Inexplicata
The Journal of Hispanic Ufology
August 7, 2006
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DATE: August 6, 2006
Unknown Santiago - Mystery Returns After a 4-year Absence
MUTILATED ANIMALS AND STRANGE LIGHTS REAPPEAR IN QUIMILIOJ
History repeats: In 2002, mutilated cows appeared in this locality of the Dept. of San Martin, as they did in many parts of the country. Today, four years later, history repeats. Mutilated goats were found in a pen. The previous evening, local residents reportedly saw "strange" lights in the sky.
A resigned _expression and serene voice reveal the fact that Juan de la Cruz Paz is no longer startled by anything a all. In 2002, two of his cows were found mutilated near his humble ranch. There were no signs of putrefactions and carrion animals did not dare touch the animals' remains. Today, four years after that disconcerting experience, four of his goats were found with the same signs of mutilation and no one can explain -- again -- what happened to them.
"Don Juandela", as he is known by the locals, lives in the Quimilioj wilderness, some 16 km northwest of Garza in the Dept. of San martin. Four years ago, this province, as well as others, made national and international headlines when bovines began turning up with mutilated vital organs [removed] with a surgical precision hitherto unseen.
With these recent discoveries, the mystery returned to Quimilioj yet again. And although don Juan de la Cruz reported that he did not officially report the cases since "it will all be for naught" as in 2002, the inhabitants of this inhospitable wilderness are concerned by the new chain of strange events that is taking place in this site and which they already endured four years ago.
Although in 2002 they preferred to keep silent about many things they saw and experienced, on this occasion, interviewed by EL LIBERAL, several residents of Quimilioj decided to break their silence and tell us about the strange manifestations of "flying objects with unusual lights."
"We Couldn't Touch The Cows Because There Was Electricity"
EL LIBERAL visited Quimilioj's residents last Thursday. All of the locals consulted on the cases involving cow mutilation in 2002 and those whose goats met the same fate a week ago, coincided in their accounts. "Strange lights could be seen in the wilderness the night before the mutilations."
When several Argentinean provinces began reporting cattle mutilations in 2002, her husband was among the first Santiago residents who reported strange cases in this province.
"The first thing he found was a dead cow missing her eyes, guts and many inner organs, but he didn't pay it much mind because it's only normal for an animal to die every so often in the fields. But when we strated seeing on TV that dead cows were being found in the same way as ours, my husband decided to file a report, because it was very strange," Graciela Paz de Lemos told EL LIBERAL.
Graciela still has vivid recollections of that first encounter with the astonishing. "When my husband found the cows, all of the locals went to the site, which is about 2 km from my house. When we got to where the animal was, no one could approach it because the current would seize you. The truth is that it scared us a lot, and we're still scared today," she added.
Graciela agreed with her neighbor Ernestina about the strange lights that appeared in the wilderness always before cattle mutilations. "Every time we saw a large light in the wilderness, an animal would be lost the next day. Whenever we went to look for it, it would turn up dead and mutilated."
"The cows had their eyes well gouged-out, as if they'd removed them with a spoon. Furthermore, they would leave them like a bag, that is to say, nothing but hide, because they would remove all that was inside and left them with nothing. All of the locals felt frightened, because we still don't know what happened to them."
"We Always See Strange Lights in the Countryside"
Although four years ago, when the first mutilated cows turned up, the story did not merit greater attention by researchers, she insists. She does not doubt to ascertain that everytime that an animal is found dead under strange circumstances in the countryside, "strange lights going up and down can be seen in the wilderness the night before."
"You're the ones who published that time when the mutilated cows turned up. I remember because the animals turned dead near my house. My name is Ernestina Paz and it's a pleasure to see you here." That was how the woman who, along with her fellow residents of Quimilioj, suffered the experence finding mutilated bovines, presented herself to the team from EL LIBERAL.
Today, four years after that incident, Ernestina claims that "what happened at the time is also happening today." She added: "The other night we saw a very powerful light in the wilderness, several colors, going up and down. At the next day, over at Juan de la Cruz Paz's place, near my house, about four goat kids turned up dead."
Regarding these new discoveries, she remarked: "The goat kids were hollow on the inside, like the cows. It seems as though all their innards had been removed in a single go. Don Juandela didn't find traces of any other animal and there was no blood anywhere."
"That time with the cows, some people said it was Martians, because strange lights could be seen in the wild. It was as though some red-colored thing was burning. Until today, when one wakes up in the early morning, one can see something like giant lamps burning," she observed.
"But as far as I know, this isn't happening only in Quimilioj. When I worked in Garza, a little old man also had all of his sheep devoured. I say that it's something to be afraid of, because one doesn't know what it is. Even other animals are terrified, because when we found the dead cows, not even the crows would come near."
"Animals Were Left As Empty as a Bag"
A man from the deep countryside, Primitivo Paz never feared anything that could befall him in the wilderness, but the situations involving cows and mutilated goats changed his opinion. "All I can tell you is that one's afraid of what one doesn't know, or what you can't explain," he told EL LIBERAL.
This resident of Quimilioj also suffered the "terrible" experience of seeing - without knowing how their deaths occurred - dead and mutilated cows. "When the first mutilated cow showed up we were all alarmed, because we couldn't understand how it happened."
"The animals were down to pure leather, that is to say, empty inside. Furthermore, they were missing eyes and entrails. Even thought they came down from Santiago to investigate, we were never told what had happened to the animals. It's still a mystery to us today."
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Translation (c) 2006. Scott Corrales, Institute of Hispanic Ufology (IHU). Special thanks to Christian Quintero, Planeta UFO.
UFOs convoy planes in Moscow
17.08.2006
UFOs convoy planes in Moscow
Yesterday several people who were flying from Russian town Volgograd to Moscow witnessed quite unusual situation.
The first who noticed IT was Eugenia Kazarinova. She was the first who accidentally photographed invisible UFO that was following the plane. Eugenia Kazarinova saw nothing but a beautiful landscape outside the illuminator, but when she took several photos she noticed strange lights on them. She was worried and showed the photos to other passengers. They began to take photos using their cameras and mobile phones. The strange lights were present on almost all the photos.
The passengers became panic stricken because the lights didn't look like another plane and couldn't be seen with the naked eye.
Today experts can't give any official explanation of this strange phenomenon. Some of them say that it could be the reflection of the plane but the photos reject this hypothesis.
