Independent New Hampshire Journalism · Northfield, NH

Granite State Report Takes UFO, Paranormal and Wildlife Footage. Here Is How Every Clip Gets Checked.

Two drop boxes on this site take photos and video of lights in the sky, things nobody can explain, and New Hampshire’s wildlife. Each one is checked against whatever fits, from flight tracks, satellite passes and sky charts to wildlife biologists and other witnesses, before anything runs, and the newsroom says what it found, including when the answer is a balloon.

In the early morning of September 3, 1965, two Exeter police officers, Eugene F. Bertrand Jr. and David R. Hunt, reported flashing lights that an Air Force letter later called “various unidentified objects.” Local newspapers spread the story, officers from Pease Air Force Base investigated, and the Air Force opened a file.

That file, held by the National Archives, shows how a sighting gets checked. The Air Force’s initial impression, a January 1966 memo in the file says, was that aircraft from Big Blast, an Eighth Air Force operation over New England, caused the lights. Then the timing got in the way. Ten B-47s from the operation had landed at Pease by 1:35 a.m., and “the major portion of the sighting occurred subsequent to two a.m.,” a March 1966 memo records. Maj. Hector Quintanilla Jr., chief of Project Blue Book, wrote to the two officers and asked one precise question: had either of them seen any aircraft? If they had noticed the planes as well as the objects, his letter reasoned, that “would tend to eliminate this air operation as a plausible explanation for the objects observed.”

In the end the Air Force split the case. Earlier sightings that night, by two women and by a man whose name is blacked out in the file, were put down to aircraft from Big Blast. The officers’ observation after 2 a.m. was not. The record card carries one word under Conclusion.

The Exeter card records no photographs and no physical evidence. What the case had was a time, a place, more than one witness, a specific question put to the people who were there, and a written answer that says what was ruled out and what was not. That is the standard Granite State Report applies to every photo and video readers send of something in the sky, something nobody can explain, or an animal nobody can name. The newsroom takes these reports seriously enough to check them, which means most will turn out to have an ordinary cause, and GSR will say so in print. The ones that hold up after checking get reported as exactly that. For the state’s long history of sightings, read Exploring New Hampshire’s UFO History.

Where to send it

Both boxes are also in the Upload menu at the top of every page. Any file type, up to 2 GB each and 50 at a time, and nothing has to be typed. A short Quick details panel asks for the four things that make a sighting checkable: when, where, which way you were facing or what you think the animal is, and how long it lasted or how far away it was.

Why the original file matters

Send the file your phone or camera saved, not a screenshot, a screen recording, or a copy pulled from social media. Photos and video from phones can carry the date, the time and the location where they were taken, written into the file itself. The Library of Congress describes the Exif standard used by digital cameras and smartphones as including “date and time information, geographic data” among its tags, and video files have their own fields for the creation date and GPS coordinates. A copy may keep that data or may not. The original is the version that can be checked.

The same data can show exactly where you stood, down to your yard. If that spot is private, say so in your note. GSR needs the location to check a sighting; it does not need to publish it.

How a sighting in the sky gets checked

Most lights in the night sky over New Hampshire are things that can be looked up after the fact. GSR looks them up, in this order.

1. Aircraft. ADS-B Exchange shows aircraft that broadcast their position, and it does not filter out military flights that are broadcasting. Its map can replay a past date and time. An aircraft with its transponder off will not appear, which is why this is the first check and not the last.
2. Satellites. A line of lights moving together is usually a train of Starlink satellites; the National UFO Reporting Center tells people not to report them. Heavens-Above predicts satellite passes for any location, Starlink included, and can run those predictions for past dates.
3. Planets and bright stars. A very bright, silver-white light sitting still near the horizon is likely Venus, the reporting center says. Stellarium, free and open-source, shows the sky for any date, time and place.
4. Weather balloons. The National Weather Service sends up balloons from 92 stations, normally twice a day. One is in Gray, Maine, where staffing shortages led the weather service to suspend some launches in 2025. Launches go up in the hour before 00:00 and 12:00 Coordinated Universal Time, which in New Hampshire is about 7 to 8 in the morning and evening during daylight saving time, and an hour earlier in winter.
5. People. Other witnesses, police logs, nearby airports. A second person who saw the same thing from another angle is worth more than a sharper picture.
6. The camera. Something in the video that you did not see with your own eyes is “probably a camera anomaly or artifact,” the reporting center says, and it asks people not to report lights that pulse only on video playback. GSR checks zoom, focus, lens flare, reflections in glass, compression, and edits.

Paranormal footage goes through the same steps that fit it: the original file, the room or the place, the time, everyone who was there, and the camera itself, including reflections, dust or insects caught in a flash or infrared light, compression in dim video, and edits.

