Incident at Exeter

About the Author

John Grant Fuller Jr. (1913–1990) was a widely read journalist best known for his long-running "Trade Winds" column in Saturday Review, with no background in UFO research before this book. He went on to write The Interrupted Journey (1966), the landmark account of Betty and Barney Hill's case, also from New Hampshire and also already covered on this site, and later authored nonfiction on subjects ranging from a faith-healing controversy (Arigo, 1974) to industrial pollution (We Almost Lost Detroit, 1975) and aviation disaster (The Ghost of Flight 401, 1976) — a career built on the same investigative-journalism approach he brought to Exeter.

This site's own key-figures entry on Fuller notes that his sustained press profile around this book directly fed the climate that produced Congress's first public UFO hearing, before the House Armed Services Committee in April 1966 — making this book not just a chronicle of the Exeter case but a documented contributor to its era's broader political response to UFO reporting.

Historical Context & Origins

One bibliographic detail worth stating precisely: the original 1966 G.P. Putnam's Sons hardcover's title page carries the subtitle "...Over America Today," while the later Berkley Medallion mass-market paperback reprint, the edition most commonly available today and pictured on this article's cover, markets it as "...Over America Now!" alongside a banner reading "Over 500,000 Copies Sold." Both are legitimately the same book; this is an ordinary marketing variance between a hardcover first edition and its later paperback reprint, not a separate title or a bibliographic error.

Fuller's roughly sixty witness interviews, conducted as an outside journalist rather than a UFO researcher, gave the book an investigative credibility that helped it reach a national bestseller audience in a way few UFO books of its era achieved. This site's own case file documents the case's core evidentiary strength independently: two corroborating witnesses, one of them a sworn police officer, reporting the same object within the same encounter, followed by Project Blue Book's unusual written admission — after first floating a temperature-inversion explanation and then a military exercise codenamed "Big Blast" involving B-47 aircraft — that the object was never identified.

The case's proximity to Pease Air Force Base, and fellow officer David Hunt's own involvement alongside Bertrand, gave Fuller's reporting a specific institutional angle to investigate: a case involving multiple law-enforcement witnesses near an active Air Force installation, rather than an isolated civilian sighting far from any official presence. That combination of police credibility and military proximity is part of what made Exeter a harder case for Blue Book's investigators to wave off with a single tidy explanation, and part of what gave Fuller's book its national traction.

Core Arguments & Key Concepts

The book's central argument, consistent with its subtitle's national framing, is that Exeter exemplified a broader pattern of credible, multiply-witnessed UFO reports the Air Force's official explanations could not adequately account for, using the specific credibility of a police officer's corroborating testimony as its strongest single piece of evidence.

Fuller's own transformation from an admittedly skeptical journalist to one persuaded the case deserved serious attention is itself part of the book's argument: rather than starting from a UFO-proponent position, the book's persuasive structure rests on presenting itself as the product of a skeptical investigator's honest reconsideration after direct, extensive witness contact.

Key Cases & Evidence Discussed

This site's own Exeter UFO Incident case file documents the full record in far greater depth than this book review needs to repeat: Muscarello's complete account, Bertrand's independent corroboration, fellow officer David Hunt's involvement, the Pease Air Force Base connection, and Project Blue Book's shifting and ultimately unsuccessful attempts at explanation. Readers wanting the complete, independently sourced record should consult that case file directly.

What is specific to this book is its status as the case's foundational published account, written within months of the event by the journalist most responsible for bringing it to national attention — and its direct historical link to Fuller's other major work, The Interrupted Journey, already covered on this site, on the same state's other landmark 1960s UFO case.

Critical Reception & Controversies

As of this article's research (August 2026), the book is well-documented as a genuine New York Times bestseller that ran through at least six printings, with later commentators describing it as more carefully organized investigative journalism than most UFO books of its era. This article found broad consensus on its historical significance and readability rather than any substantial contemporary critical controversy specific to the book's own claims.

The case's core evidence, independent of this book, has held up relatively well in the decades since: this site's own case file notes that Project Blue Book's own written record concedes the object was never identified, giving the book's central claim of official inadequacy a documented basis beyond Fuller's own advocacy.

Influence & Legacy

The book's legacy is substantial and well-documented: it elevated a regional New Hampshire case to national bestseller status, helped feed the political climate that led directly to Congress's first public UFO hearing in 1966, and, alongside Fuller's own subsequent book on the Hill case, established New Hampshire as the site of two of the era's most consequential UFO narratives.

Set alongside this site's own case file, which draws on Project Blue Book's own documented investigation and later analysis, this book remains valuable as the case's original, journalistically rigorous account, produced while witnesses' memories were freshest and while the national UFO conversation Fuller helped shape was still taking form.

The Book

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