Southern Africa Unexplained

Case No 154 · UFO Afrinews No 22, July 2000

Cigar-shaped object, paralysis and lost time at a café

1980 · Uitenhage, Port Elizabeth, Eastern Cape; the case came from Sgt Powell's Uitenhage district and the café's exact location is not printed, South Africa

What was reported

A café owner in Sgt Chris Powell's Uitenhage district was working on his stamp collection at 2 a.m. when he heard a buzzing and went out with a torch expecting a car thief. Shining the light over his roof he saw a large dark cigar-shaped object, like a petrol tanker's barrel, hanging stationary below scattered cloud at perhaps 200 feet and 70 degrees elevation, one end glowing orange without any beam. He suddenly felt cold, found himself completely paralysed and noticed absolute silence. A rising whine accompanied the object as it shot upward and shrank into the night sky, after which he could move again and his dogs began to howl. He estimated three minutes of sighting, yet it was 3 a.m. when he went inside, leaving thirty to forty minutes unexplained. Powell sent the report to Hind in 1980.

What Hind made of it

Hind and Powell felt the unexplained time gap was significant; no hypnosis was used and contact was lost, but a new Uitenhage investigator will try to trace him for issue 23.

In their words

  • Both Chris and your Editor felt that there was some significance in the time factor.

    Cynthia Hind, spread 06

Cross references

  • Case No 133 Stuart of Mutare (UFO Afrinews Nos 17 and 19): paralysis and complete silence
  • UFO Afrinews No 23 (promised follow-up)

Connected

  • Groendal Reserve: silver-suited men on the hillCase fileNamed person

    Sgt Chris Powell is the hinge. He was in the Groendal search party in 1978 and the Uitenhage cafe owner was in his district in 1980; Powell sent that report to Hind. The two appear in adjacent spreads of Afrinews No 22, i.e. Hind published them together.

  • Groendal Reserve: four boys, three silver-suited men, nine impressionsCase fileNamed person

    Powell again. One policeman is the channel through which both Eastern Cape close-encounter cases reached Hind in Harare. Remove him and the 1978-1980 half of this cluster has no reporting route.

  • Groendal Reserve: silver-suited men on the hillCase fileSame place

    Both sit in the Uitenhage-Despatch belt, 6.0 km apart as geocoded. 22-04-1 records Hind driving to Despatch with Peggy McLean; 22-05-1 is a cafe in Uitenhage town. Note the geocoding is coarse: 22-05-1 sits exactly on the Uitenhage town-centre point, which is also the De Mist Commando coordinate.

  • Unconfirmed reports: huge round white object over Hobie Beach (Justin)Case fileSame behaviour

    Absolute silence from a large close object. Justin: no sound from something he estimated at 500 m to 1 km across. The cafe owner: 'absolute silence' during the paralysis. These are the cluster's only two fully independent accounts that agree on anything.

  • UAP AttackCase fileSame behaviour

    Physical and physiological effects. 1952: engine stalled and was hard to restart, car shaken, arm hairs erect. 1980: paralysis, sudden cold, dogs howling once it left. Hind's own editor's note on 13-17-1 explicitly generalises this as electromagnetism from the object, so she treated them as one phenomenon.

Source

Cynthia Hind, UFO Afrinews No 22 (July 2000), spread 05-06

In the archive

This case became a story on this site.

1980 · South Africa

The tanker over the café roof

A café owner went out at 2 a.m. with a torch to check on his car and found a dark cigar hanging over his roof. He came back inside at three.

LIFTLiftACCAcceleration
Documented

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