How a wildlife photo gets checked

New Hampshire Fish and Game says it has never received verifiable evidence, photographic or DNA, of mountain lions living in the state. Reports that came with photographs, the department says, have been misidentified bobcats or house cats, or mountain lion pictures taken from the internet. So every wildlife picture gets three checks: the time and place, the animal itself, confirmed with wildlife biologists and, where it matters, Fish and Game, and a reverse image search to make sure the photo has not run somewhere before.

Many species can also be reported to NH Wildlife Sightings, especially those the state’s Wildlife Action Plan lists as in greatest conservation need; not every species is on its list. The site is a joint project of Fish and Game, the University of New Hampshire, the NH Natural Heritage Bureau and NH Audubon, and it uses photos so wildlife professionals can confirm what the animal is.

What the government’s own files show

The Pentagon’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, known as AARO, received 319 reports of unidentified anomalous phenomena from June 2, 2024, through May 30, 2025, according to its annual report for fiscal year 2025. It resolved 114 of them and said every resolved case was attributable to ordinary objects such as balloons, satellites, birds, aircraft and drones. Civilian pilots’ reports through the Federal Aviation Administration made up 21 percent of what came in.

The larger number in that report is the one that did not resolve. AARO sent 191 of the 319 reports to an archive for cases without enough data to judge, and it named nine that merited further analysis. In March 2024 the office released a historical review that found no evidence that any government investigation, academic research or official review panel had confirmed a sighting as extraterrestrial technology.

Unidentified describes the evidence: what was checked, and what the checking could not rule out. The Exeter card uses the word that way, and so does AARO. Granite State Report will too: a clip that survives every check gets published as unexplained, with the list of what was ruled out, and a clip without a time or a place gets set aside for the same reason AARO set aside 191.

What gets published

• Explained. GSR says what it was and how it knows.
• Unexplained after checking. GSR publishes the footage, the checks, and what each one ruled out.
• Not enough to go on. Nothing runs. The file stays with the newsroom.

Nothing is published on one person’s word. Faces of people who did not agree to be shown, and anything that identifies a child, are blurred or cut first. You keep your copyright, and you choose the credit: your name, or none.

Before you film

• Stay where you are allowed to be. No clip is worth a charge.
• Drones. Recreational flyers must pass the FAA’s free online safety test, known as TRUST, and carry proof of it. They must stay at or below 400 feet in uncontrolled airspace and need FAA authorization, through LAANC or DroneZone, to fly in controlled airspace near airports (FAA, Recreational Flyers).
• Voices. New Hampshire’s wiretap law, RSA 570-A, makes it a crime, with exceptions, to record a conversation without the consent of everyone in it when the speakers reasonably expect it is not being recorded. Sky footage rarely raises that; a camera indoors can. See The Law That Decides When You Can Press Record in New Hampshire.
• Wildlife. Fish and Game says moose “give little warning before attacking a perceived threat” and that no one should ever approach them. For bears, its advice is to keep your distance, and it says it is illegal to intentionally feed bears in New Hampshire. Never bait or feed an animal for a picture.
• Driving. Pull over first, or let a passenger film.

Other places to report

• Anyone in danger: 911.
• A wildlife emergency or a wildlife crime in progress: Fish and Game dispatch, (603) 271-3361, 24 hours a day. Poaching tips: Operation Game Thief, 1-800-344-4262.
• A mountain lion: Fish and Game’s Wildlife Division, (603) 271-2461 or wildlife@wildlife.nh.gov, for an observation report form.
• Sightings in the sky: the National UFO Reporting Center takes public reports through its online form. As of October 2026, AARO’s reporting form is open only to current or former federal employees, service members and contractors with direct knowledge of government programs; the office says it will announce when the public can report, and it encourages civilian pilots to report sightings promptly to air traffic control.

The Exeter officers’ account outlived the night because they wrote down the time, the place, and what they saw, and because someone asked them the right question afterward. Send the footage. GSR will ask the questions.

— Granite State Report

Fact check

Editor’s note. The Exeter account is taken from the Air Force’s Project Blue Book case file at the National Archives. Federal case figures and findings are taken from the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office’s fiscal year 2025 annual report and its 2024 historical review. Wildlife guidance and contact numbers are New Hampshire Fish and Game’s. Statutes are quoted or summarized from the New Hampshire General Court’s posted Revised Statutes Annotated. Granite State Report is a newsroom, not a law firm, and nothing here is legal advice.

Corrections: Granite State Report corrects verified errors promptly and appends a dated note identifying what changed and when. The corrections policy and the corrections register are public, and correction notes are never removed.