A shooting star? Ball of lightning? Visiting aliens from outer space? Whatever it was, a handful of residents from Usakos are convinced they saw an unidentified flying object (UFO) pass over their heads on Sunday night.

According to Hester Schmidt, who was sitting on her porch with her husband at the time, they saw what looked like a "round ball with a long tail", passing overhead in the direction of Swakopmund.

"We didn't hear anything, but it was extremely fast and it went really low.

I would say the ball was about 18 inches in diameter as we'd call it in the old times," she told The Namibian.

Schmidt and her husband's story was corroborated by at least two others - Thomas Ismael and Sabina Naruses.

"It made a huge light over the town.

My children, my wife, they all saw it.

Everyone is talking about it," Ismael said yesterday.

A quick glance into the history books reveals that this weekend's "UFO" sighting is not the first of its kind in Namibia.

Coastal newspaper The Namib Times reported similar sightings over Walvis Bay in its August 16 1976 edition.

This article is archived on the website www.ufoevidence.org.

In that case, several people reported seeing a "strange phenomenon" passing over "the wilderness in Walvis Bay".

"Some people referred to the phenomenon as a 'Space Monster' and said that with the rising of the sun, the 'monster' faded and later disappeared completely," the article read.