Unknown: a silent sphere over Marondera

What was reported

On the night of 23/24 November 1992 Chifef, a hunter, was walking his dogs on a dirt track off North Road just outside Marondera when he noticed a star-like point hanging far too low and creeping along about 15 degrees from where he stood. It made no sound and carried no lights: a perfectly round, highly reflective body with flashes of bright orange-red on the face turned away from him. He put it one to two miles off and 300 to 500 metres up, over the Hunyani Timber plantation beyond the Mutare road, and watched for some 20 minutes until a tree line hid it, not fetching his family in case it vanished. Next morning his 14-year-old daughter said a bright light had woken her about 11 or 11:30; behind the house she saw a silent silver ball as big as the moon and dived under her blankets.

What Hind made of it

Hind suggested a satellite, which Chifef rejects as too low; too slow for a meteorite; the 20-minute duration is puzzling, so it stays an unknown.

Explanation offered
Satellite (Hind, rejected by witness); meteorite ruled out

In their words

• round and silver and shiny like metal.

• I am a hunter with keen eyesight, and certainly not very impressionable.

• one feels, from experience, that for the moment, this must remain an 'unknown'.

Cross references

• Chifef's earlier letter about an early-1970s Sunningdale sighting, 10-08-1
• 1964 Zambezi River observation with Graham Guy, 10-08-2

Connected

• Chifef's earlier daylight sphere over SunningdaleCase fileSame witness

  Chifef, the Marondera hunter of November 1992, had written years earlier about an orange-red daylight sphere over Sunningdale, Harare, in the early 1970s; Hind uses the earlier letter as witness background.

• Justin's mother: silvery cylinder over MaronderaCase fileSame place

  Marondera: Chifef's silent reflective sphere of 1992 and Justin's mother's silvery cylinder over the town in the early 1970s. Twenty years apart, different shapes; a place link only.

• Marondera farm: ozone smell reproduced by rubbing stones (smells recap)Case fileSame place

  Marondera again: the farm foreman who reproduced an ozone smell by rubbing stones together. The underlying case is not identified in this cluster's files.

Source

Cynthia Hind, UFO Afrinews No 10 (August 1994), spread 07-08

Nearby

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