South America’s Giant UfonautsBy Scott CorralesNews of an alleged three-meter-tall non-human entity shambling toward a roadside in Chile (March 2010) brought back memories of the truly giant UFO occupants that were commonly reported in the 1950s and ‘60s, usually in Argentina, Brazil and Chile, although cases in Spain and even the USA were reported. As with everything involving UFOs, we must first assume good faith on the part of people who are beyond our reach: the witness, the magazine or newspaper in which the story first appeared, and so forth. These cases were made known to U.S. audiences by Jim and Coral Lorenzen’s books on UFOs in the Sixties and Seventies, contributed by a formidable network of correspondents and advisors in other countries. Some reports suggested that their tall stature proved beyond question their non-terrestrial origin, as even humans who will someday be born in a low-gravity environment may attain considerable height. Their purposes seemed centered on “gathering samples”, much like their other occupants reported at the time, or sometimes chasing terrified witnesses (potential “samples”? Who knows) who made narrow escapes.
An argument can be made in the recent Chilean sighting that energy released in tremendous earthquakes may cause unusual effects in the human mind, perhaps leading individuals to see what isn’t there, or misinterpret what they’re seeing. But it is nonetheless worth looking back at some of the cases that we have accumulated over the decades before relegating giant UFO-related beings to the company of the Jolly Green Giant.
An Argentinean GiantIn January 2002, Argentinean researcher Pablo Omastott brought the following case to the attention of Quique Mario, director of that country's Proyecto Condor UFO research group. The event, a CE-III involving a motorcyclist and a giant entity, had appeared in the January 15 issue of the Córdoba newspaper.
Enrique Moreno, 19, a clerical employee with the Ika-Renault corporation whose nocturnal job involves acting as a courier for business documents from one company office to another. Arriving at one of Ika-Renault's offices in the dark of the night to lay some paperwork in the middle of a table, he realized that the facility's lights flickered on and off inexplicably. Moreno paid no mind to the power fluctuation and hopped on his motorcycle, heading for his next destination.
Upon reaching a site where vehicles were parked before being sent out across the Andes to Chile, Moreno was amazed to see a giant green figure some 150 meters away. Thinking at first that it might be a welder carrying out his duties at that time of the night, the courier got on his motorcycle and drove toward the figure. When he came within thirty meters, his otherwise dependable bike backfired and hesitated, shuddering and becoming almost unmanageable. Moreno had to perform extraordinary efforts to remain in control of his two-wheeler, but he was much more distressed by the glowing figure than by his vehicle's unaccustomed reaction.
"I froze after seeing it," said Moreno. "It was like a robot standing more than two meters tall. Its angled head was hairless, it had shining, luminous eyes, and was dressed like a frogman, wearing a belt with a wide oval buckle around its waist."
The ungovernable motorcycle shot like an arrow out of control crossing an open gate and going straight across the road without its driver being able do a single thing about it.
"My arms still ache; it robbed me of my strength," he told the interviewer from Córdoba. "I felt as though I was in the middle of a magnetic field. It was cold that night, but the area surrounding me was very hot."
After the experience, Moreno stumbled through the factory's gates feeling a terrible buzzing in his head, as though it were about to explode. Factory personnel immediately drove him to a clinic where he was given sedatives. Although the newspaper considers that the young courier may have hallucinated the experience, it adds that there were other witnesses to the entity that very same evening: a nurse at the same medical facility Moreno had been driven to had administered a sedative to a woman who claimed having seen the same colossal figure levitate through the air and enter an unidentified flying object--an event which was confirmed, in turn, by residents of Villa de El Libertador, who had seen the alleged spacecraft that same evening.
As if these corroborating accounts were not enough, there is also the case involving trucker Luftolde Rodríguez, 52, who was slowly turning his tractor-trailer around and was terrified to find the green giant standing in front of his rig. The giant's presence appeared to drain not only the vehicle's power source, but the trucker's wristwatch and portable radio as well.
Given his proximity to the unknown figure, Rodríguez was better able to describe it. The giant, he said, was looking at him inquisitively; it had a flattened head, was completely bald and lacked eyebrows and eyelashes. Its ears were long, and it wore a glowing light blue outfit with a broad black belt and white boots. An interesting detail is that Rodríguez reports that the giant had a ball "similar to a billiard ball" in its left hand.
