Exeter UFO Festival 2024

The Exeter Area Kiwanis Club is the organizer of the Exeter UFO Festival. The festival would not be successful without the ongoing support of the Town of Exeter, the local merchants, and many volunteers.

The Exeter UFO Festival is a major fundraiser for the Exeter Area Kiwanis Club. As with all of their fundraisers, 100% of the profits go to local children’s charities, children’s programs, and community programs. All Kiwanians are volunteers. The Exeter Area Kiwanis Club relies on your generosity at the food and souvenir stands. They look forward to seeing all of you at this year’s festivities.

2024 is the 59th anniversary of the Incident in Exeter.

To learn more about the Exeter Area Kiwanis Club, go to our website at: https://exeterkiwanis.com/, or reach out to us using the contact us page on this UFO Festival website.

The festival is based on the famous “Incident at Exeter,” which occurred on September 3rd, 1965 in nearby Kensington. At that time, 18-year-old Norman Muscarello reported to the Exeter Police his sighting of an unidentified flying object behind a barn in Kensington. As the police investigated the site, they too saw the object hovering where Muscarello had seen it. Headlines nationwide told the story. The rest became history as the police and investigators nationwide tried to determine what young Muscarello saw that night.

Guest speakers:
Peter Robbins is an investigative writer, author and lecturer best known for his books, columns, articles, radio commentaries, interviews and conference talks He has appeared as a guest on and been consultant to numerous television programs and documentaries.

Ralph Blumenthal, a Distinguished Lecturer at Baruch College of the City University of New York, and summer journalism instructor at Phillips Exeter Academy. He was an award-winning reporter for The New York Times from 1964 to 2009, and has written seven books on organized crime and cultural history. He led the Times metro team that won the Pulitzer Prize for breaking news coverage of the 1993 truck-bombing of the World Trade Center. In 2001, Blumenthal was named a Fellow of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to research the progressive career and penal reforms of Warden Lewis E. Lawes, “the man who made Sing Sing sing.” The book on Warden Lawes, Miracle at Sing Sing, was published by St. Martin’s in June, 2004. During the coronavirus pandemic he contributed articles to The Times and other publications, worked from home on his Baruch Archives blog, “An Adventure in Democracy”, and given virtual talks on his new book, The Believer: Alien Encounters, Hard Science, and the Passion of John Mack.