Porirua three hovering lights

Porirua is a city in the Wellington Region of New Zealand's North Island. On the morning of 3 August 2020 it became the setting for a small, stubborn mystery. One local. One phone. A few seconds of footage.

It was the early hours, and still dark. Theodora Faafia was leaving her home with her cousin when she noticed lights above the town. Three of them. Large, and hovering up in the dark skies.

They did not drift. They did not dart. "It was just still in the sky," she said later. Her cousin had the same reaction. "I just thought it was strange and so did my cousin." Both were sure of one thing. In Faafia's words, "it wasn't plane lights or anything."

She raised her phone and filmed for a few seconds. She also took a still photo. Then they drove, and kept watching the lights until they were out of sight. When they came back into Porirua, it was daylight.

That morning Faafia posted her footage to a local Porirua Facebook group. "Anyone have a clue what it could be?" she asked. Another resident replied that they had seen the lights too. The NZ Herald ran the story the same day under the headline "UFO over Porirua? Mysterious hovering lights stun locals," with her video and photo. The caption spoke of three "creepy" lights hovering over the town.

The comments filled with theories. Some suggested searchlights. Others suggested military aircraft, and one local said army planes had flown over the area the previous Thursday. No notice confirming an exercise over Porirua has surfaced.

A third idea was the Moon behind clouds. The full Sturgeon Moon peaked at 15:59 UTC on 3 August 2020, so a near-full Moon would have been up in the pre-dawn sky. That could explain a bright glow. It does not easily account for three separate lights. Faafia herself said she had "no idea" what they were. No official body looked into it. The NZDF had stopped officially investigating UFO reports long before.

The clip found a second life months later. On 12 February 2021, at about 10:30 pm, a witness in Trentham, Upper Hutt, reported a black triangle, dark and unlit, crossing the ranges. He told aviation authorities he had seen "a clip posted on web of a large triangle above Porirua," dated "2 August 2020." His verdict was blunt. "Similar size but it had lights whereas the thing I saw was pitch black." UFOCUS NZ recorded his account. Porirua, he said, lies "almost straight across" the ranges from Trentham.

That reading turned three lights into the corners of a shape. Faafia never described it that way. Today the case survives as an entry in Wikipedia's list of New Zealand UFO sightings and a handful of retellings. The original Facebook post has not been found. The question it asked is still open.