UAP or 'Phantom' Car at Featherstone?

What was reported

Woken around midnight by a disturbed dream, Johnny Petersen heard what sounded like a smooth-running six-cylinder American car. From his bedroom window he seemed to see two cars pass each other, one far slower, which pulled up at a farm gate: long and wide, with a row of red rear lights and headlight beams tilted upward that lit the msasa trees. It waited at the closed gate about thirty seconds, moved on as if someone had opened it, and was gone. Suspecting engine thieves, he searched with dogs, rifle and four workers: no tyre marks, but an oppressive heat rose from the ground near the second gate. A shepherd had seen the same thing hours earlier, and workers report two sightings the previous year. A committed Christian, Johnny calls it a satanic phantom and means to shoot it next time.

What Hind made of it

All four investigators found him straightforward and sincere and believe he told the story as he perceived it; Gunter Hofer noted the gate had been closed yet the 'car' went straight through, and that midweek traffic on these isolated roads is unusual.

Explanation offered
witness first assumed poachers or engine thieves; he now calls it a phantom, a satanic deception foretold in Revelations; suggests the older lights might be gas balls; links its appearance to the end of the 3-4 year drought and the good rains

In their words

• And that was it: it was GONE!

• But I promise you, if it ever comes again, I will actually shoot it.

• I wasn't drunk, I'm not a heavy drinker. I KNOW I was awake and I saw it!

Cross references

• shepherd's sighting the same evening (15-06-1)
• 1984 white ball of light on car roof (15-07-1)
• red lights hopping tree to tree (15-07-2)
• Revelations (Bible) on end-days deceptions
• gold claim and other minerals on the 7000-acre farm

Connected

• Featherstone farm gate: heated ground and sheep that would not crossCase fileHind follow-up

  The Featherstone farmer's telephoned report (heat at the gate, sheep refusing the spot) in No 14 becomes the full four-investigator visit to 'Johnny Petersen' in No 15. Note the geocoding: these two sit at -18.689, 30.904 while the sub-entries 15-06-1, 15-07-1 and 15-07-2 sit 31 km away at -18.417, 30.85, all for one farm.

• The shepherd and the 'thing' between the cattle grids; sheep walk round it (within Case 121)Case fileSame window

  The shepherd saw the thing sitting between the cattle grids about 19:30-20:00 the same evening, hours before Johnny's midnight sighting; the sheep ran round it and afterwards refused the spot. Second witness on the same farm, told the next morning.

• Ball of white light settles on the car roof, 1984 (within Case 121)Case fileSame witness

  Johnny Petersen's own 1984 memory of a metre-wide white ball dropping from a tree onto the truck roof, offered as evidence that odd lights are familiar on the farm; Hind's team asked about granite (none).

• Red lights hopping from tree to tree, seen from a donkey cart (within Case 121)Case fileSame witness

  Petersen and his workers, from a donkey cart, saw red lights hopping tree to tree behind the farm; he groups it with the 1984 ball as harmless 'gas balls', unlike the humming car.

• Bruce of HarareCase fileNamed person

  Maria Sullivan, Hind's Harare co-investigator, appears in four entries: Bruce reached Hind through Sullivan's friend Theresa (04-06-1), she was in the car on the Lomagundi Road in 1975 (06-03-1), she is listed among the 1994 flap's names (11-05-1) and she visited Featherstone (15-05-1). The cases follow the investigators' social reach.

Source

Cynthia Hind, UFO Afrinews No 15 (January 1997), spread 05-08