Circles on the field and other formations. South Africa

Date: November 12, 1972
Location: Rosemead, South Africa
Time: 9:30 p.m.
Summary: The Case of the Damaged Tennis Court November 12, Rosmead, South Africa. Hundreds of sightseers from the , Middelburg area flocked to neighboring …., Rosmead on Monday to see a damaged tennis court believed to have been the landing place of a UFO the night before. At about 9:30 p.m. on Sunday policemen at Middelburg watched a strange g l owing object through binoculars. It appeared to change color and it s shape from circular to elliptical. The officers said the Iigh I hovered over “a hill” at Rosmead, then disappeared and reappeared. A while later the principal of Rosemead school, Mr. harold Truter was just arriving home when he saw “a beam like a searchlight” in the sky and he and his wife and children watched it for some time. He then discovered that chunks of tar had been gouged from the school tennis court ncar his home. The next morning he made a closer inspection and found that there was no damage to the fencing a round the court and that the gate was st ill firmly secured with wire as it had been before the object was seen. lie thought it significant hat lumps of tar were found caught high up in the tennis court fence. On the 13 th , po lice who were searching the area found lumps of tar on a hill some distance away. Lieutenant Colo nel B.J. van Heerden, District Commandant of Police at Middelburg said that the reports from his men on the object tallied with those of the UFO seen at Fort Beaufort earlier in 1972. As the investigation continued, it waS found that a tree next to the tennis court at Rosemead High School had started to die. It is a large blue gum tree which shows signs of scorching, according to van Heerden. Theories had been advanced that the ten to twelve feet chunks of tar which had been ripped up from the court’s surface were caused by a gas explosion or a whirlwind but were dist: ounlcu l”‘::t:<:luse not a piece of tar had been overturned, and the other trees in the vicinity had not sustained any damage. After the news about the ,mysterious damage was reported, four men who had been guarding the petrol dumps four hundred meters away on Sunday night made independent statements to the po lice that t hey had observed red lights on the courts. ” It looked as if someone in a car without headlights but with tail lights burning were riding a round in circles on the tennis court”, they told the police. The lights disappeared , they said . and t h e n the whole petrol dump was illuminated with a “strange incandescent light”. Riflemen P.K. Nel and SJ. Rosseau said that the lights were on the court and not next door. A Mr. E. van Zyl . who holds a DSc in astronomy and lectures It the University o f Witwatersrand. investigated the case and concluded that the damage was caused by a whirlwind. In ,1 Jetter 10 Mr. T. Geary. Director of the Planetarium , he THE A.P .R.D. BULLETIN argued that upon examining the surface of Ihe lennis court ” I saw no signs whatever of melting and no signs that could have been made by a rocket or jet blasting off” (here V’1Il Zyl makes the fatal error of assuming that whatever was over the court was using a mundane type of propulsion). He also made the flat statement that two holes pressed into the asphalt surface at each end of the court “definitely could not have been made by a leg or stay pressing down into the tar” without listing his reasons. Van Zyl further says, “The whirlwind does not explain the light which waS seen on the Sunday night – some folks say they saw a red light, others yellow <lnd some blue! So it must have been a piece of hardware left over from a satellite burning out. ” Mr. van Zyl’s Mendelian explanation of the cause of the damage to the tennis court conveniently ignores some evidence or distorts it, whichever is the most effective to bolster his theory. Some cdilorhll comments are in order in Ihis case: Although we do not have exact times for the sigh lings involved. we can reconstruct to some extent. The petrol dump guards saw two red lights going around in circles – !lot next to, but 011 t he tennis court. Then the lights disappeared and the petrol dump was lit up. Meanwhile, Principal Truter, arriving home (which is located next to the school) saw a “beam like a searchlight” in the sky. Shortly thereafter he discovered the damage to the court. Now the question is: Did the guards first sec a UFO with rotating lights over the court? When they disappeared and the dump was lit up, was Mr. Truter, at the same time looking at the “searchlight” which was .. ‘. -,;. …. -.. , .~ PAGE 7 spotlighting the petrol dump? Where Mr. van Zyl’s hypothesis is concerned , we must again ask some questions. Can .1 whirlwind pick up material as heavy as the material which was torn oul of the tennis court? Why was asphalt found on a hill some distance away, but there was no evidence of the ravages o f a whirlwind bet ween the tennis court and the hill? Why were the green shoots at the base of the gum tree dying the next day? The tree was partially denuded and the remainder of the foliage is withered – it is doubtful that a whirlwind could do that. 
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