Lights and Tracks

What was reported

Extract from a letter that 'Bunty', a well-known Bromley farmer who had recently died, wrote to a friend. During the 1954 or 1955 curing season at Nyambuya Farm she woke at 02:45 to her Great Dane whimpering. At the front door she was almost blinded by silver rays with a deep flame tint fanning down from something far higher than the tallest trees, and found she could not move. There was no sound. The beams retracted upward, glowed red like a forge, then a huge fireball crossed the farm from left to right at terrific speed and was gone in seconds. Joe and the manager Kingsley saw the fireball but said she had dreamed the lights. The dogs were terrified and Bruce staggered as if drugged. A dawn search of the mealie field found no scorching. Neighbouring pilot Peter Jocelyn believed her and said pilots were warned to avoid UAPs.

What Hind made of it

Hind prints the letter as received without comment; Bunty regretted never telling Hind, fearing to be thought a 'nutter'

Explanation offered
Joe and Kingsley told her she had been dreaming; no other explanation raised

In their words

• I remember thinking, 'it's searchlights upside down', but much brighter

• Poor old Bruce stood up, shaking like a leaf and when I called him he staggered as if he was doped.

• They were aware that there definitely were UFOs but did not know what they were being used for

Cross references

• 12-06-3 tyre imprint at Nyambuya Falls (same letter)
• Peter Jocelyn, neighbouring farmer and pilot
• Women's Institute talk by Cynthia Hind
• Figure 1 sketch of the fan of beams

Connected

• Tyre-tread imprint in granite at Nyambuya FallsCase fileSame witness

  Both from Bunty's posthumous letter: the 1954/55 night beams and fireball at Nyambuya Farm, and the earlier tyre-tread imprint in granite at the falls that she connected only in hindsight.

• Ping-Pong Lights over BromleyCase fileSame place

  Bromley district, 38 years apart: Bunty was 'a well-known Bromley farmer' (Nyambuya Farm) and Patterson's farm is at Bromley. Both were woken after midnight by a dog, both saw a large bright sphere or fireball over farm trees, both checked the crops at dawn and found nothing.

• In Conclusion: John C. thrown to the ground by a light at MachekeCase fileSame behaviour

  A beam from above pins a rural witness who cannot move: Bunty at her front door at 02:45 in 1954/55, John Clark in his Macheke garden in 1975. Bunty had heard Hind's Women's Institute talk and Clark's case was in Hind's 1982 book, so the later telling is not sealed from the earlier.

Source

Cynthia Hind, UFO Afrinews No 12 (July 1995), spread 05-06

Nearby

Stories within 60 km

• The Ariel School encounter 1994 · 13 km
• The circle of light on Mazowe Dam 1968 · 57 km