The Boianai UFO sightings

On the evenings of 26 and 27 June 1959, Father William Booth Gill and mission parishioners at Boianai, Papua, reported UFOs and human-like figures. A later study proposes bright planets seen through cloud.

Patrick Gross dates the first sighting to 6:45 p.m. on 26 June 1959. He writes that Father William Booth Gill, a young Anglican priest at Boianai on Papua's coast, saw a white light, bright, in the northwest. According to Gross, thirty-eight further witnesses joined him, among them Steven Moi and Ananias Rarata. Gross says sworn statements from them describe an object shaped like a disc, standing on four legs, about as wide as five full moons side by side.

Gill's own notes cover the following evening, 27 June. He wrote that Annie Laurie first spotted a large object at 6 p.m., and he spotted it two minutes later. He summoned Ananias and some others, and they watched in the open for about fifteen minutes. Gill recorded four figures appearing on top of the object and wrote that they were human. He also noted two smaller objects, one above the hills to the west and one overhead, and took the large one for the night before's "Mother" ship.

David J. Halperin of Duquesne University gives the numbers differently, with Gill and twenty-five Papuan parishioners. Halperin writes that they perceived several UFOs and humanoid beings who walked about on top of a disk-shaped craft and tried to communicate. He says the likely trigger was several very bright planets and stars, seen as clouds gathered and cleared.