Warkworth, NZ being encounter — January 1978

A young couple at Warkworth reportedly attracted an unusual light with a flashlight one night in January 1978. Keith Basterfield’s New Zealand entity catalogue, published in MUFON UFO Journal 177, cites the Rodney & Waitemata Times of February 1 as the underlying newspaper source. The exact encounter date and witnesses’ names are not supplied in the available summary. The light allegedly descended and landed approximately fifty meters away. It was then described as a round, luminous, silvery saucer. A door opened and a very tall figure appeared in the threshold, estimated at two to 2.3 meters. One witness waved, and the figure reportedly waved in return. The door subsequently closed and the object rose and departed. No spoken exchange, approach to the couple or boarding by either witness was recorded. The brief catalogue description supplies neither a clear face nor clothing, skin or other anatomical details. Its apparently humanlike silhouette should therefore remain indistinct in reconstruction. The surviving chain is a newspaper report summarized by later researchers, without an independently reproduced field investigation here; the reciprocal gestures are the central reported interaction.