All sightings, photographs, drawings and articles are © Ufocus NZ.

The extent of our investigation and analysis of sighting reports is dependent upon the data received, and the length of time elapsed between the sighting event and the receipt of a report.  If applicable, additional comments are made at the bottom of a report.

Date: 2 July 2005

Time: 6.00 – 6.30 am

Location: Waihopai Valley, Marlborough, South Island

Features/characteristics: object with coloured rotating lights follows car

Description:

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]

Date: 13 June 2005

Time: 8.30 pm, and throughout the night

Location: At sea off the coast of the Bay of Plenty, North Island

Features/characteristics: charter fishing boats followed by red pulsing light

Description:

On the evening of 13 June 2005, two charter boats were traveling off the coast of Plate Island in the Bay of Plenty, New Zealand, en route to Port Whakatane; the Enchanter, with one on board, was five kilometres ahead of the Pursuit, with six on board. Around 8.30 pm both skippers watched a large pulsing orb of red light (no radar contact) to the south, as it followed both vessels to Port Whakatane.

During a three hour period, a light appeared from the top of the large light and flew off along the coastline traveling east along the Ohope Beach until it was out of sight. The main light, estimated to be about the size of a house, but difficult to ascertain at night, stayed above the Matata area for the rest of the night, according to the Pursuit crew.

The seven men on both vessels were very nervous, never having seen such a light before. Both skippers noted that it was traveling at the same speed as their boats. At one time the red light came closer to the Enchanter and then moved away again. This was noted by both skippers, who were in radio contact all the time.

When the Enchanter was adjacent to Whale Island, the light was on the coast side of the boat and the light disappeared soon after, but the Pursuit could still see it now nearer to them. They anchored for the remainder of the night on the west side of Whale Island and noted the light moved nearer Matata and they all thought it hovered over the hills above Matata for the remainder of the night.

The evening was overcast and cold with light winds. The light was described as being as bright as a red brake light on a car.

Ufocus NZ comment: UFO sightings often occur around the time of seismic or volcanic activity. Matata, the coastal rural area mentioned in this sighting, sits near a major fault line from the Central Plateau volcanic region, and White Island (an active volcano) sits nearby off the Bay of Plenty coastline. In 1987, a major earthquake measuring 6.3 on the Richter scale, struck the Bay of Plenty leaving a 7km crack known as ‘the Edgecumbe Fault’ that opened in the Rangitaiki Plains near Edgecumbe and Matata.

In May 2005, shortly before this sighting, floodwaters ravaged the township of Matata, causing landslides and mudslips and destroying many houses.

From early February right through to June 2005, hundreds of earthquakes (swarms) occurred near Matata. They were very shallow, between 5 and 10 kilometres deep. These swarms were still occurring at the time of the above sighting.

Date: 8 February 2005

Time: 8pm

Location: Taupo, North Island

Features/characteristics: fast-moving defined ‘clouds’ become stationary

Description:

The witnesses, ‘Sharonn’, her mother, and sister, were traveling by car approaching the lakefront in the city of Taupo, arriving from the Napier-Taupo Highway. Being Summer, it was still light, with the sun was just starting to go down. The sky was generally clear, apart from two long, narrow, and clearly defined cloudbanks to the north. There was only a very slight breeze.

Sharon’s sister drew their attention to an unusual shaped cloud at a low altitude. The whitish ‘cloud’ was rounded and thicker at one end, tapering off towards the other end like a teardrop turned on its side, or a short comet-like shape. It was in a patch of clear sky between the two layers of clouds. They then spotted another identical ‘cloud’ some kilometres away from the first, and realized that both the ‘clouds’ were actually steadily moving directly towards each other – one moving faster than the other in a northeasterly direction towards Taupo, and the other in a southwesterly direction towards the ski resort town of Turangi. Each ‘cloud’ was moving horizontally, with the rounded end facing forwards, and a short tail behind. Apart from the two distant cloudbanks, there were no other clouds in the sky in that area. They were moving at a speed that was not consistent with the calm weather at the time.

Witness’s Drawing

The women quickly stopped the car on the Taupo lakefront and used binoculars to observe the ‘clouds’ more closely. They were able to see a dark shape or object slightly protruding from the rounded front of each ‘cloud’. The ‘clouds’ continued moving slowly across the sky towards one another until one was directly above the other over Lake Taupo. They both hovered stationary in that position for a few seconds. From their place of observation the women described the clouds as being, “…very close to each other, almost touching – only a tiny gap (visible) between them”.

The clouds surrounding the objects did not change size or shape and remained well-defined. The ‘cloud’ or object moving towards the township of Taupo then began to move off quite quickly and within a few seconds just seemed to suddenly disappear or dematerialize from sight, which the witnesses thought was unusual, considering it was traveling towards them and should have remained visible for some time. The trio observed the other ‘cloud’ or object for a couple more minutes as it headed steadily away southwest, before it eventually disappeared from view. No sound of aircraft was heard throughout the sighting as one of the ‘clouds’ approached the observers.

The three women were at a loss to explain what they had just seen, but they believed that the ‘clouds’ or objects were performing/moving in a way that was not typical of either aircraft or normal clouds.