From UFO ROUNDUP
November, 1996
Masinaigan@aol.com
On Friday afternoon, October 18, 1996, Humberto Araujo Cruz took off for a flight in his Cessna 310. Leaving the airport at Campina Grande, the second largest city in the state of Paraiba in northeastern Brazil.
As he approached Guarabira (population 200,000), Araujo "saw an OVNI (Portuguese acronym for UFO) measuring 30 meters (100 feet) in height, pyramid-shaped with rounded corners at the bottom and a transparent dome on top."
Oblivious to the Cessna's presence, the UFO proceeded in a westerly direction through the big cumulous clouds, crossing the Rio Corimata and heading for Paralhas. Keeping his distance, Araujo said he followed the UFO "for over thirty minutes," crossing the line into the state of Rio Grande do Norte. The UFO turned to the northwest, flying over Jardinido Sorida, Carto and Catole do Rocha, with Araujo still following.
Then the UFO's top dome opened, Araujo reported, and "a little oval-shaped thing came out." While the small, shiny UFO hovered, the huge object rocketed away at high speed, heading due north toward the Chapada do Apodi and the South Atlantic. "The small one hovered for a few more minutes and then left."
Elsewhere in South America, a few days later, on Monday,
October 21, at 10 p.m., an unidentified Venezuelan woman
walking the beach on Isla Orchila in the Caribbean Sea saw
"a giant UFO 100 meters (330 feet) in diameter, rise from
the ocean" about a quarter-mile (0.5 kilometers) offshore.
The woman watched as the jumbo-sized saucer flew overhead
due south, heading for the mainland. Isla Orchila lies about
400 kilometers (240 miles) north of Caracas, Venezuela.
(Email Interviews)
(Editor's Note: This is the latest in a long line of Guarabira
sightings dating back to April. Also, a giant pyramid-shaped
UFO was seen over Pelotas, Rio Grande do Sul state, Brazil
on October 5, 1996.)
In early November, a motorist driving near Ballarat, in southern Australia's Victoria state, "reported seeing a fireball with a tail" fly over his car. Minutes later, he glanced in the rearview mirror and saw what he described as "a panel of lights" approaching from behind at speeds between 185 and 250 miles per hour (300 to 400 kilometers per hour).
The driver immediately pulled over to the side of the road. Just as it seemed about to crash into his car, the UFO pulled up and shot away "at a tremendous speed."
In Queensland, residents reported a weird phenomenon in Grafton, the site of a UFO incident last summer. Whole sheets of roofing tiles and shingles levitated away from houses and flew west toward Mount Bajimba. There were "no weather conditions that (could have) caused it."
Ross Dowe of Australia's National UFO Hotline said, "There's been a whole sequence of events which are highly irregular." (See Australian AP World News for November 4, 1996.)
On Sunday, November 3, 1996, Marta Ionescu, 27, was at the beach in Eforie Nord, 25 kilometers (15 miles) south of Constanza, Romania's seaport on the Black Sea. Sharing the beach with about 50 other onlookers, Marta spied "three red spheres positioned in a triangle shape. Moving but always keeping a triangle" The beach crowd "stopped and stared as the spheres disappeared one by one."
On Thursday night, November 7, 1996, Elena Antonescu, 29, was watching a gymnastics performance on her TV at her apartment in Constanza. "During the publicity (commercial)," she said, "I went to the kitchen and opened a window to smoke a cigarette. I am a very enthusiastic smoker. As I was looking in the sky, (she noticed) it was a cloudy night. I was looking at a 'red star,' saying to myself that it's a UFO. After thinking this, I started to watch (scan) the sky to see if there were any stars. After smoking my cigarette in peace, I saw a red ball...not round, but like a rugby ball...up in the sky. I became afraid. I started to close the window. But it was too late. This strange thing was right in front of my window at about 50 meters (165 feet away). I ran away, scared, to my neighbor."
In the adjoining apartment, Elena convinced her neighbors to go to the French windows overlooking the terrace.
"It took three seconds for the UFO to arrive in front of my window," Elena said. "Its color was bright red, like something between pink, orange and red, bright with a half-sphere shape. It looked like a half-moon (or inverted bowl). My neighbors looked at it more than I did. After I calmed down, they told me it was (had been) moving slowly to the left and to the right. After fifteen minutes, it went away. (By then) We were not watching the window because we were afraid."
Romania's current UFO flap began in June when MOI-TV in Bucharest reported a saucer landing in Vidra, a remote village in the Carpathian Mountains of the Vrancea district. The entire village saw a platoon of UFO occupants, whom they described as "gray, smaller than we humans, with big ears and big eyes. People were afraid and ran and hid."
The following day, a red-sphere UFO was seen flying over the forests of the Galati district, 150 kilometers (80 miles) east of Vidra, near the Ukrainian border. (Email Interview)