THINK ABOUTIT UFO|UAP|ENTITY ENCOUNTER REPORT

1997: South Africa UFO Encounter | The “Tower of Discs” Case Archive

Driving home from windsurfing at dusk in September 1997, past the CSIR buildings on the edge of Pretoria, Frank Valentyn, his wife, and his son saw something ahead of the road that took a full five minutes to pass: an immense, conical tower of stacked discs, tapering from a huge glowing top down to a smaller base, each disc ringed with six or seven bright orange lights. Every so often, a disc would peel away from the bottom of the tower and fly off on its own course — ten to fifteen of them, by Valentyn’s count, over the course of the sighting. “My God,” someone in the car said, “it’s a mothership and those are ‘daughter-disks.'”

What sets this case apart is the witness himself: Valentyn opened his car window mid-sighting specifically to rule out an internal reflection, worked out the tower’s rough dimensions using hand-measured angles rather than guesswork, reported it to the Johannesburg Planetarium the next day, and later offered to submit to polygraph testing. None of that produced an investigation. This entry also untangles a numbers mix-up in the case’s own recorded dimensions — three separate figures that had been folded into one confusing range.

Date: September 1997 (exact date not given in source)

Sighting Time: Dusk (specific clock time not given)

Day/Night: Dusk

Location: On the freeway between an unnamed inland lake and Johannesburg, passing the CSIR buildings on the periphery of Pretoria, South Africa

Urban or Rural: Rural

Hynek Classification: NL (Nocturnal Light) — retained despite the object’s extensive discernible structure, since it was seen only at a distance (~10 km), well outside CE-I’s close-range threshold. See Researcher’s Notes.

Duration: Approximately 5 minutes, from first sighting to passing the object

No. of Object(s): 1 large tower structure composed of an unspecified number of stacked discs, tapering from largest at top to smallest at bottom; separately, 10 to 15 individual discs were observed detaching from the tower’s base and flying off during the sighting. See Researcher’s Notes.

Description of the Object(s): A tall, apparently stationary tower of stacked discs, conically tapered (largest disc at top, smallest at bottom), from which individual discs periodically detached and flew off in varying directions, some on roughly parallel courses and others diverging sharply; no sound, electronic disturbance, or physical trace was noted

Shape of Object(s): Disc (individual units); overall tower shape conically tapered

Size of Object(s): Top disc estimated at a diameter of at least 1.7 km, based on the witness’s angular measurement (four finger-widths at arm’s length, roughly 10°, at an estimated 10 km distance)

Color of Object(s): Each disc glowed dimly with an evenly distributed reddish light; each disc’s equatorial rim showed approximately six or seven bright orange light sources

Distance to Object(s): Approximately 10 km, calculated from driving speed (120 km/h) and the roughly 5-minute duration of the sighting

Height & Speed: Bottom disc estimated at approximately 1.8 km altitude (from a 10° elevation angle at ~10 km distance); top of the tower estimated at approximately 7 km altitude (from a 35° elevation angle at the same distance); resulting total tower height (top minus bottom) of approximately 5.2 km. The tower itself appeared stationary; no speed is given for the departing discs. See Researcher’s Notes for how these three figures were disentangled from the original field data.

Number of Witnesses: 3 named/described in the vehicle — Frank Valentyn (driver), his wife, and his son (now a military instructor pilot and air force captain) — plus unspecified occupants of other vehicles on the highway who were also seen looking at and pointing toward the phenomenon, not individually identified

Special Features/Characteristics: Witness opened the car window mid-sighting to rule out an internal reflection, confirming the object was external and that its apparent size grew as they approached; no sound, electronic/electromechanical disturbance, or physiological effect was reported beyond the emotional impact of the sighting itself; witness reported the sighting to the Johannesburg Planetarium the next day, which showed little interest and produced no documented follow-up; witness offered to submit to polygraph testing to support the report’s credibility

Case Status: Insufficient Data — see Researcher’s Notes for rationale

Source: Frank Valentyn (first-person witness account)

Summary/Description: In September 1997, at dusk, Frank Valentyn, his wife, and his son observed an enormous, conically tapered tower of glowing, reddish discs — estimated at over 5 km in height and more than 1.7 km in top diameter — apparently stationary beside a freeway near Pretoria, South Africa, while 10 to 15 individual discs detached from its base and flew off in various directions over roughly five minutes. The witness reported the sighting to the Johannesburg Planetarium the next day but received little interest and no known follow-up.

Related Cases: Undocumented by name — a separate, unrelated 1994 sighting near Warrenton, South Africa also described a “mothership”-like object, a recurring theme in South African UFO literature rather than a documented connection to this case.

Detailed Report

Frank Valentyn’s account, submitted in his own words and signed with his full name, describes a drive home from windsurfing at an inland lake one evening in September 1997. Traveling south toward Johannesburg at dusk, passing the CSIR buildings on the edge of Pretoria, Valentyn was driving with his wife and son in the car when something ahead, slightly off to the right of the road, caught his attention: what looked like a very tall tower of stacked discs, tapering conically so that the topmost disc was the widest and the lowest the narrowest.

