Southern Africa Unexplained

Case · UFO Afrinews No 10, August 1994

Groendal Reserve: four boys, three silver-suited men, nine impressions

1978 · Groendal Reserve, Port Elizabeth area, South Africa

What was reported

Hind's second example of indisputable-but-unprovable evidence. On 1 October 1978 four boys in the Groendal Reserve reported a silver object and then three figures in silver suits who seemed to glide across the ground, clearing fynbos eight feet tall and small trees. Hind grants that the boys could have been hoaxing, but Professor Rust of the University of Port Elizabeth's Geology Department released two lecturers, Russell Shone and a colleague, who went into the dense bush with Police Sergeant Chris Powell and several other men. Shone found nine impressions laid out symmetrically, calculated that an object six metres across would have been needed for the boys to see it from where they stood, and doubted that anyone could have got through such thick bush to flatten the vegetation the way it had been flattened.

What Hind made of it

Hind concedes hoax is possible but relies on Shone's finding that the site was inaccessible and the impressions symmetrical.

Explanation offered
Hoax by the boys considered and doubted

In their words

  • Shone reported that there were nine impressions arranged symmetrically.

    Cynthia Hind, spread 05

Connected

  • Alien Descriptions: Hugo Ferreira's silver faceless figures, Groendal ReserveCase fileSame place

    Both are Groendal Reserve, 1978, four boys, silver-suited figures. One event recorded twice. The coordinates differ by 27.2 km: 10-05-2 is placed at -34.0424, 25.49, south of the city near the coast, about 52 km from the actual Groendal Wilderness Area north-west of Uitenhage.

  • Groendal Reserve: silver-suited men on the hillCase fileNamed person

    Professor Rust, Russell Shone and Sgt Chris Powell appear in both. The nine symmetrical impressions, the four small holes, and Shone's calculation that a six-metre object would be needed for the boys to see it from where they stood are the same single finding told twice in different issues.

  • Alien Descriptions: Hugo Ferreira's silver faceless figures, Groendal ReserveCase fileHind follow-up

    Hind recycles Groendal across the run: as an 'Alien Descriptions' box supporting her time-dimension speculation (06-09-4) and as her worked example of 'indisputable but unprovable' evidence (10-05-2). Both point back to her book UFOs-African Encounters, pp 138-152 and 153, so all three records share one written source.

  • Cigar-shaped object, paralysis and lost time at a caféCase fileNamed person

    Powell again. One policeman is the channel through which both Eastern Cape close-encounter cases reached Hind in Harare. Remove him and the 1978-1980 half of this cluster has no reporting route.

  • Groendal Reserve: silver-suited men on the hillCase fileSame window

    Both fix on 1 October 1978. 22-04-1 adds that Hind was interviewing witnesses at Rosmead and Middelburg on the Rosmead Tennis Court case when the call came, which dates her arrival and ties this cluster to a different cluster through the investigator's diary rather than through any phenomenon.

Source

Cynthia Hind, UFO Afrinews No 10 (August 1994), spread 05

In the archive

This case became a story on this site.

1978 · South Africa

Three men in silver on the hill at Groendal

Four boys waiting for a lift home watched three men in silver suits glide up a hill of tall fynbos and vanish. The ground they had come from was marked.

LIFTLift
Documented

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