Black Light Absorbing Sphere illuminated by Lighthouse beam followed by very rapid soundless departure
I was probably 18 years old at the time (event year approx 1992 date and month forgotten), fully sober and lucid and sitting on a beach in Durban North South Africa near to Virginia Airport. It was around 10pm at night and I was with a young lady. Whilst she was talking, I was watching the beam of light being emitted from a nearby lighthouse, I hadn't been watching long. On it's first rotation, the beam seemed to pass over a perfectly still hovering spherical/perfectly round shape. The sphere only became noticeable (visible would not be the right word to use in this context) because as the beam of light from the lighthouse passed over it it seemed to absorb the light showing the partial curve (obviously beam facing) of a perfectly round large sphere. The size was difficult to estimate but judging from the distance it was from the lighthouse (if you consider the beam radiating from the lighthouse to the object)must have been several hundred meters and even though the beam appears to expand in size from its origin the sphere shape absorbed all the beam at the at the point it met the light and the curve of the object entirely blocked the beam from travelling any further.
Almost as soon as the light hit the object (probably around 1 second after), the object moved at incredible velocity away from the beam and without sound.
Unfortunately my companion did not see what I saw, I did ask but the spectacle itself left me astounded.
The only action I took back then was to phone the airport the next day and ask if there was anything that could explain what I had seen. They replied that they did not operate at night and nothing they were aware of could account for what I had seen.
I had never seen a UFO before and have not seen one since. I can say the object was airborne (hovering without any detectable movement) and then moved using some form of silent and rapid propulsion and that the movement very deliberate and directed upwards away from the lighthouse beam.
Although this event happened around 20 years ago, I only recounted it to my companion on the beach with me at the time, the person manning the airport phone the next day and my close family and friends. I have since payed partial interest to TV shows and accounts (written or otherwise) about sightings if I come across them and only really to see if any accounts matched mine. With the advent of youTube and satellite TV and the fact that in all that time I've not seen or heard of any reported incident that resembles my experience (I have checked around 50 youtube videos in the past few weeks) I decided I should now share this experience with MUFON after seeing something about your organization on a satellite TV show.
All accounts I have seen (and this pertains to night sightings specifically) contain some element of light emitted from the craft, almost all are disc shaped or triangular. I have seen nothing about a perfectly spherical light absorbing (and non emitting) object. I can only speculate that the object was designed with maximum stealth in mind and I know that I would not have even known it was there if not for the purely co-incidental fact that I happened to look up at that part of the sky just before and as the lighthouse beam passed over the object. I certainly would have not seen or heard it if it were for these circumstances.
I am now 37 years old well educated with degrees and diplomas and I have worked for some of the most respected firms in the world including Barclays and Deloitte and I now own my own successful business. I can still say that to this day nothing known to me can account for what I saw and I am more than happy to be a non-anonymous witness of an Unidentified Flying Object