The New Hampshire Seacoast has long been famous in UFO lore, both for the “incident at Exeter” and as the area of residence for the two most renowned “alien abductees,” Betty and Barney Hill. Few people, though, may be aware of the incidents in Stratham, close encounters of a second kind that occurred in the 1970s during the last great UFO wave in America. Eight Stratham children came face to face with the frightening unknown when they were confronted by mysterious aerial crafts that left behind physical trace evidence and etched indelible marks upon their memories. On a wintry eve in 1971, three Stratham lads fired up their racing snow machines and departed from one of the youth’s Stratham Heights Road homes. Cutting across the Goodrich Farm fields, the boys turned onto a woods trail leading to Bunker Hill Avenue. They tooled carefree down the trail, one on a Polaris 2-cycle Star Racer, and as they reached the vicinity of the old Sanderson Gravel Pit, looming just above and nearly touching a high power electrical line was the catalyst to heart-pounding, primal fear — a UFO. Fleeing the apparition, the youthful trio turned and at full throttle retreated to the safety of the Heights Road home. One of the boys’ moms, who requested anonymity, recalls, “The boys were white as sheets ... scared to death ... frightened out of their wits ... terrorized!” She adds that “these were boys who did not frighten easily.” Arriving soon at their door was John Oswald, a NICAP (National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena) UFO investigator of local renown. Both parents remember the interview with Oswald as being eerie. “He seemed to know what we would say before we spoke, as if he already knew what was in our minds,” they said.

The boys were so uncomfortable they fled the house and interviewer as soon as possible. Dad recalls Investigator Oswald telling them about sensors that his people had set up in New Hampshire, all of which, he said, were triggered off at the precise time of the boys’ encounter. Peter Geremia of Rye, director of the New Hampshire chapter of MUFON (Mutual UFO Network), as well as a lecturer and UFO investigator, recalls Oswald as a dedicated researcher.

View: Full Article | Source: Sea Coast Online