UFO Sighting

June 18, 1996

Red Light in the Sky

Transcription (June 18, 1996)

Six spot UFO in night sky
Red light appears in New Ipswich

BY JANE EKLUND
Monadnock Ledger Staff

    NEW IPSWICH Stephen Kouropoulos isn't sure exactly what it was that he saw through his living room window Saturday night, but he does know one thing.

   "It was strange, I'll tell you," he said Tuesday.

    Kouropoulos and a neighbor on Hubbard Pond Road contacted police that night to report sighting an unidentified flying object. All told, he said, six people in two houses witnessed what appeared to be a red ball of light that disappeared in a white flash.

   Kouropoulos was lying on the couch in his second-story living room watching television at about 9 p.m., he said. No other lights were on in the house. He looked out of his picture window, across the tree-line.

    "I saw a red light in the shape of a circle," he said. From a distance, it was the size of a pin hole. At first, it looked like a light on an airplane, Kouropoulos said.

    Then: "It's coming for me, getting larger, larger. It's coming closer," he said. At that point, the red light was about the size of a basketball, and appeared to be about 100 to 200 feet from the house.

   Kouropoulos, who was afraid the object would hit the house. jumped up off the couch. "As jumped up, it stopped, it backed up, and then went straight up in the air," he said. "It just went into the clouds."

   The night was overcast and starless, but he could see the red glow behind the clouds. Kouropoulos ran downstairs and got his wife. The couple returned to the living room and watched the red glow from separate windows Kouropoulos took a minute to oper a sliding door, to see if the was making any noise. "I couldn't hear a sound," he said.

    "The next thing you know, just a flash of white light, and it was gone," he said. His wife reported seeing a tail, like the tail of a comet, when the flash went off.

   Kouropoulos, who was concerned the object may have been a plane flying dangerously close to trees and houses, got on the phone to police. He also called neighbors. At one nearby house, four adults had witnessed the same light from a bay window in the kitchen, he said.

   Those residents also phoned police.
Residents at another neighborhood house hadn't seen the light, but did note that their motion detector lights turned on shortly after 9 p.m. No one was out walking around their house, and the snow was too deep for animals negotiate, Kouropoulos said.

    Kouropoulos said he's never seen anything like the UFO before, and admits he's not the kind of person to wait around for alien space-ships to show up. But, he repeated, the experience "was strange. It was real strange."

James Roger diary entry

March 15, 1909 (Monday)

Frosty, fair wind westerly.  David fixing Hearse House door and at Lonie’s in afternoon.  Church society meeting at 2pm.  Present Mr. & Mrs. Peacock, Mr. & Mrs. Wheeler, Mr. & Mrs. Corbett, Mr. & Mrs. Sargent, Mrs. Bucknam, Mrs. Ferrin, Miss Taylor, Mr. Travis, F. Whittemore, & James Roger.  Elections Mr. C. Wheeler as Moderator, clerk and treasurer, F. Whittemore, G. Sargent & W Corbett Standing Committee.  Mr. Peacock read report of Parsonage.  Repairs Income of Church for year $107900. Expenditures $105400.

275th Anniversary Celebration Events

Saturday - March 29, 2025 - 11AM - 2PM

Chili cook off

2025 is the 275th anniversary of the founding of New Ipswich! There will be town events and celebrations throughout the year and this first one is coming right up. If you have the perfect chili recipe and want to enter it to win bragging rights and your place in Town history, then register today and we look forward to seeing you on March 29th. Use the QR code above to enter. (Only New Ipswich residents can enter their chili, but anyone and everyone is very welcome to come and eat lunch and judge).