Ufolog.ru
Translated by Alexander Timoshik
Inexplicata
The Journal of Hispanic Ufology
October 3, 2006
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Source: El Tribuno de Salta and Planeta UFO
Date: October 2, 2006
ARGENTINA: Enigmatic Brealito Lagoon and Recta de Tin-Tin
A mysterious region filled with odd stories and accounts of lights, UFOS and monsters reaches from El Cajoncillo to Brealito Lagoon in the departments of Cachi and Molinos.
The area's landscape, which begins at the very heart of the Los Cardones National Park, assists in letting human imagination run away: the traveler is surrounded by a marvelous landscape at Cuesta del Obispo, runs into Recta de Tin-Tin, crosses the town of Seclantas and reaches the edges of Brealito Lagoon, resembling a landscape from another world. Recta de Tin-Tin is a perfectly straight stretch of road that extends for 11 kilometers and forms part of the ancient Inca road network, employed centuries ago to link the various points of the Tahuantisuyo, whose capital was in Cuzco.
In the 1980's a team from Diario El Tribuno made a report on Brealito Lagoon and gathered accounts that have not been forgotten to this very day. At that time, a police officer from Seclantas - now deceased - known as Gringo Guzman, told the detailed story of an apparition that caused him to lose sleep until the end of his days.
An avid fisherman, he would visit the lagoon regularly, as it was only 24 kilometers from his home. At that time, he made ready to spend a night at the edge of the enormous pond, which has a capricious shape and is surrounded by mineral hills and whose southering wing stretches into a rocky defile. He lit his lamp and settled under a gigantic black carob tree (a characteristic species of the area's damp microclimate, with red soil and green thistles. He cast his line and suddenly the waters became agitated. A splashing sound was heard as something large and heavy began to move around. Curiosity got the better of him and he did his best to see what it was; at the border of light and darkness he thought he saw a large dark figure, but the image was fleeting. As he didn't quite understand what had occurred, he calmed himself and prepared to cast his line into the water again, but as he was about to do so, the splashing returned--this time much stronger-- and no lamp was needed to see the gigantic figure that emerged scant meters away from him.
He was able to make out the shape of what he said was a gigantic reptile or "pejerrey" with a scaly back. Horrified, the man ran away, falling several time. Although -- he said -- once he had recovered from the shock, he did his best to calm down and return for his belongings, he found them completely soaked in water, in spite of being 4 meters away from the water's edge, as though swamped by a gigantic wave.
Brealito is surrounded by scattered houses occupied by local residents, no more than 10 of them. Many in Seclantas report that the site is filled with eyewitnesses to very strange events.
Gloria Aban, former national deputy and a member of one of the oldest families in the region, said that: "Brealito is a source of phenomena that have been reported since the dawn of time" adding that there are two key individuals living near the lagoon -- Tomas Pastrana and Estanislao Lopez -- who have seen the monster. Aban is a physician and currently a member of the Provincial Insurance Board.
Mrs. Funes, owner of the "La Rueda" hostelry in Seclantas, claims that executives from the now-vanished COTAS corporation( which was the largest passenger transportation service in the capital 20 years ago) told her of having had an experience similar to that of Gringo Guzman. These businessmen visited the area every year to spend a few vacation days with their families, and after running into the creature, made a quick getaway and never again returned to the site.
They told her that while sitting at the lagoon's edge, the children's attention was drawn by a strange waterspout that was heading toward them. The waterspout made an ululating sound that echoed amid the rocky mountains that surround the lagoon. Amid the water tornado that came out of nowhere on a calm, sunny morning, they claimed to have seen a semi human figure of colossal size. According to their story, the entity had the figure of a woman covered by a watery veil. It isn't hard to imagine how those people jumped aboard their vehicle and never returned.
Geographer Flavio Aban, who knows the area very well, has attempted to get to the bottom of the area's history and mysteries with the aid of one of his nine brothers, Fido Aban. "...this area contains not only the mystery that concerns you (the journalists) . It is also customary for local residents to see strange lights in the mountains, especially the ones toward the west. Large luminous eyes that cover the area without their origin ever being determined. No one can deny that there isn't at least one mysterious presence living under the waters of Brealito, or that something unknown is taking place there. We have determined the existence of strange movements in the water, which repeat frequently at dusk. These movements cannot be due to a current, unless it is a source of energy that comes from the depths. Furthermore, the lagoon's waters are brackish, have a strange mineral taste, and their true depth has never been ascertained. "
Walter Aban, mayor of Seclantas (a distant relative of Gloria, Fido and Flavio) does not believe in the monster, but agrees that inexplicable things do happen in the area. "Look, anyone traveling between Salta and Seclantas knows that strange lights appear in the sky from the Recta de Tin-Tin onwards. Are they UFOs? I don't know. But I can assure it's no fantasy."
Aban's words were confirmed by another area mayor, Hector Legoburo of Payogasta. "It's true, the Recta de Tin-Tin is a mysterious place at night. The lights that can be seen crossing the skies overhead are not a product of human engineering. Traveling from Salta to Payogasta I witnessed, I was tailed by a luminous object for a number of minutes. The people with me thought it was the lights of a construction vehicle, but it was impossible for a wheeled machine. And when the glare became brightest, we saw it vanish into the sky. I have no explanation for this."
(translation (c) 2006, Scott Corrales, Institute of Hispanic Ufology (IHU). Special thanks to Guillermo Gimenez, Planeta UFO)
Inexplicata
The Journal of Hispanic Ufology
February 26, 2007
Argentina’s Vidal Teleportation – The Truth Can Now Be Told
by Guillermo D. Gimenez, Director, Planeta UFO (Necochea, Argentina)
Editor’s Note: The Vidal Case was deliberately excluded from the INEXPLICATA monograph on the subject of UFOs in the 1960s in South America and Spain due to its complexity. This article by our good friend and contributing editor, Guillermo Gimenez, will give readers the most complete approach to one of South America’s most fascinating and controversial cases.
The story concerning the teleportation of a car from Chascomus, Province of Buenos Aires, to Mexico in 1968, became world famous and it remains today an undisputed classic of Argentinean ufology. Furthermore, it was a the catalyst for the tremendous Argentinean UFO wave of 1968, when all newspapers took to publishing UFO accounts, including older cases that had never appeared in the press.
