my mind.
That brought me back to a conversation I had about 10 years ago at Red Wing. I was stopped by someone who wanted to discuss the UFO that was above that field back in the 70s.
Now most people might find that a little odd. Not me. My answer was simple. Tell me more.
We stood there for about 20 minutes, and they walked me through what they saw. Something hovering over the main field. Not moving fast. Not passing through. It just sat there for a while before it finally moved off. The kind of story that sticks with someone.
And honestly, they did not seem crazy. Just someone who had seen something they never really forgot.
So that story stayed with me.
Fast forward to today, reading about Exeter, and it all clicked back.
So I looked it up.
There is a recorded UFO sighting in Chelmsford dated November 28, 1978. The entire entry is just this:
November 28, 1978
Location: Chelmsford, Massachusetts
Summary: “1 mother ship with her smaller ones.”
That is it. No field. No Red Wing. No Maple Road.
But here is the part that makes you stop for a second.
That date lines up with the timeframe the person was talking about.
That location lines up with South Chelmsford.
And the description is not something small or quick. It is something people would remember.
So now you have two versions of what could be the same moment.
One version ends up in a database as a date and a sentence.
The other version stays local, told by someone standing in that exact field.
Same time. Same place. Same kind of story.
And now, thanks to a random post about a UFO festival, that old Red Wing story does not feel quite so random anymore.
If something really did hover over that field back in 1978, maybe Chelmsford had its own moment… we just did not know to look up.