Case · UFO Afrinews No 6, July 1992
The Vanishing Photographer: Brenda van der Hoerten's twelve years on Mars (Sunday tabloid)
1979 ยท Kenyan wildlife reserve near Nairobi, Nairobi, Kenya
Outside the region. Hind reprinted this case from elsewhere; it has a file here but no place on the map.
What was reported
Summarising a story in The Sun of 2 April 1991, Hind relays that Brenda van der Hoerten, a South African wildlife photographer, allegedly vanished on an elephant-photographing safari in Kenya in 1979 and claimed to have spent twelve years caged on Mars by silent, football-headed beings with big round eyes and no visible ears or mouths, who kept her naked, ran scanners over her and fed her foul rotting slop. She said a tingling sensation preceded finding herself in a metallic room, that she saw the Martian surface on landing, and that they finally dropped her at the same Kenyan spot, where rangers found her bleeding and bruised. She then lived penniless in a Johannesburg rented room seeking her husband and two children. French ufologist Claude Richelier reportedly found her account consistent and invited her to Paris. Hind has tried and failed to trace her.
What Hind made of it
Hind treats tabloid stories with a pinch of salt but reprints this one; she has written to a Johannesburg ufologist and two leading newspapers without reply, notes the surname sounds Dutch and is uncommon in South Africa, and asks readers for help tracing Brenda.
Explanation offered
tabloid sensationalism
In their words
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the majority of the stories should be taken with a pinch of salt.
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Needless to say, we have tried to trace BRENDA VAN DER HOERTEN.
Cross references
- The Sun, April 2nd 1991
- the three-toed Vadoma people story, Zimbabwe (a tabloid story Hind verified)