Chascomus is halfway between Buenos Aires and Necochea, the beachfront city that is the home of Guillermo Gimenez, the author of the following article. There can be no doubt that explaining this case was always among his goals, but the alleged witnesses were always impossible to locate and the rumor mill would kick up people who claimed having known them or were otherwise relatives of the Vidal family. When researchers endeavored to delve into the subject, they would find that these were all false leads. The tip of the iceberg was found by Alejandro Chionetti in the 1980s and it subsequently it was his namesake, Alejandro Agostinelli, who managed to solve a plot that involves the presence of well-known figures from the [Argentinean] entertainment industry, such as Pipo Mancera, Anibal Uset, el Muñeco Mateyko and Tito Jacobson, an entertainment journalist.
Date: May 1968
Place: Chascomus, Prov. of Buenos Aires, Argentina
Summary: A dense fog enveloped a Peugeot 403 belonging to the Vidal couple. The next thing they remembered was finding themselves on a rural road in Mexico, some 6,400 kilometers away, 48 hours later and still aboard their car.
A Report by Guillermo Daniel Gimenez.
There have been countless incidents within the Argentinean UFO case histories that have called attention at the domestic and international level alike due to the characteristics of the events. One of them is without a doubt the Vidal Case, which occurred in May 1968 when a family surnamed Vidal drove along Buenos Aires Route No.2 from the town of Chascomus to Maipu, blacking out upon driving into a fog bank and awakening 58 hours later in the vicinity of Mexico City, in North America.
This incident received global attention and weeks later a “cloak of silence” fell over the events. Neither journalists nor researchers could secure access to the main protagonists, and those upon whom the mantle of silence fell were no longer inclined to speak. Conjectures and suppositions would surround the event.
The Vidal Case would remain among one of Argentina’s spectacular cases of teleportation or teletransportation, a term employed in Ufology to describe cases involving persons and/or objects (in this case the vehicle and its occupants) when they are transferred in a short space of time through means unknown from one place to another, disregarding the space-time barrier. Here, from Argentina in South America to Mexico in North America.
The incident
Numerous Argentinean newspapers took note of the story. La Razon, the Buenos Aires daily newspaper published the information under the headline “Que es esto? (What is this?) – others did the same, such as La Nacion (which did not mention the fog bank) and La Mañana (the only one to report the presence of UFOs in this case), among many others.
Renowned Argentinean ufologist Dr. Oscar A. Galíndez, who looked into these events, details the episode in Flying Saucer Review Vol. 14
No. 35 Sep-Oct 1968 as "Teleportation from
Chascomús to México" which reads thus:
“...in early May 1968, a well-known Buenos Aires attorney, Dr. Geraldo Vidal, decided to attend a family get-together with his wife, Mrs. Raffo de Vidal, to be held in the city of Chascomus, less than 120 km distant from Buenos Aires and to the south. The left the gathering shortly before midnight and decided to drive to Maipu, a community some 150 km south of Chascomus, as they had friends and relatives there.
“Driving along national highway No. 2, they had in front of them another car, containing another couple that also had relatives in Maipu. This other family, whose name is unknown, reached Maipú without incident, but this was not the case with the Vidals, whose delay became a cause of concern for those who awaited them. Then, the other couple decided to retrace its steps along the same route in an effort to find them, but had to return to Maipú without achieving this goal or having found the slightest trace of the car or its occupants.
“Forty-eight hours after the Vidals disappeared, at the home of the Rapallini family in Maipú, a phone call came in from the Argentinean consulate in Mexico City, 6,400 km away as the bird flies. In this phone call Dr. Gerardo Vidal told his friends that they were well, and gave them the exact time of his arrival at the Ezeiza International Airport in the capital of the River Plate.
“The Vidals reached Ezeiza at the right time, expected by friends and relatives. Mrs. Vidal was taken directly from the airport to a private clinic, since she was in a state of nervous shock. Dr. Vidal told his relatives of the strange event that had befallen them. He said that when they were in the outskirts of Chascomus on the evening of their disappearance, a “dense fog” materialized suddenly before them, and from that moment onward, they were unable to account what happened to them during the next 48 hours. When they regained awareness of their surroundings, it was daytime and their car, with both of them inside, was parked along an unknown road. They had no physical injuries, but both complained of pain in the nape of the neck and had the sensation of having slept many hours.
”Stunned, they stepped out of the vehicle and noticed that the paint on the chassis appeared to have suffered the effects of a blowtorch. The engine, however, worked perfectly. Putting the car in gear, they drove along the unknown road, crossing a landscape that was utterly unfamiliar. They asked several persons they found along the way and all of them told them the same thing: they were in Mexico.
“Mr. and Mrs. Vidal’s watches had stopped, but using a calendar, they ascertained that they had been gone from Argentina for 48 hours.
“In due time they reached Mexico City, where they asked for the Argentinean Consulate. The retold their incredible adventure there, and the consul allowed them to make a phone call to notary Martin Rapallini in Maipú. Next, the consul, Rafael Lopez Pellegrini, asked them to remain completely silent about the case in order to allow the authorities to investigate.
Dr. Vidal’s car, a Peugeot 403, was shipped to the United States for research, agreeing upon the delivery of a vehicle of the same make and model, paid for by the U.S. authorities.”
These are the facts. Once again, the “cloak of silence” enshrouded the case as confirmed by Dr. Galindez himself, who reported that no one dared speak of the events.
In Search of the Truth
Around this time, the Argentinean press continued reporting on the incident and La Razon explained that the Vidal family had spoken from the Argentinean consulate in Mexico City with a family surnamed Rapallini in Maipú.
All associated this with the notary, Martin Rapallini, a friend or relative of the Vidals (it was later known that this was not their real name, but a pseudonym used to protect the real experiencers), although the notary later professed being completely unaware of this matter.
This “denial” by the notary served as a “confirmation” of the events, as there was a ban on speaking about the case. Only a few weeks later, an alleged witness and relative of the Vidals, a young man surnamed Mateyko, appeared in the news program “Sabados Circulares de Mancera” hosted by journalist Pipo Mancera, to discuss the case
It was also known that Mrs. Vidal, allegedly surnamed Raffo, according to some sources like those of Dr. Galíndez, had been hospitalized due to a nervous breakdown arising from the events, and even Patrice Gaston says in his book “Disparitions Mysterieuses” (Plaza y Janes, Barcelona, 1975, p.72) has her say: “But, what have they done to us in these days? What manner of creatures have had us in their grip?”
Meanwhile, other authors hinted at her death in 1969 – specifically from leukemia – as a result of the uncanny experience. The case continues to add on more mysteries.
A Lie
28 years would elapse before the truth would emerge, and over 36 before it could be reported.
