
                  MYSTERIOUS CLOUD SEEN IN AUSTRIA
                  --------------------------------

                            By Robert K

One  morning last summer an elderly woman who lives not far away from our
home in central Burgenland (close to the Hungarian border) came to us and
reported that she had seen something weird on the last night:

On August 26th 1995 at about 23:00 Liza (aged 74) saw through the windows
what  appeared  to  be  a  rotating "cloud", that was periodically moving
between  the street and a point about 50 metres down the garden.  She was
scared  because  she  didn't  know what it was, so she called her husband
(aged 83) and he also saw it.  According to her the object was about 5-10
metres  across,  and  this  "cloud"  was  torn  into  many pieces and was
rotating "like a Ringelspiel" (a carrousel with seats hanging on chains).

The  sighting  lasted  for  about half an hour.  During all this time the
object was moving back and forth between the street and the garden.

On the next day she used different words to describe it:  she referred to
it  as a cloud, a foam or a fog.  I didn't notice anything strange at the
time  of  the  observation,  I  only felt a strong headache, but this was
nothing  unusual.  Maybe I could have seen the object if I had looked out
of the window.  Sunset on that day was at 19:49.  The weather on that day
was changing, mostly sunny with one heavy rain shower at about 13:30.  My
first  speculation  was  that  the  object was a vortex that was carrying
either dust or humidity.  However, it is hard to explain how a vortex can
move  for  half an hour on such a constant path.  Liza's son (who had not
seen  the object) dismissed it with the argument that it was the smoke of
fireworks  from  a  nearby town; a very weak explanation from my point of
view,  but  Liza  thought  that this is what it must have been and now no
longer thinks about the incident.

On  the  next  evening  I observed the night sky for three hours with the
hope  to  see  the  object.   The only remarkable observation happened at
22:05.   For  only  one or two seconds I saw something what looked like a
rotating  ring  of  lights.   It  was  not very bright, and I only saw it
because I was looking at the right portion of the sky at that time.  This
was  either  the  projection  of  a  kind  of  searchlight, or these were
cloud-like  objects  illuminated  by  the street lamps on the ground.  At
that  time  I  thought  to  hear  the engines of a jet that was obviously
flying very high and which I couldn't see.

Does  anyone  know  about similar UFO sightings?  There have been so many
sightings  of  mysterious  clouds (like the famous World War 1 case where
the  Norfolk  regiment  was scooped up by a cloud in Turkey), but I don't
remember  a  case  where the cloud was torn into pieces and was rotating.
Does  anyone know of other UFO sightings at that time?  I only know about
strange lights that were observed over southern Austria in early August.

It's strange how difficult it is for a UFO buff like me to have his first
nuts-and-bolts  UFO  sighting.   I've  already  been  very close to a UFO
sighting  two  years ago, but I didn't see the object that someone in the
neighbourhood described on the next day.

From: e9125767@stud1.tuwien.ac.at (Robert K)

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