Southern Africa Unexplained

Case No 38 · UFO Afrinews No 6, July 1992

Interview with Nigel Espi and his family, Noordhoek

1990 · Noordhoek, Cape, Cape Town, South Africa

What was reported

Nigel woke at about 04:30 in his Noordhoek home and saw from the window what looked like a falling star, which then slowed, stopped and moved towards him, not in a straight line, coming close enough for him to make out an outline. He ran for his mother, but by the time she arrived it had retreated to a pinhead; she thought star, then experimental aircraft, and fetched her husband, who could not identify it either. Nigel's sister and grandmother also watched as it passed behind the neighbour's house and zigzagged far out over the sea, flashing red, yellow, blue and green. Nigel drew a circular craft with a row of windows around its middle that seemed to spin with it. He has had several such sightings; on another occasion the family cat clawed his sister frantically.

What Hind made of it

Hind thinks it was probably a star or planet with autokinesis and that identification is difficult so long after the event; she notes the family were told by the Observatory not to phone the Silver Mine naval base.

Explanation offered
star or planet with autokinesis

In their words

  • the windows were going round with the craft, as though the whole thing was spinning.

    Pamela Puxley's report of Nigel Espi, spread 07

  • they didn't like that sort of thing.

    Observatory advice, quoted by Cynthia Hind, spread 07

Cross references

  • the Observatory
  • Naval Base at Silver Mine

Connected

  • The lights above Table MountainStoryNamed person

    An institution rather than a person: 'the Observatory' (SAAO) is the authority consulted in both 1990 and 2015. In 1990 it told the Espi family not to phone the Silvermine naval base.

  • The Vanishing Cylinder at HangklipCase fileSame window

    Both 1990, southern Peninsula, the first cases from the new Cape Town investigator. Weak: Noordhoek is undated within 1990.

  • Alien Intervention? Coloured lights over the farm near Cape TownCase fileSame behaviour

    Multicoloured lights that dart, circle and shoot off, watched from home at night: Espi 1990, Kerry 1998. Both match scintillating stars plus autokinesis, which is Hind's own reading for the first.

Source

Cynthia Hind, UFO Afrinews No 6 (July 1992), spread 07

Nearby

Stories within 60 km