UFO. New Zealand

Date: June 10 1995
Location: Northland, remote countryside, East Coast
Time: 02:00
Summary: Headlights on a collision course with a hill which suddenly “jumped” back, appeared diamond shaped and zig zagged across the sky We were returning to our bach (beachside holiday home) in a remote farming/coastal area in Northland, New Zealand from a party at the nearest town. I was as straight as a die as I had badly sprained my ankle the night before and didn’t want to “party hard” and make it worse (there was a good band and usually I love to dance) so had drank only two cans of premixed bourbon and cola over a period of about 7 hours prior to driving a car load of people back to my place who had been indulging. All up there were two car loads of us. Our bach is situated on top of a hill which has a 360 degree view all around but the front of the place has huge windows which look directly out to the Pacific (directly east). There is approximately 400 metres of land between us and the beach and it is totally flat – the top of our hill is probably about 5 or 6 storeys high… Being a farming/rural community, the coast around here is reasonably unpopulated and there was only one house between us and the beach, an old homestead which my husband grew up in – about 100 m away from the hill between us and the beach. There were no roads although a “farm track” lead to the beach.

October in New Zealand is still pretty cold, although officially spring, and we were all huddled together on the deck waiting for my partner to open the door when we all noticed two headlights coming straight towards us from the direction of the beach/sea. We quickly realised that it wasn’t a car as we were at eye level with these headlights and they were somewhat bigger. The weird thing was that there was no noise and they had “snuck up” on us to quite a close distance without us realising. Our initial reaction was that it was a plane or helicopter (do they have headlights?) and they were on a collision course with the hill (and us!) as they appeared to be getting closer and closer. We were all talking about it when my husband finally got the door open and we all spilled inside. I remember saying, quick turn on some lights so they can see it is a hill and a house and don’t hit us. We turned on the lights and everyone arranged themselves around the kitchen breakfast bar which looked over the sea. I had gone straight to the window with one of the other girls and was amazed to see that the “headlights” were almost within striking distance but then in a “blink” of my eyes they had suddenly jumped back to sit out somewhere over the sea. At this point they were barely distinguishable as “headlights” and then suddenly seemed to be more of a diamond shape. I verified with my friend that I wasn’t seeing things and we tried to engage the others to reaffirm what we had all seen. It was funny because they all sat down and opened drinks and seemed to forget about the headlights that had been coming straight at us minutes before. We tried to get their attention and point out that the head lights had suddenly gone from about to hit us to sitting way back and they all went yeah yeah you guys are out of it! Anyway, knowing that I was absolutely NOT out of it (may be a bit tired) I decided to go outside to have a better look as it was hard to know whether I was seeing things properly looking through the window and shielding my eyes from the light inside. It was pitch black outside except for a few dim stars and this bright white light which every now and then seemed to glow red and move about suddenly. I felt a wee bit scared and got my girlfriend to come outside too. We seemed to be the only ones interested or who remembered what had just happened… Once we got outside I was almost certain that the shape was a diamond although it had moved even further back, still at eye level though. All of a sudden it zigzagged from side to side and seemed to come closer, then settled directly in front of us but further away. I really thought my eyes were playing tricks on me and said to my friend… did you see that? She said yep and not wanting to lead her, I said, what did you see? and she described the zigzag movement too. This thing must have been moving fast as it went from the left to right of our field of vision and back again several times in a matter of seconds. At this point we got the binoculars and resting my arms on the fence to ensure I didn’t wobble, I tried to see something. It was too far away and only confirmed that it was vaguely diamond shaped, it was really bright and occasionally seemed to flash red but far enough back now that even through binoculars was hard to distinguish. I gave up. We started to run through all the things it could possibly be and logic said it wasn’t any of them, ie. not a satellite as they orbit the earth on a horizontal plane, not a star as we had never seen one there before and they tended to pass overhead as night waned to day (incidentally I have looked and looked and never seen anything remotely like that light at any time of year, ever again), etc… We were determined to keep an eye on it and at one point started to feel that maybe it was keeping an eye on us! Every now and again we would go back in and tell the others it was still there but they told us we were seeing things. It zig zagged several times after that and occasionally appeared to come closer (and we got ready to run inside) but always it settled just beyond our field of truly distinguishable vision.

We decided to keep an eye on it until it went away and finally it sat at a point which we realised was the horizon as the sun came up, and there it stayed until about 8.00 am. As the sky lit up it maintained its brightness while the stars dimmed and faded out completely by about 7.00 am. We watched the family in the house below arise and soon surmised that even if farmers/early risers did look to the sky, unless they knew where to look, they probably would have missed this object or dismissed it as a star. By this time we had “landmarks” to measure the object against, being several little islands near the horizon. As the sun rose we were able to confirm that it was sitting just above and to the right of the one on the right. We were tired by now and nothing “exciting” had happened for quite some time so we would go inside and come out every half hour or so to check… Around 8.00 am we realised that having sat stationery for most of the night, the object was now moving up, back and to the left at a considerable speed. We could still see it because we knew where to look but, although bright, it was becoming much smaller as it moved away. By about 10.00 am we could still see it getting smaller and further away and finally giving up, noted that it had moved a lot from its original position… instead of just above and to the right of the right island, it was now considerably to the left of the left island (bearing in mind the islands are situated straight ahead and directly to the east) and instead of near the horizon, was high in the sky, and a mere pinprick of bright light, having at first been of a size considerably larger and brighter than the largest and brightest star.

Over the years, we have talked of this experience to numerous people and not all have scoffed. I didn’t know who to report it to so didn’t. A few people even related their UFO stories to me. One guy was on his way from shopping with his wife after work, when coming out of the city, noticed a many storied, brightly lit object hovering over the sea. They pulled over and looked at it, as did the car behind them, before it disappeared. He is disappointed that they then drove off without verifying it with the driver of the other car. Another was an airline pilot who looked at me in horror when I asked him if he believed in UFO’s. I proceeded to tell my story anyway, at which point he relaxed, and realising that I wasn’t going to cite him mad or cause him to lose his job, he told of a time near New Caledonia, an island in the Pacific, when his commercial flight and an American plane were both circling to land and reported an unidentified object sitting between them. It didn’t show on the radar on land or their planes, but the cockpit crews of both planes had visually identified it and started discussing it sitting between them, at that point it suddenly accelerated straight up in the air from a motionless position, at extremely high speed, and disappeared. Another friend who does air traffic control told me that something once crossed his radar and went off the screen in a matter of seconds – many in the control tower witnessed it and none can explain it as the speed at which it was flying was so much greater than anything known at that time.
Source: National UFO Reporting Center