Thoughts on the Aguas Prietas "Contactee"

I usually have a rather jaundiced view of UFO “contactee” claims, regardless of the country in which the claim is made, but there’s something about the story told by Prof. Rodolfo Paredes (in the report provided by Prof. Ana Luisa Cid) that triggered a recollection. Whether or not Paredes is really in contact with “beings from Jupiter” is debatable, but the fact that they endeavor to make contact through his radio signal – it is unclear if Prof. Cid meant a “ham radio” frequency or something else – is very interesting. In the late 1970s, Puerto Rican UFO researcher Orlando Rimax played a recording of an alleged alien transmission on his Otros Mundos broadcast, which aired every Sunday morning in the city of San Juan. The recording could have been a hoax, naturally, but the heavily distorted voice of a being calling itself “Omicron” was definitely disturbing. It had a quality often associated with recorded sounds involving hauntings and paranormal goings-on, even though the entity professed an interplanetary origin, and they always do.

Back in 2003 I penned an article entitled “Spirit of the Radio” in which I discussed these broadcasts from allegedly non-human sources:

“The purported space entity [meaning Omicron, from Rimax’s 1977 radio program] had been picked up by a ham radio operation and it seemed to be taking a great deal of time establishing its non-human bona fides. Intrusions such as this one appear to be frequent in contactee circles; they are often dismissed as hoaxes, but they are nonetheless intriguing. In the latest reissue of George Hunt Williamson's classic contactee work "Other Flesh, Other Voices", UFO author and publisher Timothy Green Beckley makes the interesting note that Williamson was a ham operator "who claimed contact with extraterrestrial beings who were
continually broadcasting messages from spaceships circling in the Earth's uppermost atmosphere.

“Alleged TV and Radio Broadcasts from Space, an Internet document written by Jon Hurst, provides transatlantic equivalents to incidents similar to the "Omicron" transmission. In January 1971, a call-in show on Greater London Radio received a call from "a cold, metallic voice" claiming an extraterrestrial origin. The voice, which did not give itself a name, said it was "speaking by thought﷓transference guided by computer" and imparted the usual patter about the difficulties of life on Earth and humanity's unwillingness to forsake its primitive ways. When asked by the program's host if it was possible to humans to see the interstellar interlocutor, it replied that it was "possible to assume human appearance" for a specific number of minutes.

“The ubiquitous Ashtar Command, a source of "space brother" wisdom for many decades, apparently transcended wireless to appear on the small screen. The Command hijacked a number of transmitters belonging to the Southern ITV network at 5:12 p.m. on November 26, 1977, broadcasting its message directly over a news broadcast. The network appears to have been unaware of the problem at the time, or completely unable to correct it. "Possibly," writes Hurst, "this was because the source of the overriding signal was not terrestrial in nature."

“The message went on for a little over five minutes, and contained a familiar warning: "We come to warn you of the destiny of your race and your world so that you may communicate to your fellow beings the course you must take to avoid the disasters which threaten your world, and the beings on our worlds around you. This is in order that you may share in the great awakening, as the planet passes into the New Age of Aquarius. The New Age can be a time of great peace and evolution for your race, but only if your rulers are made aware of the evil forces that can overshadow their judgments."

Putting the New Age aside for a moment, it is nonetheless interesting that radio is somehow permeable to these entities. It remains to be seen if contemporary means of communication (iPhones, Blackberries, cell phones) are equally prone to manipulation.

One of the most intriguing on-going situations in South American ufology involves the activities of a group calling itself “Friendship”, hailing from one of the many islands of the Chonos Archipelago and variously associated with UFO aliens, interdimensional beings, holdovers from Nazi Germany and meddlesome CIA agents, depending on who’s writing the article. In 1984, a ham radio operator of by the name of Octavio Ortiz, a married resident of Santiago de Chile and proud owner of a 27 megacycle CB base station with which he talks to DXers all over the world, became the protagonist of a drama that unfolds to this very day. That year, Ortiz received a distress call from a vessel that claimed to be ensnared by a mysterious light that was playing havoc with the ship's electronics. The light--an unknown craft--descended even lower over the vessel. Bewildered, Ortiz offered to retransmit messages to the authorities of the port of Iquique on behalf of the ship's master.

As a result of this, Ortiz struck up a friendship with the ship's master, a man named Alberto, who told him that he had been recruited by mysterious "gringos" to ferry equipment and supplies to their mysterious island. These elusive northerners described themselves as a "congregation" and dubbed themselves and their island "Friendship".

Octavio Ortiz would eventually have the chance to speak directly over his ham radio with one "Ariel", one of the strange members of the Friendship. In an interview with Spanish journalist and broadcaster Josep Guijarro, Ortiz explained that whenever "Ariel" speaks to him over the ham radio, the needles on his equipment jump, indicating that a transmitter of enormous power is being employed. Nor is Ortiz the only one to speak with this entity: his wife Cristina boldly asked "Ariel" where he and his group came from. The voice replied that they were "not of this world, but belonged to Humankind."

In August 1985, little over a year since Ortiz relayed the message from the vessel besieged by the strange craft, a shining object appeared in the early afternoon over their home in Santiago. According to their testimony, a voice on the ham radio bade them to "Come out! come out!" After doing so and talking to "Ariel" on the ham radio, they realized that the UFO was an object remotely controlled by the mysterious Friendship.

According to Guijarro, renowned ufologist Jorge E. Anfruns made note of a highly important detail: "Some of the ham operators were phoning the newspapers to report interference with their sophisticated equipment." Proof that strange cabal actually controlled the saucer? The Ortiz family believes that the object was not remotely controlled, but that their friend "Ariel" was actually aboard it.

More could be said about this bizarre sect of humans who possess advanced technology or aliens who claim some sort of kinship with our species, but it goes far beyond the scope of this article. Suffice it to say that the Chilean Navy appears to have been aware for many years of the radio interference and problems caused by the strange objects operating in the vicinity of the Chonos islands. Josep Guijarro received a letter from a man who served five years in at a naval radio station in Puerto Montt, stating: "We were sick of these devils, who often jammed our communications with immensely powerful high-tech distorting equipment, which on occasions even produced invisible barriers surrounding all of the Taitao Peninsula and left all boats, including the Navy, bereft of communications."

Delving further into the highly complex “Friendship” situation takes us away from the original issue: are non-humans presently reaching out to a Mexican “contactee” through radio, as Prof. Cid’s report suggests? Until further information is received from Rafael Oceguera, who is currently researching and documenting the case, this question remains open.