The witness states, "I live in the Waihopai Valley, Marlborough. On the 2nd July 2005, at six in the morning, my daughter and I were driving the 26 km down the winding gravel road through mountainous terrain, on our way to Christchurch. It was pitch black, with no moon or stars, as we followed the river for a while approaching Netherwood Station.
Looking ahead, we saw an extremely bright, oblong, pulsating light hovering about a couple of hundred feet above the hills further along the valley. The object had lights flashing from one side to the other - red, blue, green and white - and they would flash in sequence across the oblong, changing colours as they went.
Suddenly, the light came straight towards us. I thought, "Oh shit! Leave us alone!" I was scared and concerned for my daughter. The object made no sound as it approached us really rapidly, and the lights were about a thousand times brighter than helicopter or plane lights. We turned a corner heading up the cutting away from it. It circled around following us and came up on our left hand side. It is a narrow road and as we went in behind a hill, it would go around behind it, and reappear over the top or around the other side. This went on for some time, and I was trying hard to concentrate on the driving, as it was dark and the road is winding. I was trying not to say anything that would frighten my daughter. As we went up a cutting, it disappeared behind a hill, and as we drove around the hillside, it caught up with us again from the other side and appeared straight out in front of us. The glow from the object illuminated the entire gully and lit up all the pine trees.
Fearing for our safety, I thought to myself that if we got to the next house and we could still see the object, I would go into the farmhouse. When we got to the farm, we looked back and couldn’t see the light any more, so we continued driving on down the road thinking it had gone. However when we looked, there was the light again. It seemed as if it had somehow read our minds, or ‘knew’ we were afraid, because now it suddenly stayed further away from us, over the ridges of the hills between the Waihopai and Wairau valleys. But it still followed us at a distance for a full half hour all the way down the valley towards Blenheim. We continued driving out of the valley and the object stayed hovering over the hills until we eventually lost sight of it.
For the following two or three days my daughter was sick with headaches, sore eyes and nausea, with a lack of appetite. I did not have these symptoms and I can only put this down to the fact that I was driving and concentrating on the road, whereas she was watching the very bright object, sometimes quite close, for most of the journey. We did not have any missing time. After this event, I rang a helicopter pilot who flies in the Waihopai Valley a lot and he said it would have been too dark to have been flying a helicopter in the valley at that time."
More sightings up the Waihopai Valley in 2008: Click Here
[Link to Sightings 2008 Spray River sighting]
Back to top |