On Saturday, August 10, 1996, we had a UFO “doubleheader” in the southern hemisphere. Read on…
LARGE SAUCER APPEARS OVER GUARABIRA
The Brazilian “Sertao” or Northeast is again the site of a UFO flap. During the early afternoon of Saturday, August 10, 1996, a large metallic saucer, about 50 meters (165 feet) in diameter, startled two women on the outskirts of Guarabira, a town in the state of Paraiba. This is the third sighting of a daylight disc this year, with previous sightings in April and June.
According to Oriel Farias, a ufologist from Joao Pessoa, the UFO, “um grande objeto em forma de disco,” descended slowly from a cloudless sky and hovered above a sugar cane field. Lights circled the equator of the saucer, and there was a large bright light in the center of the disc’s underside. The women watched the UFO for several minutes before it rocketed straight up into the sky.
Just after 5 p.m., residents spotted another, smaller UFO high in the sky, with a bright white light emanating from it.”
The day’s most spectacular sighting came after dark, Farias reported. At around 9 p.m., Guarabira residents spotted three UFOs or “objetos de forma triangulares” (objects of triangular shape). “They appeared all at the same instant,” Farias said. At first, the UFOs “went slowly through the sky” but then “they began zigzagging through the sky.” The display lasted several minutes.
On Sunday, August 11, ufologists from Joao Pessoa visited Guarabira and interviewed the eyewitnesses. They also tested the soil at the field where the saucer hovered, Farias said, and “found strong traces of magnetism.”
UFO BUZZES BEACH IN NORTHERN NEW ZEALAND
Add New Zealand to the ranks of southern hemisphere lands visited by UFOs during 1996. At 9 p.m. on Saturday, August 10, 1996, the same day as the UFO flap in Guarabira, Brazil, a glowing green UFO appeared over a Pacific Ocean beach on the North Island of New Zealand.
Damon W. and his girlfriend, Frances P., were lounging in the backyard on Wairere Road, just up from Wainui Beach in Gisborne, N.I., New Zealand. “The sky was overcast,” Damon recalled, “so we couldn’t see any stars.” Damon thought he “saw a meteorite streak across the sky from the southeast to the northwest and called her (Frances’s) attention to it. She looked and saw it just as it disappeared over the tops of some nearby trees. Then, suddenly, it reappeared and flew in a zigzag pattern across the sky” until it turned “and dropped toward some low hills by the sea. We realized it could not be a meteor because it was below the clouds. It was a diamond or a rhombus shape about the size of a five-cent New Zealand piece and was surrounded by a fuzzy green glow. It then shot straight up and down, and that was the last we saw of it.”
This is the second UFO encounter for this family. In 1955, Damon’s father, Norman, then living in Los Angeles, California, USA as a small boy, spotted a silvery domed saucer over the beach in Santa Monica.
ORANGE UFO CRASHES CONCERT IN WASHINGTON STATE
Ever heard of George, Washington? Don’t laugh–there actually is a town by that name. It’s located in Washington state, in the Pacific Northwest region of the USA, about 219 kilometers (137 miles) east of Spokane.
George was the scene of some UFO action on Friday night, August 9, 1996. A crowd of music fans attended an outdoor concert put on by KUBE Radio at “the Gorge,” a narrow canyon north of Interstate Highway 90 and just south of the Frenchman Hills. Sitting in the crowd was Mr. Z, a 41-year-old man, his 14-year-old daughter, and two women in their middle 20s.
At 9:40 p.m., Mr. Z looked up and saw “what looked like an orange ball in the sky. It was slightly fuzzy and appeared to be still,” he said. “It’s kind of hard to say what the distance was, but it looked to be quarter (U.S. 25 cent piece) size in the northern sky. I realize that it was probably much bigger than that, but I would say it was at least 20 miles away, if not more. As I said, the distance was hard to tell. The sky was absolutely clear; the stars were clearly visible, and we did see several meteorites also.”
“When we first saw the object, it was 25 to 30 degrees above the horizon, north of the Big Dipper,” Mr. Z reported. “It stood still for about twenty seconds, then started to move away from us to the north, then started to move slowly to the east in a straight line. Again, I am not sure of the distance, but it stopped again after about fifteen seconds of movement, and then started to move away from us to the north, getting smaller until it disappeared from view. That took about ten to fifteen seconds. There was no sound to the object that we were aware of, or any smoke, flashing lights, etc. It was just a solid fuzzy orange glow. In fact, when it was first spotted, one of the gals thought it was Jupiter. I myself was not sure, except for the fact that I’d never seen a planet look quite that big. Oh, also to let you know that all of us were very sober at the time. I mention this because it was at an outdoor concert.”
(Note: Judging from the flight path, the orange UFO made a detour around the town of Quincy, north of George on Highway 281. Note also the presence of a radio mast and a power line four miles north of Quincy.)
Yes, I know UFO ROUNDUP is out early this week. But that’s because your editor is going on vacation tomorrow. Meaning “the paper that covers the saucers” will be on hiatus for two weeks. We’ll be back in early September with more UFO news from all over our home planet. Keep watching the skies!
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