The La Rochelle Beings

Light poured from their heads. Clifford Muchena was the foreman at the La Rochelle station of the Forestry Commission, about nine kilometres north-east of Mutare, which older sources call Umtali. He said three figures in silver coveralls stood before him on the evening of 15 August 1981. When they turned towards him the force of that light knocked him to the ground from ten feet away.

It began at about 6 pm with a ball of fire. About twenty workmen watched it cross the grounds and burst into flame. Muchena ran to ring the emergency bell. In the archive's telling the ball came back down a wall and reappeared, and then the figures were there. The workers took the beings for ancestral spirits.

What is on the record

The outside record rests on a single investigation, but a first-hand one. Cynthia Hind went to La Rochelle and investigated on site. She wrote the case up in her 1982 book UFOs: African Encounters and in an article titled Entities at La Rochelle in the MUFON UFO Journal of May 1983. The case also sits in the Hatch and Eberhart catalogues, and both draw on her work. It is one of the best-known entity cases from Africa. No official response appears in the record and no standard explanation has been put forward.

Our telling and the outside record agree on the date, the place and the foreman's name. They differ on the fireball's path. Our telling has it rolling across a lawn and up a wall. The outside record describes a ball about five feet across that moved about the grounds and entered an observation tower before bursting into flame.

Why it sits where it does

The archive holds one video on one channel and resolves two claimants: Muchena and about twenty forestry workmen. The second entry is a whole group counted as one, so the number understates the crowd and overstates what can be checked person by person. The case grades L3 for independent witnesses because a workforce saw the fireball and a named foreman saw the figures. What came to La Rochelle that evening is not resolved here.