The witness was 18 at the time, and living at home with her parents on their family farm.
The family lived on a small Romney Marsh stud farm a mile from the Waipukurau township. The farm bordered the Tuki Tuki riverbed on the north side, the AMP show grounds on the west side, a neighbour’s farm on the east side, and Mt Herbert Rd on the south side.
One night in late June when the witness’s father and brother were returning from the woolshed and were taking their boots off at the back porch, they noticed a very bright white light slowly moving from east to west above the Tuki Tuki River, which was north of their vantage point.
The father called out to the witness and her mother, to go out onto the porch and have a look at this strange light. By the time the two women left dinner preparations to get outside, this light had disappeared. They joked with the father, telling him he must have been seeing things, before returning to the kitchen.
A few seconds later the farmer and son called out again, and the two women rushed out the door to the porch, to see an amazingly bright light going up the River from east to west. As it was disappearing from view, it gained altitude and then turned to come at a fast pace directly towards the farmhouse. The witness started screaming to her father, asking him what on earth could be about to happen to them, and asking whether they should leave the house in case we were killed by this object.
However, as the object lost altitude, they realized that it was not going to land on their house, but it came down between the cowshed and a line of pine trees by the home boundary fence – approximately 50 yards away.
The object within the light was now clearly visible. A small silver-grey saucer-shaped object, about the length of a car in width, came to a halt and hovered about 20ft from the ground over the lambing paddock, very close to where the dog kennels were positioned on the other side of the trees. It was emitting a very bright light that lit up the entire 2 four acre paddocks, which were divided by a line of pine trees running from the farm boundary to the Tuki Tuki river bed. The object lit up these 2 large paddocks as if it was broad daylight. The sheep grazed unperturbed, but the dogs went absolutely berserk and howled like they had never been heard to howl before. They leapt and strained on the end of their chains trying to get away. (The witness has since wondered if the object was giving off a high pitched sound that was beyond human hearing range, but clearly audible to the dogs’ sensitive hearing.)
The witness was absolutely traumatized with fear, pleading with her father to help explain what was going on. However she soon noticed that her father, mother and brother seemed to be transfixed on the spot, whilst she hid behind her father. She recalls them just standing perfectly still, without any movement, reaction or conversation. In those moments, she felt very afraid and alone.
The witness described the eerie silence from this object as perplexing, and that the air around the family felt as if it was somehow “pressing down” on her. She was terrified that someone was going to take them away, but the object just hovered there. After a few minutes, it took off in an upwards movement, lighting up all the banks of cloud until it appeared to be moon-sized, then took off at great speed, in fact “in a flash”, due east. It then suddenly stopped and hovered, and in a flash, moved due north and disappeared.
When the witness’s family regained their senses, they were amazed by what they could recall of the incident, but were not shocked like the witness herself, who had remained ‘conscious’ throughout the event. She was the only one who shook uncontrollably for several hours and had a severe headache which did not subside until the next day.
After this experience, the father swore the family to secrecy, and they were not allowed to mention any of it to anyone for fear of becoming the laughing stock of the community. However some time afterwards, the father took his daughter into his confidence and told her that he had seen unusual things in the sky before and said that he would show her some of them in daylight.
True to his word, on another occasion they saw similar objects sitting above the horizon of the hills that were part of the neighbour’s farm. On this occasion, there were three metallic-looking objects visible that were hovering tilted on an angle, amidst the clouds. The witness has often wondered what else her father had witnessed or experienced that he did not share with his family.
Colour-enhanced photo of the family farm showing details from the event. |