Case No 28(c) · UFO Afrinews No 5, January 1992

Case No 28(c): UFO Afrinews 4, Namibia (Hannetjie's account of the ball of light and the drained dam)

1985 · Mr V.'s farm (location given in Afrinews 4, Case 28; not restated here), Namibia

What was reported

Namibian correspondent R. M. Roeis traced Hannetjie, daughter of the late Mr V., now married and living in Mariental. Earlier reports said Mrs V. heard her child crying in its cot; in fact the child was twelve and remembers it vividly. Feverish around midnight, she got up with her mother for medicine and they saw a round ball, bigger than a motorcycle headlight, glittering as if full of tiny blinking stars, arriving from the south and passing north. Next afternoon a farmhand guarding sheep came to say a red ball had 'drunk' the water from the Lower Dam. The night was dry, still and cloudless, silent, with the dogs unusually quiet, and the sheep afterwards refused to go near the camp where the red ball had been. Hind now knows of this second witness and wants him interviewed.

What Hind made of it

Hind repeats that no case should be validated on a single investigation, notes the colour is now in doubt and will be checked, and says the sheep-guard is the key witness Roeis must track down; she stresses water's significance and finds the phenomenon one of ufology's more arresting anomalies.

Explanation offered
Ball lightning or plasma raised by Hind and dismissed as unable to absorb a whole dam of water

In their words

It seemed to me like a ball with a thousand little stars in it.

Hannetjie, spread 12
I have always maintained that no case should be validated when only one investigation has been made.

Cynthia Hind, spread 12
how could they possibly absorb the full contents of a dam of water?

Cynthia Hind, spread 13

Cross references

UFO Afrinews No 4, Case 28
Case No 27 (Bennie Smit), UFO Afrinews 4 page 18
UFOs African Encounters
VUFORS water study (Paul Norman, Judy McGee)

Source

Cynthia Hind, UFO Afrinews No 5 (January 1992), spread 12-13

The facts

Date as written: about midnight; the farmhand's report came the next day, a Monday, at about 1400 hours; year inferred as 1985 from Mr V.'s death in 1987, two years after the newspaper reports
Where: Mr V.'s farm (location given in Afrinews 4, Case 28; not restated here), Namibia
Kind: Close encounter
Who saw it: Hannetjie, Mr V.'s daughter, then aged 12, now 18-19 and married in Mariental; her mother Mrs V.; a farmhand guarding sheep who saw the red ball at the Lower Dam; Mr V. himself, who died in 1987
Shape: round ball with many little blinking stars in it
Size: bigger than the headlight of a motor-bike
Colour and lights: glittered like stars, not blue-white according to Hannetjie; a red ball according to the farmhand
Sound: no sound; a very quiet happening
Duration: not given
Behaviour: south to northglitteringblinkingsilentwater drained from damanimals reactedsheep avoided sitedogs quietsecond witness found
Effects: The Lower Dam reported drained; sheep refused to approach the camp where the ball had been; dogs at their quietest
USO: USO Water affected, Lower Dam, Gomaub-South
Strength: 4 of 5