1969-10-15 - Exeter, NH - Cigar

I was returning from the first Vietnam Moratorium (that is how I fix the date accurately) in Boston with some friends in an old VW bus. The VW was starting to act up(I don't suspect any UFO effects - just a typical college junker VW) so we exited I-95 and got onto a side road south of exeter and portsmouth, NH.As we started up a hill with the VW it started to die and did so part way up the hill. Well there was a light on at a house about 150 yards up the road (the only house around) and so we walked up to the house and asked to use the phone. I called my roommate and asked for him to pick us up. We went back to the VW and sat there waiting and looking out the window at the night sky. After a few minutes I saw some lights (pretty much tiny discs to points of light positioned to the right side of our vehicle) in the sky that were moving in a way I had never seen. They would move in different directions and in different ways. A typical move would be to move in a straight line and then take a 90 degree turn without slowing down. I am familiar with aircraft movement since I lived near Pease air base and was used to seeing the high speed f-111's that were stationed there. These lights were in the 30 to 80 degree range off the horizon and were moving at times at speeds like a jet fighter and at other times they would be still in the air. One even was still in the sky and then just took off at speed , went up in the sky and disappeared. One time several moved to a single point in the sky but there always seemed to be 6 or 8 or maybe more craft visible at any time.There came a time when I caught sight of a Cigar shaped craft moving slowly through my field of vision and across the road we had come up to our present position. The craft continued to moveacross the road and settled down over what seemed to be a field on the other side of the road and by this time I was 50 to 75 yards down the road from the VW and on the left side of the road. I was somewhat excited when it settled down and was furth! er conflicted when lights came on and blinked around the craft. I say around the craft because a light would blink from right to left and as it reached the left of the craft it would disappear and shortly thereafter it would reappear blinking at the right edge of the craft.I say the plural lights since I believe there were many lights with only one coming on at a time. And there were other lights that stayed on that appeared to be windows above the centerline where the blinking lights were located. I had mixed emotions at this point - wonder and fear. I turned and ran over to my friends up the road - they nwere still watching other lights- and told them there was something they have to see. We headed back to where we could see the cigar and it was gone. Some traffic came by- one stoppedto see if we needed help and after that all craft were gone. The whole experience from first sighting was probably about20 - 30 minutes and the cigar sighting I had was in the 2-4 minute range.