Southern Africa Unexplained

Case 32 · UFO Afrinews No 4, March 1991

The Circle in the Grass

1988 · Cleveland Park, Harare, Zimbabwe

What was reported

One evening in December 1988 (the exact date could not be pinned down), after supper with the curtains drawn, Mrs B. of Cleveland Park in Harare, facing the window, saw a bright orange glow through the closed curtains; it had gone by the time her husband turned to look. Next morning their gardener showed them a ring apparently etched in burnt grass on the lawn, about 2.10 m in outer diameter with a 90 cm centre. Hind only received the report a year later and went at once on 21 December 1989, when the ring was still visible as bright green grass around a much paler centre. She took a sample from the ring, one from inside it and two controls, which Mr Fenner of the government Chemistry and Soil Research Institute analysed: pH 6.1 in the ring against 6.6 inside and in the control, a difference he called significant.

What Hind made of it

Hind cannot establish how a 0.5 pH difference could have occurred or what might have fallen there to change the soil's structure, and is awaiting a further report from a geologist friend; she regrets receiving the report a year late.

In their words

  • All soil wetted up readily. 0,5 of pH is significant.

    Mr Fenner's analysis, quoted by Cynthia Hind, spread 21

Connected

  • Ariel School Report (cont.)Case fileHind follow-up

    Hind's standard trace procedure appears twice: ring, centre and control soil samples to the government Chemistry and Soil Research Institute (Mr Fenner, Cleveland Park, December 1989: pH 6.1 in the ring against 6.6; Dr Viewing, Ariel, 1994: insignificant anomalies).

  • Two round metallic UAPs over Glen Lorne (Hedebro letter)Case fileSame window

    Both about 1988 in Harare: the Cleveland Park orange glow and ring of December 1988, and Mrs Hedebro's report of letters to The Herald about peculiar lights over Harare, which she asks whether Afrinews followed up. The friend's date is only 'five or six years earlier'.

Source

Cynthia Hind, UFO Afrinews No 4 (March 1991), spread 20-21

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