The article in Córdoba offers the following conclusion: "The giant's attitude was entirely harmless and could be said to be one of observation. The entity was completely made of energy, perhaps belonging to a form of life in which protoplasm no longer plays any part."
“Tallfellows” and Truck Drivers Much has been written about people's love for their automobiles. Given the number of cars on our roads, the fact is unquestionable. However, not much has been put down on paper regarding the UFO phenomenon's similar affection for the humble car. Prior to the age of abductions, a fair share of UFO cases involved unsuspecting motorists.
"RV" never suspected he would be one of them.
As he drove at three o'clock in the morning along Spain's A-68 highway from the city of Logroño back to his home in the Basque country, the anonymous protagonist of our story was more interested in pulling into the nearest rest area rather than having a close encounter with the unknown. As luck would have it, he found one such rest stop further along the road, deserted but for the presence of large French tractor-trailer whose driver had obviously had the same idea.
"RV" parked his Citroen BX, turned off the ignition, and promptly shut his eyes, drifting off to sleep before he even knew it. Despite being a sound sleeper, "RV" was wakened by a slight buzzing sound and a bright light which he at first thought to come from another vehicle--perhaps another articulated trailer--pulling into the rest stop. The bright light gradually dimmed to extinction, and early morning darkness reigned over the area once more.
Even as he reflected on the sudden burst of light's origin, "RV" saw the driver of the French tractor-trailer exit the cab of his vehicle and approach the car with great urgency, pointing at the empty field adjacent to the rest area. "Did you see that?" asked the trucker in French.
"RV" cautiously got out of his car and was stunned. The source of the unexpected brightness turned out to be a vast dark structure, blacker than the surrounding night. The French trucker brimmed over with fear and nervous excitement, but willingly followed "RV"'s lead toward the dark structure.
When interviewed by Spanish ufologist Juan José Benítez in 1988, the year the event had occurred, "RV" could not explain what had possessed him to take the lead in a potentially foolhardy excursion, and he admitted to "not being a very curious person." Both men walked an estimated ten meters toward the ominous object before running into what can best be described as an "invisible wall". RV's eyeglasses pressed against his face as he hit the strange barrier, which he would describe to Benítez as having a gelatinous or plastic consistency. Even scarier was the green luminescence which emerged from nowhere to outline the looming dark structure.
The French trucker vented a few choice expletives in his language, which caused RV to take a second look at the structure with the greenish cast: twin colossi had seemingly emerged from the vehicle, advancing slowly toward the humans. Knees trembling with fear, RV guessed their height at three meters (9.8 feet), and their width seemed to match.
During the interview, RV was careful to state that he did not believe the colossi were robots--at least not mechanicals as we've come to understand them. They moved in unison, "as though they were reflections of one another." Their faces were featureless, their arms hung by their sides, and their massive legs appeared to be slightly articulated. Silent in the darkness, the pair of giants stared impassively at the two humans at a distance of five meters. Whatever courage or curiosity the truck driver and RV may have felt evaporated: both men broke into a frantic run, eventually hiding behind RV's car.
The entire event, which lasted about an hour, ended with a very slight buzzing sound coming from the dark structure, which began moving away at low altitude before disappearing. RV guessed that the structure could have conceivably been a hundred meters in diameter (roughly three hundred feet) and never once thought that the object and its silent "crew" could have been the product of any Earth technology. "Any country that has access to such artifacts will dominate the planet at its leisure," he told Benítez.
But the details surrounding the brush with the unknown were event stranger: during the entire hour, not a single car or truck had driven past the rest area in spite of the fact that the A-68 highway is a major artery; the French trucker jumped aboard his rig and "put the hammer down", zooming away from the rest area at top speed, not even bothering to exchange notes with RV regarding the bizarre occurrence both had shared. The battery of RV's Citroen BX became unable to hold a charge, despite the fact that the car was only a year old. Strange blister-like deformities appeared on the rear windshield and the front bumper, the parts of the Citroen which were made of plastic. Mechanics attributed them to proximity to a heat source. Nor did magnetic media fare much better: RV's credit cards refused to work at automatic teller machines.
