Preliminary research for Witness
Guide to zones:
1. Africa
2. Asia
3. Australia and Oceania
4. Miscellaneous Europe I
5. Miscellaneous Europe II
6. France, Canada and Switzerland
7. Portugal and Brazil
8. Spain and Spanish-speaking South America
9. United Kingdom
10. USA
Images taken from the accompanying book Witness by Susan Hiller
Africa
01.02
Zimbabwe [woman]
Cynthia Hind reporting. In November 1996 I went to Bindura, some 90 km from Harare, to interview a 17-year-old named Lloyd Karambakuwa, a student at the Hermann Gemeiner Secondary School, studying for his 0 levels. This is what he told me.
At between 1.00 and 1.30 on March 6, 1996 he woke up and because he knew it would be quiet at that hour, he decided to do some studying for his exams. Whilst thus engaged, he heard a clicking sound, not unlike a telephone dialling except there are no telephones in this area. It continued for some minutes, so Lloyd decided to check what it could be. He opened the front door and looked outside. He could hear the sound coming from up the road and when he glanced in that direction, he witnessed something very strange. He quickly went outside and hid behind a hedge to get a better view. He was able to observe a small figure, about 1 metre high, with a head like a rugby-ball, dressed all in white overalls. On its back the creature had a small satchel, attached to which was an aerial with a flashing red light. Lloyd was terrified. He told me he was “asphyxiated with fear”, and ran back into the house, jumped into bed and covered himself with his blankets. He slept fitfully for the rest of the night.
At 6.00 the next morning he went to look where the creature had walked and found several footprints which he could not identify and which he attributed to the creature. When he arrived at school he told his friends about seeing a ghost in the night, but one of his friends suggested that it was a UFO. Lloyd is now under the impression that the creature is called a UFO.
Opposite Lloyd’s house is a teaching centre guarded at night by a security firm. My enquiries led me to one of their guards, a woman named Kumbadzai, who had been on duty at the centre when she saw what she called a ghost. She was so disturbed by this event that she had found herself another job elsewhere. Kumbadzai told me that she had heard clicking sounds and been frightened, had hidden behind a wall and seen a figure in white. It passed her twice, and the second time the figure had been covered in “rainbow colours”.
01.03
Zimbabwe [man]
My name is Johan Reitman and I farm near Feathersdorp, 150 km from Harare. I am 31 years old. On 5th February 1996 I woke up from a bad dream just after midnight, when I heard a car go past. I got up and looked out of the bedroom window, which faces the front of the farm. I watched as two cars passed each other, a strange sight, as there are usually few vehicles to be seen, and none at night. One car pulled into my gate and I thought immediately, “Oh no. those guys are coming to pinch my new engine on the borehole”.
I rubbed my eyes and face to make sure I wasn’t still asleep, and I looked at the car again. It was long and wide and made a low humming sound. I could see lights at the back, a row of red lights, and a front light which shone high enough to illuminate the tree tops. This car, or object, stopped at my gate for a good 30 seconds and then drove on, as if the gate had been opened. And that was it: it was gone!
I took my torch, my rifle, four farm workers and my dogs, and we went out to the gate. Despite the fact it had just rained, there were no tyre tracks or human tracks on the road. As we approached the gate, I could feel heat coming up from the surface of the road, a really oppressive heat radiating from the ground. Even my ears felt flushed with the heat and my workers and I were soaked with perspiration. It was about 12.30 hours by now, so when we found nothing further we all went back home.
It was only the following morning that it occurred to me that when we reached the gate, it was closed. This meant the car had disappeared through a closed gate, because I had been watching it when it disappeared and the gate hadn’t moved.
The next day I sent one of the farm workers to fetch some sheep who were lost in the bush, and on his way back he said he saw an object straddling the road. By the time he reached the spot, it was gone, but strangely enough, the sheep would not walk over the area where the object had been. Instead, they divided around it.
My workers were convinced this was a ghost, and because I am a Christian myself, I believe it was a phantom or spiritual phenomenon of some sort. I don’t believe in UFOs.
01.04
South Africa [man]
My name is Credo Mutwa. There are things that fly through the night that you call UFOs, which we in Africa call Abahambi Abavutayo, “the fiery visitors”. Long before they were heard of in other parts of the world we, the people of Africa, had contact with these things and the creatures inside them. I can only speak with certain constraints because we are not allowed to talk in detail about these sacred things, or else the star ships will stop visiting us. There is a creature called the Mutende-ya-ngenge, the grey or white creature with a large head, whose face is chalk-white with large green eyes that go around the creature’s head, so it can look at you over its shoulder. The Mutende sometimes captures human beings, cuts them open, then closes them up again and makes them forget what has happened. This is only discovered if the person is put into a trance, then he remembers. I was once abducted myself, by fellows like little dolls. They paralysed me, then painfully examined me by sticking instruments up my nostrils. A female creature seduced me but it was very cold and unpleasant, a feeling of being violated. I then found myself back in the bush, and when I approached my village all the dogs tried to attack me and I had to be rescued. I then learned I had been missing for three days. There are many creatures who are watching over us curiously, and I think they are regulating our development for some reason.
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