Case No 49 · UFO Afrinews No 10, August 1994
The Jack Jones Case: Budden versus the Editors
National Road from Bloemfontein to Vanderbijlpark, South Africa
What was reported
The argument over Case 49 (AFRINEWS No 7) continues. Jack Jones, driving by night with a young mechanic on the National Road from Bloemfontein to Vanderbijlpark, had repeatedly been shadowed by a huge ball of flame that faded as he entered each town. Albert Budden now says Afrinews prints stories, not reports: no weather, medical, geological or eyesight data. He holds such phenomena to be electromagnetic and tied to fault lines, asks why the UAP could not simply have been travelling that way, and accuses the editors of assuming intelligence and of believing in aliens. They reply that the night was clear with little moon, that Jones is a tall, wiry, healthy man of about 70 who needs no glasses, that Budden's sub-station idea had been misplaced, and that with hundreds of cars nightly on that road, why Jones' car every time?
What Hind made of it
The editors accept Budden's identification of the fireball's nature but point to inconsistencies and ask why only Jones' car was singled out on a busy road; they promise to consider eyesight tests in future.
Explanation offered
Budden: electromagnetic phenomenon following a fault line; earlier, an electrical sub-station
In their words
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Your cases are not really reports but stories.
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Come off it, you are a believer in aliens, are you not?
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how come the fireball picked up Jones' car each time, and not any other passing vehicle? Is that how a UAP behaves?
Cross references
- AFRINEWS No 7, Jan 1993, Case No 49 'Followed by an Intelligence?'
- Budden's initial comments in an earlier issue