There had been so many obstacles in gaining access to the true protagonists, and given the case’s characteristics, the incident became a classic in world ufology. Authors all over the world took it as a spectacular UFO case. Subsequently, numerous teleportation cases would occur all over the world.
So much was written about the incidents in newspapers, and subsequently books, and presented in conferences and TV programs that even skeptics reported it.
It was Peter Rogerson in "Notes to a Revisionist History of Abduction
(Part 4): Recovering the forgotten records", Magonia No. 50,
September 1994, who reported having learned in Buenos Aires that the case had been a lie employed to conceal Mrs. Vidal’s missing days while she was committed to a mental health clinic.
Sooner or later the truth would emerge.
Alejandro C. Agostinelli, an Argentinean journalist and researcher, looked into these events and confirmed that it had all been a sham designed to promote an Argentinean science fiction film at the time
In his report “Coches Voladores a Estrenar: Fraudes,
Rumores y Ciencia Ficción" co authored with Luis R. González
(Spain) and appearing in Anuario, Cuadernos de Ufología, No. 29, 3ra Epoca 2003.
Fundación Anomalía, España, he states that he interviewed filmmaker Anibal Uset in 1996, who confessed to having invented the Vidal Case with the assistance of entertainment journalist Tito Jacobson and other friends to promote a movie that opened 2 months after the events, titled “Che OVNI”
The cast of the film included Marcela López Rey, Jorge
Sobral, Perla Caron, Juan Carlos Altavista, Javier Portales, Erika
Wallner, among others, directed by Aníbal Uset from a screenplay by Gius.
Che OVNI was pulverized by critics of the time. The film went by unnoticed and was only recognized years later when some granted it cult status for its role in the early years of Argentinean science fiction.
The movie tells the story of how a hitchhiking Tango singer is picked up by a stunning blonde driving a Peugeot 403, just as in the Vidal Case. After a love scene, he takes the wheel and as he drives, a beam of light from a UFO stops the car and puts the driver to sleep. The frightened blonde leaps from the car and is stripped naked by the UFO. The film moves on, now showing the driver at the wheel of the car during the day, but with a brunette beside him – supposedly an alien – on a road in the outskirts of Madrid, Spain.
The teleportation had taken place along the lines of the Vidal Case. Other scenes and teleportations lead the car to London, and the movie ends at Ezeiza International Airport, where the protagonist is attracted to an airplane – a camouflaged UFO – filled with lovely flight attendants. Uset also told reporter Alejandro Agostinelli that the alleged witness who appeared on the “Sabados Circulares de Mancera” show had been none other than Juan Alberto “Muñeco” Mateyko, his personal assistant and character actor in the movie, who is today a well-known television host.
Uset expressed alarm at how the Vidal Case had gained notoriety and that the “snowball effect” had been among the reasons that led to his silence.
“So many people approached me to say that they had known the Vidals that I began to have doubts. What is more, the confusion was such that I began to think that our story coincided with something that had really happened,” he stated.
Uset is uninterested in revisiting the subject. Even more, it was very hard to secure his story, says Agostinelli.
The entire plot was confected with the aid of journalist Tito Jacobson to promote the movie, which was cooked up by both during a trip between Montevideo and Buenos Aires.
He cannot remember the sources for the events, although he thinks they could have come from a case in either Argentina or England, where he lived for several years. Almost 40 years have gone by since those events and we now know the truth. It was all a lie.
It is important to stress these events. The truth must be known in spite of the case having become a classic of world ufology. Today the Vidal Case will go down in history as a sad reminder in which untruth governed from the start, woven by journalists hoping to provide notoriety to an Argentinean science fiction film. In spite of all this, I wanted to confirm these events myself. The case deserved it. It had been so spectacular, and so much had been written about it, that I wanted to learn more of it. So it was that in January 2004 I got in touch with Alejandro Agostinelli, my friend (editor of www.dios.com.ar, a Spanish-language website devoted to extraordinary beliefs), who first looked into these events and “spoke” to the person directly responsible for the case. At my request, he said the following about the incident:
Guillermo Gimenez: How did you come across the Vidal Case?
Alejandro Agostinelli: It was an intriguing and popular case when we began to develop an interest for the subject of UFOs in the mid-‘70s. Everyone knew – to a lesser or greater extent – someone who claimed having dealt with the protagonists of the case, “the Vidals”, but when you tried to get to the core of the matter, you found out that that person had not been with the Vidals, but had only gleaned it from a third party. It was an endless rumor loop. At the time we were not only unaware of the characteristics and transmission process of a rumor, but that we were actively feeding into it, albeit innocently. I then followed the adventures of my friend Alejandro Chionetti when he visited Maipú around 1980 to interview the Rapallini family, who were the “only indirect protagonists” who could be located. No one knows how this family was involved with the mysterious couple that was “teleported to Mexico”. When notary Martin Rapallini claimed having no knowledge of the matter, the “La Razon” and “La Capital” newspapers (the media outlets that confected the alleged scoop) published the denial with a considerable air of skepticism, as if saying that by denying the matter, he was in fact “covering up for the Vidal – Raffo couple”, arguing that “there was a strict ban on disseminating the case.” If memory serves, it was the La Capital newspaper from Mar del Plata who christened the heretofore anonymous experiences as “the Vidals” to protect them from the rapaciousness of the press, since “Dr. Vidal” was “a distinguished professional.” This ironclad anonymity assured that the case could not be verified, and would later become essential in turning it into an urban legend.
GG: Would evidence confirm that it was in fact a hoax?
AA: It can be said, with a wide margin of certainty, offered by many students of the subject and the passing of time, that there was never solid evidence regarding the existence of a couple that experienced an adventure of such characteristics at that time and place.
It has also been confirmed that Che OVNI was slated to open two months later, a movie with ingredients copied from the case, and which had begun shooting long before “the story” broke in the news. If memory serves, it was Anibal Uset, Che OVNI’s director, who in the early Nineties told Chionetti that the case was a ruse to promote the film. Alex was in the U.S.A at the time and I was following the leads. In 1996 I came across Uset and we started to hold meetings. Between our second and third encounter, when we had developed mutual trust, he began to tell his version of the events. Uset’s testimony was critical. But even without him, the parallels between the film’s content (teleportation of a car to a distant country, with was a white Peugeot 403 both in the movie and in the Vidal Case) and the structure of the story offered by the media, it can be clearly seen that the relation between story and movie is quite obvious. More coincidences? The only “indirect” witness of the events, who appeared on television (specifically in “Sabados Circulares...”) was a youth who Pipo Mancera presented as “a direct relative of the Vidals.” That witness was Juan Alberto “Muñeco” Mateyko, a now prominent TV host who worked with Uset and was a supporting cast member in the film.
