Southern Africa Unexplained

Case No 68 · UFO Afrinews No 8, Sept. 1993

The Wall of Flame

1970 ยท Namib desert base camp near the Swakop river bed, Swakopmund and Rossing uranium mine, Namibia

What was reported

'Hein' was eleven in 1970, at school in Swakopmund and living in a geologists' base camp in the Namib near the Swakop river bed while his father worked at the new Rossing uranium mine (printed 'Rossin'). One clear night, with 25 to 30 people at a braai between nine and ten, a wall of flame appeared as if switched on in the V-shaped gap between two hills: as tall as an eight-storey building, roughly 80 feet across, flickering like a stage curtain of fire and giving off intense heat. Children and women screamed; one man became hysterical. After three to five minutes it stopped as abruptly as it began. Armed men searched twice that night and everyone at daybreak, finding no scorched grass, discoloured sand, containers or tracks, although a test burn of fuel marked the ground at once. Tiny doll-like footprints 5 cm long led into a tool shed and never emerged, and the camp cats stayed nervous for weeks.

What Hind made of it

Hind does not think the case has any UAP connection but printed it for the unidentifiable footprints; citing Corliss's 1930 Colorado curtain of fire, she speculates about an eruption of methane igniting in air while admitting the cause remains a mystery.

Explanation offered
Prankster pouring fuel tested and rejected; mountain-top glow or low-level aurora per Corliss; methane gas eruption suggested by Hind

In their words

  • there was this mass of flames, as high as the mountains, about the height of an 8-storey building

    Hein, spread 13

  • Forget the bloody tea, give me a brandy!

    a woman at the camp, quoted by Hein, spread 14

  • To be honest, I don't think this case has any connection with UFOs at all, even remotely so

    Cynthia Hind, spread 14

Cross references

  • William Corliss, Lightning, Auroras, Nocturnal Lights and Related Luminous Phenomena p.23
  • Colorado circa 1930 curtain of fire
  • Case No 72 (same interviewer, Hein's mother)

Source

Cynthia Hind, UFO Afrinews No 8 (Sept. 1993), spread 13-15

In the archive

This case became a story on this site.

1970 · Namibia

A curtain of fire in the Namib

Thirty people at a desert braai watched a wall of fire eight storeys high switch on between two hills, and off again. At dawn the sand was not even scorched.

Single witness

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