Lilfordia Road Landing

What was reported

Driving home to his aunt's farm on a Sunday evening, Paul saw a bright light descend from high in the sky and resolve into a discoid craft. He stopped and watched it settle in the middle of an open field to his left. A door slid upward and two men in shiny black overalls climbed out of a dome on top. A second vehicle stopped opposite and an African farmer got out to watch. There was no sound and no stirring of the nearby trees. The figures seemed to notice they were watched, folding steps dropped, they went in and the door closed. The machine was flat underneath with a dome, two lights on either side and a reddish-pink glow brightening toward the top, as tall as the adjacent tree. The farmer ran over shouting that they were tsotsis and both drove off; Paul heard a faint hum as it left north-east. He arrived home visibly shaken.

What Hind made of it

Hind finds the story fascinating and believes the informant would not lie, but cannot verify it: the informant withdrew two days later because her husband thought it demonic, and the farmer could not be traced despite appeals. Not a helicopter. The burned log is probably a lightning strike.

Explanation offered
Helicopter (rejected: no noise, no rotors, trees undisturbed); farmer's shout may have meant tokoloshes rather than tsotsis; burned log likely lightning

In their words

• Get out of here, get out quickly. Those are tsotsis over there!

• Her husband believed that the whole affair was demonic and did not want her to be involved with anything to do with UFOs.

• I am still trying to reach one or the other and will comment on this when confirmation comes to hand.

Cross references

• UFO Afrinews No 15 (appeal to trace the farmer)

Connected

• An Appeal: landing or hovering object on the Lilfordia School RoadCase fileHind follow-up

  The appeal in No 15 to trace an African farmer-businessman who saw something land near a windmill on the Lilfordia School Road on Sunday 20 October 1996 becomes Paul's account in No 16: the same burnt log, the same second car and the farmer who ran over shouting. The informant withdrew because her husband thought it demonic; the farmer was never found. Geocoded at the Harare placeholder although the site is on the Old Bulawayo Road well west of the city.

• Ariel School Report (cont.)Case fileSame behaviour

  Two men in shiny black overalls climbing out of a landed silent craft in a field near Harare, October 1996; one-metre figures in tight shiny black suits beside a landed craft at Ruwa, September 1994. Hind notes the farmer's shout may have meant tokoloshes, the same frame the black Ariel children used. Lilfordia came two years after Ariel's saturation coverage on Zimbabwean TV and radio.

• Ariel School Report (cont.)Case fileNamed person

  Gunter Hofer took the Ariel soil samples (12-06-1), examined the closed gate at Featherstone (15-05-1) and is named in the Lilfordia account (16-19-1): one Harare investigator on three of the cluster's four landing or trace cases of 1994-96.

Source

Cynthia Hind, UFO Afrinews No 16 (July 1997), spread 19-20

In the archive

This case became a story on this site.

1996 · Zimbabwe

The tsotsis on Lilfordia Road

A disc in a field off the old Bulawayo Road, two men in shiny black overalls, and a passing bean trader shouting that they were tsotsis.

LIFTLift

Documented

Nearby

Stories within 60 km

• The Ariel School encounter 1994 · 20 km
• The elliptical sausage over Lake McIlwaine 1954 · 30 km
• The circle of light on Mazowe Dam 1968 · 38 km