GG: So what’s your opinion about it today?
AA: I think that there’s enough evidence to state that one of the cases that contributed to the 1968 UFO flap in Argentina was a journalistic fraud aimed at promoting a movie. Thanks to the story’s exacting structure and the cultural predisposition toward accepting it at the time, the tale’s credibility grew when it became part of popular imagination, becoming what we now call an urban legend. What is persuasive about the story is that it ran away from its creators and acquired a life of its own. Scholars of this subject at the time considered it genuine despite having never interviewed “the Vidals”. Articles appeared in magazines like Flying Saucer Review or Lumieres Dans la Nuit, books were written, the story was mentioned a thousand and one times in UFO conferences, radio and television shows, and of course, there were also “skeptical counter rumors” such as the one by Peter Rogerson in Magonia, who cited an anonymous source and wrote that the case had been “a fraud to justify Mrs. Vidal’s absence while she was committed to a mental health clinic.”
But what surprised me the most isn’t that people believed it so readily at the time, but a passing remark made by Uset. When he realized the story’s magnitude, the director told me that he began to think the case had been real! “So many people came to tell me that they had known the Vidals that I began to have doubts,” he said. “What’s more, the confusion was such that I began to think that our story had dovetailed with an actual event.” At the time, the fact the questioned his own creation startled me. But I think that this helps to understand how UFO stories are built along with many other modern myths. If even a hoaxer can be led to doubt, this means that mysteries are able to overcome any denial. That’s why I think myths are indestructible. Countless teleportation cases have occurred in Argentina and around the world, but the Vidal Case was a lie.”
And this how “Ale” reconfirmed these events.
Today, the Vidal Case from May 1968, in which a family was teleported from an Argentinean road in the province of Buenos Aires to Mexico, has been explained. We know the real story to be another.
All of this proves the importance of carrying out UFO re-investigations, even in those cases that are considered landmarks in Ufology.
It falls to researchers, ufologists, to be open to all possibilities. To be flexible in conducting new research, dispensing with unquestionable notions and reformulating, if need be, our own ideas. See the alternate possibilities, no matter how dark, and weed out cases. All of this in benefit of Ufology. We should thus separate the truth from lies to undertake serious communication and research into the UFO phenomenon, unmasking cases such as this one.
(Translation (c) 2007, Scott Corrales, Institute of Hispanic Ufology (IHU)
Who's Who in UFology Today
Written by Francesca Black
Sunday, 08 July 2007
Below are ten names of the most educated, respected UFologists alive today. By studying their theories and published works, you will be on the forefront of Ufology research.
Jerome Clark: Researcher and writer. He attended South Dakota State University and Minnesota State University, becoming interested in the UFO phenomenon in the 1960s. He initially embraced the interdimensional hypothesis to explain UFOs, but then turned to Extraterrestrial Hypothesis as the best explanation. His focus is on UFO cases with multiple witnesses, or those which leave physical evidence. He is an active board member of CUFOS, and has served as the editor of the CUFOS journal, as well as The Journal for UFO Studies. In the 1990s he published a massive three volume UFO Encyclopedia, which earned him the 1998 Benjamin Franklin Award in the Science category. He has written and co-written several books on UFOs.
Stanton T. Friedman: Nuclear Physicist. He received his BS and MS from University of Chicago, and worked for 14 years on advanced, classified projects such as nuclear aircraft, fission and fusion rockets, and nuclear power plants for space. He is possibly the best-known UFO lecturer in North America, having been the first promoter of the Roswell incident, and the most significant voice of the Extraterrestrial Hypothesis. His written testimony has been used in Congressional hearings, and he has appeared before the UN twice. He has published two books covering his work with the MJ-12 documents and the Roswell incident.
Richard F. Haines, Ph.D.: Research Scientist for NASA from 1967-1988. He received his MA and Ph.D. in Experimental Psychology from Michigan State University. He investigated aviation accidents and incidents for FAA, NTSB, and attorneys. For 37 years he has specialized in pilot sightings, amassing more than 3,000 reports. Other special interests include analysis of photographic evidence and data on Close Encounters of the Fourth Kind. He has written two books and numerous UFO articles.
Bernard Haisch, Ph.D.: Astrophysicist and President of Digital Universe Foundation; Chief Science Officer for ManyOne Networks, Inc; Director of California Institute for Physics and Astrophysics; and editor of numerous scientific journals. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin. Self-described as a "UFO skeptic, standing somewhere between the majority rejectionist view of mainstream scientific community and the majority accepting view of the general public," Haisch advocates personal research of phenomenon while suspending judgment.
James A. Harder, Ph.D.: Professor of Civil and Hydraulic Engineering and Professor Emeritus at University of California at Berkeley. Harder received his BS at Caltech, and his MS and Ph.D. at University of California in Berkeley. From 1969-1982 he was the director of research for Aerial Phenomena Research Organization, one of the first civilian organizations to study UFOs. He was the primary investigator on a number of classical UFO cases, mainly related to alien abductions. He is a strong advocate of the Extraterrestrial Hypothesis and the government cover-up theories.
John Keel: Parapsychologist and Journalist. Keel is best-known for his ideas that there is a direct relationship between UFOs and psychic phenomena and demonology. He is one of the most widely read and influential UFologists since the early 1970s. His 1967 book, The Mothman Prophesies-about a strange winged creature reportedly seen in West Virginia by numerous witnesses-was loosely adapted into a 2002 blockbuster.
Bruce Maccabbee, Ph.D.: Optical Physicist. He received his BS in physics from Worcester Polytechnical Institute, and his MA and Ph.D. at American University in Washington DC. He has been active in UFO research since the 1960s, when he joined NICAP. After its demise he joined MUFON and is now state director for Maryland. He was instrumental in establishing the Fund for UFO Research. He is the author and co-author of numerous technical articles and books.
John E. Mack, Ph.D.: Psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, and Pulitzer-prize winning biographer. He received his medical degree from Harvard Medical School after his undergraduate years at Oberlin. He graduated from the Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute and was Board certified in child and adult psychoanalysis. He was a professor of psychology at Harvard until his untimely death in a car accident in 2004. (We include him in this article of contemporary UFologists, since his work is relevant today.) Mack's clinical work focused on the exploration of dreams, nightmares, and teen suicide. In 1990 he published his research on alien abduction encounters, concluding, "There is compelling powerful phenomenon here that I can't account for any other way, that's mysterious?it seems to me that it invites deeper, further inquiry."