From first sighting to passing the object, roughly five minutes elapsed at a driving speed of about 120 km/h, giving Valentyn a distance estimate of approximately 10 kilometers. Each disc in the tower glowed dimly with an even, reddish light, and around each one’s equatorial rim sat about six or seven brighter orange points of light. Wanting to rule out the possibility that he was seeing some kind of reflection inside the car, Valentyn rolled down his window and looked at the tower directly from outside — confirming it was a genuine external phenomenon, further supported by watching its apparent size grow as they drew closer.

As they watched, individual discs periodically broke away from the bottom of the tower and flew off — some on courses roughly parallel to one another, others diverging sharply. Valentyn estimated ten to fifteen such departures over the course of the sighting, though he was candid that he made no effort at a precise count, calling the whole experience “unsettling” and “not easily intellectually digestible” even as part of his attention stayed fixed on the main tower structure, which itself never appeared to move.

Working out the tower’s dimensions after the fact, Valentyn used a simple technique: four fingers held at arm’s length span roughly ten degrees of arc. By this method, he measured the tower’s total apparent height at about thirty-five degrees from his estimated ten-kilometer distance, giving a calculated altitude of about seven kilometers for the top of the tower. The top disc itself spanned about four finger-widths, implying a diameter of at least 1.7 kilometers. The bottom disc, meanwhile, sat at an elevation of about ten degrees above the horizon, placing it at roughly 1.8 kilometers altitude — meaning the tower’s actual physical height, from bottom disc to top, worked out to approximately 5.2 kilometers, distinct from either the 7-kilometer top altitude or the separate 10-kilometer distance estimate. Valentyn described these as estimates he’d guarantee within about 20 percent of the true figures.

No sound was heard from the tower or the departing discs, and no electronic, electromechanical, or physiological disturbance was noted beyond the emotional impact of witnessing the event itself. Valentyn noted that traffic on the freeway was heavy that evening, and that occupants of other cars around them also appeared to be looking at, and in some cases pointing toward, the phenomenon — an informal but, to him, meaningful form of corroboration, even though none of those other motorists were identified or interviewed. As they passed the tower, one person in the car remarked, “My God, it’s a mothership and those are ‘daughter-disks’…” — a line Valentyn said he would never forget, while acknowledging he had no way to know if the description was accurate.

The next day, Valentyn reported the sighting to staff at the Johannesburg Planetarium, some of whom he knew personally from an astronomy course he’d taken. He found little skeptical engagement and, as far as he knew, no follow-up investigation, either privately or through the media. In his closing remarks, Valentyn — who said he had no interest in publicity — argued for the value of responsible, thorough investigation of sightings like his own, and stated he would be willing to submit to polygraph testing to support the reliability of his account.

RESEARCHER’S NOTES

The Freeway Tower — South Africa 1997 and a Family’s Own Trigonometry

Numeric Clarification — Height & Distance: The original field data renders the tower’s dimensions as “1.8 km altitude… total tower height of approximately 5.2 km. – 10 km,” which reads as a confusing range. Working through the witness’s own trigonometry: the bottom disc’s altitude was calculated at about 1.8 km, the top of the tower at about 7 km, and the tower’s actual physical height — top minus bottom — at approximately 5.2 km. The “10 km” is a separate figure entirely: the estimated distance to the object, derived from driving speed and elapsed time. This entry presents these as three distinct figures rather than one ambiguous range.
Object Count Clarification: The original field lists “No. of Object(s): ten to fifteen disks,” but the witness’s account describes a single, very large tower composed of an unspecified but clearly large number of stacked discs, from which ten to fifteen individual discs were separately observed detaching and flying off during the five-minute sighting. This entry distinguishes the tower itself from the departing discs counted within it.
Classification Notes: NL is retained despite the tower’s extensive structural detail (discernible individual discs, rims, colored lights), consistent with this archive’s general practice of applying NL to distant sightings that fall outside CE-I’s close-range threshold regardless of how much visual structure was discerned. The dusk timing places this at the edge of a “nocturnal” classification, though the object’s self-luminous glow supports NL over DD.
Witness Self-Verification: The witness took deliberate steps to rule out an internal vehicle reflection and to estimate the object’s dimensions using explained, basic trigonometry rather than guesswork — an unusually methodical approach for a source of this kind, and one the witness was explicit about wanting to apply.
Corroboration and Its Limits: The witness reports that occupants of other vehicles on the highway also appeared to be looking at and pointing toward the phenomenon, and that his son was present as a second witness. Neither the other motorists nor any independent investigator were identified or interviewed; the case was reported to the Johannesburg Planetarium the next day but drew little interest and no documented follow-up.
Case Status Rationale: Filed as Insufficient Data not because the witness’s account lacks detail or internal care — it is unusually thorough and self-critical for a source of this kind — but because no independent investigation, physical evidence, or corroborating witness statement beyond the reporting family was ever obtained, despite the witness’s own explicit wish for follow-up and stated willingness to undergo polygraph testing.

Few witnesses in this archive did as much of their own homework as Frank Valentyn — testing for reflections, showing his math, naming his family, and asking to be polygraphed. What the case still lacks is what he himself wanted most: someone else to actually look into it. It is filed as Insufficient Data for that reason alone, not for any shortage of care on the witness’s part.