Researcher Benítez was not disappointed when he visited the rest area in search of physical evidence. Only a short distance away from the blacktopped parking lot he found a large swath of grassy terrain that looked bleached and broken in comparison with the surroundings--desiccated without showing signs of having been singed or burned.
Giants, Guards and GunfireIn the fateful early morning hours of that November day twenty six years ago, around 2:45 a.m., José María Trejo and Juan Carriozosa were standing guard outside the air base's fuel depot, each in their own guard shack, separated by a distance of two hundred feet. The night, which had otherwise been uneventful, was shattered by a loud, piercing, whistling sound that caused the soldiers to cover their ears for about five minutes. The high-pitched noise ended abruptly, causing the soldiers to emerge from their shacks. Given that they were insuring the safety of tens of thousands of gallons of jet fuel, the possibility of a terrorist attack crossed their minds.
Armed with submachine guns, the soldiers decided to comb the area beyond Trejo's guard shack, which seemed to be closer to the source of the sound. They had only advanced a few feet when the high-pitched whistling sound was heard again, loud enough "to drive us crazy," in Carrizosa's words. Things were only getting started.
The very moment the second whistle-blast ended, the sky became filled with an intense light, "brighter than a flare", which lasted some twenty seconds. Both soldiers were amazed at the unsuspected display, and were still exchanging questions about it when a third soldier joined them, asking if they'd seen the light. Deciding that these events were a bit too unsettling not to be reported, they summoned the duty corporal, who ordered the three soldiers and a guard dog--a wolf hybrid--to patrol the area and check for anything unusual.
A crackling sound arose unexpectedly from a eucalyptus tree. The soldiers unleashed their growling dog, which ran at top speed toward the darkened area. The three men held their submachine guns tightly, expecting to hear the guard dog barking at an intruder. "The wolf-dog came back to us," Trejo told researcher García, "but it seemed dazed, dizzy, as though someone or something had given it a beating or frightened it out of its wits."
The three soldiers began shouting challenges into the darkness, fingers on their triggers, expecting at any moment to find themselves in a heated gun-battle with intruders bent on detonating the fuel depot.
"I felt a strange sensation," reported Trejo. "Something was standing behind me. Out of the corner of my eye I could see a green light. Spinning around on a heel, I found myself faced with the most fantastic and inexplicable sight I could've envisioned: a nine-foot tall human figure made of green light."
Even stranger, remarked another of the witnesses, was that the figure appeared to be composed of small points of green light, giving it a small head, thick torso and extremely long arms. The luminous giant appeared to have neither legs nor feet.
Trejo tried to fire a hail of bullets at the figure, but found it impossible to pull his Z-62 submachine gun’s trigger. Indeed, a gradual stiffening was taking over his body, inducing a sensation of lassitude. He could see and hear perfectly, however, managing to shout: "Get down, they're killing us!" before hitting the ground face first.
Trejo's terrified brothers-in-arms were not stricken by the enigmatic paralysis and opened fire against the towering green figure, estimating a total of forty or fifty shots between them. The green giant became brighter, "like the flash of a picture camera" before fading like an image on a television screen.
Talavera de la Real was in turmoil. Alarms were sounded as some soldiers took up defensive positions and others headed for the fuel depot. The three sentries were hard pressed to explain what had occurred to an irate superior officer. But what saved them from an uncomfortable stay in the base's stockade was a cold physical fact: despite having ordered fifty men to comb the area in broad daylight, not a single cartridge case was found. A masonry wall behind the place where the green giant materialized should have been pockmarked with bullet impacts, but was otherwise intact.
But it was Trejo--the first one to see the green intruder--who would pay the price physically: only a few days after the incident, he was afflicted by sudden bouts of blindness to which neither the base's medics nor physicians at an Army hospital were ever able to explain beyond a vague description of "nervous shock".
Giants of AndalusiaHappening upon giant beings engaged in bizarre activities is bad enough; being pursued by them is a veritable nightmare.