Peter A Sturrock, Ph.D.: British Scientist. He studied mathematics at Cambridge University where he earned his Ph.D. Much of his career has been devoted to electron physics, particle accelerators, plasma physics, solar physics, astrophysics, and scientific interference. He was appointed professor of applied physics at Stanford University, where he is now professor emeritus. Gaining interest in UFology, and curious about the general attitudes toward the field, Sturrock conducted two major surveys involving more than 2,500 scientists. Upon learning that a majority of scientists favored better research of UFOs, Sturrock helped establish the Society of Scientific Exploration to provide a forum for the subject. His studies have since been published.
Jacques Vallee, Ph.D.: French-born Computer Scientist and Astronomer. After receiving his BS in Mathematics and his MS in Physics, he came to the US 1962 and began working in astronomy at the University of Texas. He worked at MacDonald Observatory on NASA's first project making a detailed informational map of Mars. He then received his Ph.D. in Computer Science at Northwestern University, where he was a student of renowned UFologist, J. Allen Hynek. Initially he promoted the Extraterrestrial Hypothesis, but later modified it, introducing the Multidimensional Visitation Hypothesis. His exploration of the commonalities between UFOs, cults, religious movements, angels, ghosts, cryptid sightings, and psychic phenomena contributed to his change in ideas. He was the model for the UFO researcher in Steven Spielberg's blockbuster, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and served as a consultant on the set. He has authored numerous books and articles on various subjects, including UFOs.
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Inexplicata
The Journal of Hispanic Ufology
September 2, 2007
THE SAUCERS OF WARTIME
By:
Scott Corrales
(c) 2006
The fact that the UFO phenomenon has always shown a curious attraction to the armed conflicts of the human race is undeniable. Even those who are only marginally interested in the phenomenon can relate to the stories of the “foo fighters” that pursued allied and Axis aircraft during the Second World War, or the unidentified objects that prompted the so-called Battle of Los Angeles in 1942. In past decades there was the widespread belief in many countries that “flying saucers” had come to Earth precisely because of humankind’s discovery of nuclear energy and its wartime applications.
But there are other incidents that aren’t quite as well known, and conjectures about the interest displayed by these strange presences in our wars that are quite disturbing.. .
Aliens of the Spanish Civil War
When Mariano Melgar was scarcely seven years old, he became an accidental witness to an event that would stay for him the rest of his life.
One hot summer morning in 1938, the young boy was taking care of some cows on his family’s property in the town of Muñico (Avila). It was a broad pasture that the animals could roam freely, and Mariano wandered away from them to sit in the shade of a small stand of trees by a stream. Suddenly, he became aware of a buzzing, droning sound coming out of the intense blue sky above; his eyes caught a bright flash of silver in the air from an object that was descending to a spot not far from his current location. Unsure of its nature and intentions, the boy hid behind the trees and observed intently.
“It was a round object surmounted by a small dome, measuring some sixteen to nineteen meters in diameter,” he would later tell researcher J.J. Benitez, who included the case in his book La Punta del Iceberg (Spain: Planeta, 1987). “I must have been some thirty paces away from [it] when I noticed that three or four legs had appeared underneath the object. That “thing” had colored lights all around it...they went on and off constantly. A thing to see!”
Young Mariano’s wonder went up a notch when a door on the bizarre object suddenly opened “like the doors one sees on modern airplanes.” The buzzing and humming ceased and three figures descended from the object, whose interior appeared to be full of some devices whose purpose was completely foreign to the youngster. Two of the figures walked away from the craft to collect what appeared to be soil or vegetable matter samples, while the third one remained at the entrance to the strange vehicle.
Overwhelmed by the sight and his child’s sense of curiosity, Mariano emerged from his place of concealment and tried to get close to the “pilots”, as he described them. Before he had succeeded in walking a distance of five meters, the figure standing at the doorway to the craft fired a bolt of light at the boy, very nearly knocking him down. Chastened, Mariano retreated for the safety of the trees again, but was not chased away by the display of power. In fact, he subsequently tried a second approach, only to be repelled by another volley of shots from the character standing at the entrance to the craft. Fifteen minutes later, the soil gatherers had completed their task and returned to the vehicle. The sentry turned to look at the boy and “waved goodbye”. The domed object lifted off, spinning on its axis, heading off toward the village of Barco de Avila at an altitude of between fifty and one hundred meters.
At the time of the event, Mariano believed that the object and its crew complement had been “Generalissimo Franco’s aircraft” although he now knows better. While it is true that Nazi Germany was involved in many displays of air power over Spain during the Civil War (the bombing of Guernica, immortalized on canvas by Pablo Picasso, being the best known of them), the chance that Mariano Melgar’s close encounter had anything to do with advanced Luftwaffe prototypes is negligible. To stress this point, researcher Benitez goes on to provide his readers with a brief history of Spanish aviation during the Spanish Civil War: the first Soviet-made aircraft (Tupolev SB-2 bombers and Polikarpov I-15 and I-16 fighters) were deployed in the Spanish theater of operations in November 1936; twenty Luftwaffe Junkers Ju-20’s entered the fray in August of that year, plus a host of aircraft purchased by the warring factions from a number of governments ranging from France to the United States and Czechoslovakia. None of them remotely resembling the domed, light-ringed craft that landed near Mariano Melgar in 1938.
In the Melgar case, we are dealing with a pre-1947 incident that combines sighting, landing and occupant encounters in one. There is also the possibility that an over-imaginative peasant child (albeit one whose childhood was not filled with the comic books and space-minded radio adventures of the time) imagined the whole situation. But if we decide to believe in Mariano Melgar and in J.J. Benítez’s painstaking journalistic research, we are left with the conclusion that the UFO phenomenon was active during one of the most destructive periods of internecine warfare in the 20th century. But why?
The fact remains that while a peasant boy peered at the otherworldly unknown through the trees of Muñico, other sightings had taken place on the Iberian Peninsula that amazed trained observers. Two years earlier, in August 1936, the fortress of Pollensa on the Mediterranean island of Mallorca had successfully fended off a landing by Republican forces, who had arrived in the harbor by means of submersibles. Many locals watched the scene expectantly, hoping to see the skies lit by another exchange of fire and rocketry as the Republicans tried to take the fortification yet again. Suddenly the onlookers were treated to the sight of three glowing objects at an altitude of ten thousand feet. Some Mallorcans believed that these were the new air weapons that Hitler had promised Generalissimo Franco’s forces, but the three unknown devices simply cruised over the island and nothing about them suggested a provenance of any of this world’s air forces. They were described as “plates moving through the air” and giving off considerable luminosity.
