Sean Rhategan of Cape Town: silver disc with portholes over Camps Bay

What was reported

Packing up a night picnic on the rocks between Glen Beach and Camps Bay because giant cockroaches had emerged, Sean's party of four saw a silver, hub-cap-shaped disc sweep along the beach, crossing the sky horizon to horizon in about five minutes and vanishing between Table Mountain and Lion's Head through the kloof. Ten or twelve round portholes gave white light that lit the silver body; there was no other light, no vapour trail and no sound at all. It looked the size of a two-cent coin, implying a very large object, travelled SW to NE, and Sean estimates 1000 to 2000 km/h at over 1000 metres. A teacher friend later said Pinelands High School pupils hiking in the Cedarberg, 200 to 300 km away, reported a silver porthole craft about 20 minutes later, suggesting roughly 1500 km/h. Sean wears glasses but has good vision and has followed satellite tracking and astronomy for 18 years.

In their words

• There was no sound whatsoever; you would imagine there would be some sound from something as big as that, but there was nothing.

• When we got home, everyone said, "You're daft."

• What utter rubbish! How can you see a UFO?

Cross references

• Pinelands High School students in the Cedarberg
• Table Mountain
• Lion's Head

Connected

• Sean Rhategan's earlier red delta-shaped object over Cape TownCase fileSame witness

  Rhategan's undated red delta before the Feb 1988 disc; he first thought 'Soviet test'. Aside in the same Puxley interview.

• Sean Rhategan's childhood sighting of pink shapesCase fileSame witness

  Rhategan's childhood pink shapes, a one-paragraph aside in the same interview.

• Grant and Alzanne at Clifton, CapeCase fileSame place

  Camps Bay 1988 and Clifton 1992, 1.6 km apart on the Atlantic seaboard; both night objects, otherwise unalike (fast silent porthole disc vs static hovering coloured lights).

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

  Corroboration claimed from a distant party (Pinelands pupils in the Cedarberg 20 minutes later; a friend in Claremont two weeks later, 'in the Cape Times'). In neither case is the corroborator interviewed; a 20-minute offset rules out a single satellite pass.

Source

Cynthia Hind, UFO Afrinews No 6 (July 1992), spread 07-08

Nearby

Stories within 60 km

• The monoplane that flew all over the Union 1914 · 5 km
• The lights above Table Mountain 2015 · 5 km
• The Castle's regulars 1729 · 5 km
• Van Hunks and the Devil 1909 · 6 km
• The transformer on Newlands Ravine 1969 · 6 km