Andrés Gómez Serrano, a retired Spanish police officer turned UFO researcher, has been aided by his years of being in uniform in getting to the bottom of a number of UFO and paranormal mysteries that have occurred with a certain degree of frequency on his "beat" -- the Spanish cities of Algeciras and Cádiz. The result of his work has been collected in the book OVNIS: 50 Años de Investigación en el Campo de Gibraltar (Antakara, 2000).
For reasons unknown, this section of the Iberian peninsula is rife with sightings involving giant entities associated with enigmatic craft, but none of them quite matches the hair-raising events of February 1980.
On the 6th of that month, following a spate of nocturnal light sightings in the vicinity of Botafuegos, three children decided to take it upon themselves to investigate the possible landing of one of the lights--described as a giant "Ferris wheel" -- along the road leading from Botafuegos to the town of El Cobre. The three youngsters, like characters out of a Spielberg movie, equipped themselves with a little more than flashlights and set off on their adventure. Upon crossing a stream which had to be forded in order to reach their goal, something unusual occurred: their flashlights, powered by fresh batteries, suddenly went out. When they decided to return to their starting point, the portable light sources regained their power. Startled, the children crossed the invisible barrier several times, noticing the same inexplicable power loss on each occasion. Unable to explain the oddity, the children returned home.
The nocturnal light show continued unabated. On the night of February 11th, as the three children witnessed "their light" make what appeared to be a zigzag landing on the slopes of the nearby hills, a car driven by Rafael Tobaja and his wife pulled up to them. Tobaja asked: "Did you just see the same thing my wife and I saw back in San Jose Artesano?" When the youngsters assented, Tobaja told them to hop in the back seat, and drove them to find the strange object.
At 9:45 p.m., Tobaja and his passengers reached the gates of a farm known as "La Rejanosa". Getting out of the car to check the surroundings, the group was startled by an enormous white light that slowly rose from behind a low hill, splitting in two. From each luminous half there emerged a gigantic, man-shaped entity, with elongated legs and arms, standing in excess of nine feet tall. The radiance of their bodies made it impossible to make out their faces.
The humans stared bemusedly at the luminous giants until they realized the entities were heading straight toward them.
Fear gripped Mrs. Tobaja, whose panicked screams added to the hair-scene. Clearly aware of the danger, and of his liability in having brought three unknown children into the perilous situation, Rafael Tobaja overcame his fear-induced paralysis and shouted: "Back in the car! Everybody get in the car!"
Had the unreal event been a scene from a movie screenplay, the engine in Tobaja's car would not have turned over, exacerbating panic to unspeakable heights. But the coupe started normally and the driver pulled away from the luminous giants at full speed, not stopping to look back until he had reached the neighborhood where his young passengers --badly shaken companions in adventure -- resided.
The following day, researcher Gómez visited "La Rejanosa" in the company of Manuel Aguilar, a local surveyor and engineer, to reconnoiter the premises. Both men found a profusion of triangular "boot marks" on the ground and an impression left by an object of considerable weight. Inquiries made of the military suggested that the triangular marks may have been left by mortars during live-fire exercises; however, no maneuvers had been conducted during that week in February or even earlier.
Making Sense of it All...
Giant UFO occupants have not formed part of recent case histories, and especially not during the abduction-haunted 1990's. They appear to be confined to certain parts of the world, as though assigned to them. Very few of them have taken place in the United States, and the only one worthy of mention is the August 1973 incident which occurred in Buffalo Mills, Pennsylvania, were residents saw a 9 foot tall giant with "a baleful expression" as it walked down the main street.
During the early days of ufology, speculation had it that the giant ufonauts were bred to perform a specific task, just as the small, large-headed ones seemed to be good at certain others. In the Botafuego case, the giants appeared insubstantial--projections designed to frighten away notoriously curious humans, perhaps? Had the entities been bent on enforcing a "no witnesses" policy, they could have surely caught up with the escaping vehicle in a few bounds. In the Talavera del Real case, we again find another insubstantial giant seemingly "probing the defenses" of a military facility.
The concept of these giants as security measures is highlighted in the case involving "RV" and the French trucker at the rest area. Were the monoliths involved in guarding a massive craft--probably a mothership--that made a provisional landing for unknown reasons?