On February 5, 1938, the forces defending Peñón de la Mata to the north of the city of Granada under cold, clear winter skies were buzzed by an object resembling “a Mexican hat”. Described as having the color of unburnished aluminum, the object’s slow, deliberate path across the morning sky allowed onlookers to get a good look at it. As it approached, an infantryman with the 76th Brigade, reported that “seen from below, it had the exact shape of a cartwheel. At its center, where the spokes emanated from, there was something [looking like] a photo camera lens...”
But the witness’s startling account doesn’t stop there: as the unknown object flew almost directly over him, he was allegedly able to see curved black portholes on the sides of the strange wheel. The report published in Spain’s ABC newspaper added that the unknown device appeared to rotate counterclockwise as it flew southward, fading away until the bemused infantrymen were no longer able to see it.
More humanoids were also reported during the Civil War. On the night of July 25, 1938, five months after the siege of Granada, a blinding light caught the attention of two officers. As the light dimmed, the military men were surprised to see a disc-shaped object measuring approximately eleven meters in diameter at an estimated distance of sixty meters away. The object appeared to possess a sort of “column” containing two humanoid figures that gradually descended from its underbelly. The unknown craft then started to project a circle of blue light on the ground, which expanded its circumference until it reached the onlookers, who felt a sensation of intense cold. The light dimmed and the column was fully retracted into the object, its two separate “halves” rotating in opposite directions as the powerful white light appeared again and the craft vanished into the skies at considerable speed. Researcher Manuel Carballal interviewed the main witness, who held the rank of lieutenant at the time.
UFOs in the Falklands War
Not counting the veterans of both warring sides, or the relatives of those who lost loved ones, most people have forgotten about the relatively brief conflict in 1982 between Argentina and the United Kingdom following the former’s occupation of the Falkland Islands during the spring of that year. In January 2006, Argentinean researcher Silvia Perez Simondini managed to obtain an interview with a war veteran she has named “Román” in an effort to conceal his identity. While “Roman’s story does not take place on either East or West Falkland, but in Rio Gallegos – an important Argentinean air base at the time of the conflict – it is nevertheless riveting.
According to Simondini’s report for Inexplicata- The Journal of Hispanic Ufology (http://inexplicata.blogspot.com/), the soldier’s brush with the unknown occurred sometime between the fourth and the tenth of April 1982, as he and fellow members of his platoon provided security for the sprawling El Condor ranch. Between 2 and 3 a.m., Román and his buddies were awakened by the sound of one of the sentries pounding on the door to their billet.
"When I opened my eyes, there was an intense white light outdoors,” recalls the soldier, “[it was] similar to the floodlights of a soccer stadium that light up the playing field. But there was a startling detail, the fact that it was snowing, there was a lot of wind, but the circle in which the light was contained was peaceful; even the air and weather was warm. I also noticed that the other 2 soldiers outside were looking at the sky, where there was a gigantic spacecraft with lights -- not a circular one, I perceived it as an oval body whose center gave me the impression of looking at the stars, but its lateral lights made a slight movement. Those of us inside the house went out and stared at it for 15 minutes, more or less. We felt no fear, rather a sense of tranquility. At one point, it slowly began to move and vanished over the hills at high speed in a matter of seconds. What was also astounding was that after it disappeared, the snow and the strong wind also returned, which was a shock to us.”
A greater shock was in store for the Argentinean conscripts. An army helicopter with foreign-looking personnel arrived at the ranch (“I thought they were Americans”, he confessed to Simondini). “Román” and his friends were transferred to a building occupied by another regiment and all of their equipment and clothes taken from them prior to debriefing. His superiors were concerned about the possibility of a British secret weapon, but the conscript and his buddies believed they had seen “something unnatural, not of this Earth.”
After the debriefing session, the hapless UFO witnesses were taken to a larger room occupied by members of another unit with an even more harrowing story to tell: they had been riding along the highway in a troop transport shortly after “Román” and his platoon had seen the unknown craft over the El Condor ranch, and in an instant, found themselves no longer aboard their truck, but scattered on the ground in an open field three kilometers away from their original position. The truck was nowhere to be found. This experience had been so unnerving that that a sergeant known to “Román” as a driven, energetic noncom appeared “competely broken and lost” after the ordeal.
A curious addition to the bizarre “teleportation” incident is that another truck belonging to Argentina’s YPF petroleum company also vanished in the proverbial blink of an eye, but still inside his truck and near a police station.
The Argentinean conscript ends his story by saying: “ Then the Army Command divided us up independently, we were each sent to war in different locations and never saw each other again.”
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The Journal of Hispanic Ufology
September 2, 2007
UFOs IN THE HIGH ANDES
By:
Scott Corrales
(c) 2006
So long ago that it seems like a fairy tale, the Spanish viceroyalty of Perú was divided into two regions – the land known to every man and woman in the 16th and 17th centuries and which prompted the prayer “God take me to Perú!” and its loftier inland region, el Alto Perú (Upper Perú), which we now know as the landlocked nation of Bolivia. It was here, far from the coast and in the place where oxygen grew thin as men’s dreams burned even brighter, that the bleeding silver heart of South America could be found – Mount Potosí and its seemingly inexhaustible supplies of silver. According to author Eduardo Galeano, the silver of Potosí that created a local aristocracy that wealthier and more decadent than that of any European court of the time was extracted at a terrible human cost estimated at 8 million lives. “It only left Bolivia,” he writes, “with the vague memories of its splendor, among the ruins of its churches and palaces.”
Among the millions of enslaved natives forced to work the mines were Inca astrologers and wizards who could have perhaps told the silver-crazed conquistadors about the strange land they had so ruthlessly occupied – the strange ruins of Tiahuanaco that predated the arrival of the Incas by millennia, the beliefs of the savage Araucanian tribes to the south, and very possibly the nature of the strange lights that darted around the night sky. These lights, of course, were interpreted by the occupiers as signs that pointed to the presence of buried treasure, and hence greater wealth to be exploited.
A History of UFO Sightings
In a 2002 article titled “Ovnis en Jujuy”, the editors of Gaceta OVNI magazine, while discussing UFO-prone northern Argentina, allowed for a slight trans-border detour to discuss unknown phenomena in Bolivia. One of these cases was the story provided by a young woman named Dina Angulo, concerning the UFO experiences of her grandfather near Villazón, Bolivia, some seventy years ago.
