The Walvis Bay Space Monster: a Ball with Light Extensions

In 1976 Walvis Bay was a South African enclave, run as part of South West Africa. Today it belongs to Namibia. The town sits on the Atlantic coast, with the dunes of the Namib desert pressing in around it.

Monday, 16 August 1976. Around 06:30, at dawn. Witnesses in Walvis Bay saw a strange phenomenon passing over what the Namib Times called "the wilderness in Walvis Bay". Its top shone brightly, and beneath it hung a round ball. Two light extensions came off the object, and they shot off something which looked like sparks.

Several people saw it. Some gave it a name. They called it a "Space Monster".

It was in no hurry to leave. For about an hour it held the morning sky. Then, in the newspaper's words, "with the rising of the sun, the 'monster' faded and later disappeared completely." By about 07:30 there was nothing left to see.

One resident, Dieter Krauer, photographed the object. He thought it was too far away for clear pictures. His name survives only in a later online repost of the newspaper story. Whether the Namib Times ever printed his photographs is unknown. None has surfaced.

The reports add one more detail. This was not the first time. The same object had been seen about a month earlier, by fishermen at sea. Nothing more is known of that encounter.

The Namib Times ran the story, and conceded that no one could say for certain what the object was. The case later entered the UFO Evidence archive as case 422, filed as a press report, citing the paper of 17 August 1976 and spelling the town "Walvish Bay". No official investigation is on record. NICAP's chronology for 1976 has no entry for it at all.

In May 2008 the story resurfaced. Denver Isaacs of The Namibian, writing about a new sighting near Usakos, looked back at the 1976 monster and quoted the old Namib Times report. He dated it to the paper's August 16 1976 edition. The most likely reading is that the sighting came on the 16th and the article followed a day later. No one has checked the original issue.

No hoax has ever been alleged. No explanation appears in any source. Possible answers are easy to list: a planet or bright star low on the horizon, distorted by the mirages that are common over the Namib coast, or a high balloon or rocket exhaust caught by the sun before daylight reached the ground. None has been tested against the sky of that morning.

The real answer may be sitting in an archive. A scan of the Namib Times for those August days, perhaps with Krauer's photographs, would settle a great deal. Until then the Walvis Bay Space Monster stays where the newspaper left it. Seen by many, photographed by one man, never explained.