In the spring of 1930, Ms. Angulo’s grandfather lived on a remote farm in a mountain valley near the community of Tupiza, a hundred miles away from where the 1978 Tarija UFO crash occurred. Part of the hard, unrelenting life of an Andean farmer required going to find his animals along steep mountain trails to bring them home and to butcher. As ice from the thawing glaciers caused rivers to swell, the farmer found himself cut off by a swollen river, requiring him to spend the night under the cold stars. Accompanied by his dog, the man erected a hasty shelter and lit a fire, and soon found himself surrounded by the very goats and jackasses he had gone to find.
Suddenly, Ms. Angulo’s grandfather saw the entire mountain landscape lit up by a powerful light. He had never seen such brightness, not even by daylight. Terrified, he ran off to find cover under some low-lying trees. His animals scattered in every direction while the odd light source engulfed everything in its supernatural radiance. Some twenty meters away from his place of concealment, the farmer was able to see four humanoid figures, which he described as nimble and able to make long jumps. The light suddenly went off and the odd little men vanished with it. According to Dina Angulo, her grandfather was found two days later, rooted to the site in fear, gripped by a nervous condition. It was only with the passing of time that he was able to recall the details of his ordeal, which predated the start of the modern UFO age by seventeen years.
Pedro Serrate was walking along the banks of the Mamoré River in 1953 when he became aware of a discoidal object some hundred and fifty away from him. The strange vehicle appeared to be fashioned of an azure, vitreous material. Curiosity getting the better of him, Serrate got closer to the craft and was able to catch a glimpse of its human-looking crew complement. When the uniformed humanoids caught off-guard, became aware of Serrate's presence, the vehicle rose silently into the air, disappearing in a matter of seconds.
Patricio Parente’s monograph “De Luces y Criaturas IV: La Conexión OVNI” (Of Lights and Creatures: the UFO Connection”) mentions that the Aymara mythology of Bolivia still makes mention of the “auchanchos”, described as bald, potbellied little men who leaped about in the night, creating whirlwinds and braying like donkeys. One particular Aymara tradition holds that these little men had once been seen running down the streets of Chuchuito, riding tongues of fire, heading toward Lake Titicaca and crossing it, vanishing thereafter. Could these entities have been the ones witnessed by Dina Angulo’s grandfather? Stories of lights emerging from the waters of Lake Titicaca have also been reported. In 1968, according to Sebastian Robiou, the Bolivian army had been forced to interrupt its heated pursuit of Communist ideologue Ernesto “Che” Guevara to investigate a truly unusual case: a farmer had reported the landing of a “strange craft filled with little men” who proceeded to blind the sheep he looked after in an Andean meadow.
The editors of Gaceta OVNI also mention another Bolivian UFO hotspot: the salt desert known as Salar de Uyuni, a vast uninhabited expanse between the Cordillera Real and the Western Andes. According to locals, there is a “dark depression” somewhere within these salt flats that appears to be a focus for intense light, and strange luminous bodies can be seen entering and leaving the desert at this point.
When Mercedes Casas, correspondent for the Institute of Hispanic Ufology in Salta, Argentina, was approached for comment on these manifestations, she had this to say: “Ever since the famous 1978 crash on the border between Bolivia and the province of Salta, UFO activity never ceased in the Tarija region. Reports of nocturnal lights moving in odd patterns – zig-zags rather than straight lines – continued for months after the crash when everything had ostensibly quieted down. This is what the people I interviewed in Yacuiba had to say.”
“There is a tremendous inflow of Bolivians into Salta, looking for better opportunities,” she continues. “They all have stories to tell involving bizarre nocturnal lights, particularly those hailing from the rural areas.”
In early October 2005, UFOs were reported over Eastern Oruro, becoming a source of bemusement for thousands of onlookers. The flying objects appeared in the sky at 22:30 hours and consisted of were two strange objects located in the East, drawing attention due to their red, green and blue lights, sequentially, and they also appeared and vanished in the firmament.
Abel Flores Mujica, one of the witnesses, manifested his surprise at having seen the unidentified object in space.
"I refer to it as an artifact, since I couldn't believe what I was seeing. My daughter went outside and I told her: "That's a UFO. She replied that it it wasn't a UFO, that it was the planet Mars that was delayed in covering space (sic). But that object had lights and it wasn't a star. Last night's event startled me and then my daughter said: "Look, it's not the only one, there are others there", and it was evident," he said.
Channel 39 journalist and show host, Pedro Rubin de Celis, said that Wednesday night's sighting confirms the theory that we are not alone in the Universe. "This has been a marvelous presence of UFOs in the firmament, and many people stepped out onto their balconies to observe this spectacle. The camera zoom has shown us, beyond the vehicle's flashes, a circle making concentric movements within other circles around the vessel and with a black dot at the center. The objects also had their own movement," he explained.
On October 18, 2005, local newspaper “La Patria” reported that two journalists from a Bolivian television station had managed to capture two UFOs on film as the strange objects flew over the city of Oruro, Two men and a woman – names given as Julio Espinoza, José Romero and Paola Medina – had stepped out of the ATB television station at 8:30 p.m. to see if they could find the reported presence of a UFO. The broadcaster’s news team had been following up on the October 10 sighting made by Gustavo Ponce, and as fate would have it, their impromptu skywatch paid off. By 9:00 p.m., they had managed to pick up a strange, rhomboidal object in the heavens, with lights that changed colors.
Paola Medina mentioned that the object “… also changed shape, since it transformed from a rhomboidal shape into a perfect square and into a classic flying saucer." ATB-TV’s switchboard was soon flooded with phone calls from members of the public who corroborated the news team’s sighting with observations of their own, coinciding in that the object was circular-shaped, traveled with an oscillating motion and disappeared half an hour later. Several days later, other skywatchers reportedly saw strange objects over the city once again: one of the UFOs reportedly hovered above the cluster of radio and television antennas that occupied one of the city’s hills.
But these incidents, spectacular though they might have been, could not compare to the encounters between the Bolivian Air Force (Fuerza Aérea Boliviana, or FAB) and unidentified flying objects.
Four years earlier, in March 2001, the sighting of an unidentified spherical object over the city of Cochabamba and Tunari National Park prompted the military to dispatch a T-33 fighter to intercept the object. The interceptor’s pilot, Maj. Luis Arzabe, told his superiors that the sphere was “brilliant and metallic”, yet he had been unable to d
