Weird War: Strange Stories of the Military

Weird War: Strange Stories of the Military
By Scott Corrales © 2012

Comic book aficionados who grew up in the 1970s may remember – if only dimly – a particular comic book that stood out from the rest because of the nature of the stories it presented. Military adventures featuring Sergeant Fury (Marvel Comics) and Sergeant Rock (DC Comics) eventually shared rack space with Weird War, a title with paranormal overtones that managed to hold its own against the more established offerings, delighting and terrifying readers with tales of hapless soldiers confronting ghosts, zombies and sinister figures from other times and places. Weird War owed its success, to a certain extent, to early ‘60s offerings such as Haunted Tank.

But what the writers and illustrators of these works didn’t know, or most likely were not aware of, is the volume of high strangeness that has affected fighting men and women from various countries over time – situations and circumstances that would perhaps have strained the most devoted reader of Weird War and other publications – and which has been overlooked by the no-nonsense nature of the world’s militaries.
On July 27, 2012, the Moyers and Company television broadcast aired an interview with Karl Marlantes (http://billmoyers.com/segment/karl-marlantes-on-what-its-like-to-go-to-war/), a Marine platoon leader, recipient of the Navy Cross and other distinguished service medals, author of "What It Is Like To Go to War", a memoir on the horrors of combat during the Vietnam War and coping with post-traumatic stress disorder. Despite being a successful businessman, Marlantes was troubled for years by his experiences during the conflict - graphically retold in the pages of his book and in the PBS interview, and he delved into an experience that can only be considered paranormal.

At one point during the exposition, Bill Moyers asked Marlantes what war had taught him about the nature of evil, and the response was stunning. Marlantes asserted his belief that evil is a real thing, "something that exists, and that it is always possible for us to tune into it; it's part of being in the world...we personify it, Christians came up with the concept of the devil, and I don't believe it that way, but I do believe that we are in a world of opposites, and that somehow we have to make our choices, and that Evil exists."

He then went on to describe a mind-bending ordeal that shook him to his core. After having taken part in a mass for the dead celebrated by a Capuchin monk -- a process that involved talking not only to his comrades lost in battle, but to the enemies he had slain during the conflict -- Marlantes returned home and that very same evening, found himself visited by a supernatural presence. "That night there was a presence that came into the room that absolutely terrified me, it was beyond anything I had ever encountered in my life, it was the archetype of shadow. It filled the room, and it was going to get me."

The decorated war hero did not hesitate to say that the negative presence caused him to revert into a "five-year old, holding a crucifix" in an effort to allay the visitation. "It was something that I felt. It was absolutely real."
Marlantes returned to the see the monk to discuss the ghastly event. The Capuchin suggested that they might have been tampering with a force far more powerful than they suspected. Turning to a superior in his monastic order, described as being more familiar with the details of the mass for the dead, the monk learned that any effort made to loosen evil's grasp on a soul will result in evil fighting back to reassert control.

The Marine hero ended the discussion on evil by saying that the matter was brought up with a fellow soldier - a Chumash Indian who had belonged to the Army's Long Range Penetration units - who quickly recognized the matter as an attack by "evil spirits" that was well within the control of his people, recommending a shamanistic practice to dispel the dark forces.

The Lady of Many Veils

In the mid-1970s a young man performing his mandatory military service in the Spanish army was found dead in a deserted area outside his military base on the outskirts of Madrid. He had been found – with a bullet hole in his forehead- by a fellow soldier who had gone to relieve him on guard duty. His submachine gun lay on the ground beside him, and a piece of paper protruded from his flak jacket’s pocket. It turned out to be a message for his father.

A teenager far from home, thrust amid strangers in a barracks, may become homesick enough to take his life, and sadly, this is nothing new. But the contents of the message went beyond the usual suicide note one might expect to find on a body.
The soldier wrote that he had been visited by a beautiful woman while on guard duty: she was dressed in a “costume of many veils” and had spoken to him about the nature of the universe and the myriad forms of life to be found beyond the confines of the earth, were joy and love were boundless. The mystery female tendered the soldier a tempting invitation – to join her aboard her spaceship, the vehicle that had brought her to our planet, and go away with her to see the wonders of the universe. Taken aback by the thought of deserting his post, the guard refused the offer, and watched her walk away into the darkness.

Night turned to day and the soldier was unable to dispel the vision of loveliness from his mind. The nature of the encounter was such that that he was afraid to bring the matter up with his buddies, who would surely jeer at him. Overcome with regret, the soldier remembered that the woman had told him that the way to be with her involved surrendering his own physical life.

It was then that he penned the note to his father, making it clear on paper that his suicide was not on account of any hardship or depression brought about by the mandatory service. He promised to return from the afterlife to visit with his family and offer them aid. Upon reporting for guard duty that evening, he turned his service pistol against himself and died.

Spanish paranormalist Salvador Freixedo includes this unsettling story in his book Defendámonos de los dioses (Beware of the Gods) but adds some intriguing details.

The recruit who came across the suicide’s body took the note and did not show it to anyone at all, much less the military authorities or the boy’s father, the intended recipient of the message. He immediately reported his find, but found himself accused of murdering the sentry. He spent over a year in a military prison but was later released due to a lack of evidence.

Who or what was the “lady of many veils” who claimed a world beyond our own as her home? Even the most hardened believer in the ETH would be forced to agree that a bona fide alien traveler would hardly ask for death as the price for a jaunt in a spaceship. More importantly, was the nameless soldier her only victim, or one of many, caught in the “games non-people play”, as John Keel would have put it? Freixedo adds an interesting note with more specifics: On 8 March 1984, Madrid’s Diario 16 newspaper reported the death of another young conscript, Carlos Assua Molinero, found dead of a bullet wound in a sentry box. The precise location was given as one of the guard posts between the military School of Communications and the town of Alcorcón. “The causes motivating the suicide are unknown.” Perhaps the “lady of many veils” wasn’t quite through playing with suggestible minds mesmerized by her charms.

A Paranormal Siege of Military Bases?

Given the nature of their training, statements made by soldiers, sailors and airmen are often accorded greater weight than pronouncements from other members of society. We present another incident involving personnel of the Spanish military, this time in what appears to have been a close encounter of the 3rd kind (CE-III).
On November 25, 1998, a sentry patrolling the perimeter of the Morón de la Frontera Air Base near the city of Seville (Spain) at five o' clock in the morning was startled to hear a sound he likened to "steel plate being cut" (a similarity to the metallic clangor heard by Ms. Sepúlveda in the Chilean case).

The sentry shouted a challenge; when no one responded, he loaded his rifle and fired two shots in the air, while letting loose the German Shepherd watchdog that accompanied him on his rounds. Almost immediately following the two loud reports, an entity described as a two meter tall "sort of person" emerged from the surrounding thicket.

According to Spanish researcher José Manuel García Bautista, the sentry was astonished by the being's height and its fluorescent green eyes, adding that the darkness kept him from making out its physical details. With his heart pounding, the sentry fired another shot straight into the creature, to no avail. He then ordered the German shepherd to attack; the animal charged the dark figure, but stopped short of it with a loud whimper. The highly trained guard dog cowered back to the sentry, who was at a loss as to what to do next. The entity spared him further confusion by vanishing into the thicket once more.

After contacting his superiors over a handheld radio, the sentry was taken to see the base commander, who advised him to keep the whole affair confidential and awarded him a week's leave. But before going off on his furlough, the sentry noticed that his guard dog now sported a long scar running along its left shoulder blade: physical proof of the encounter with the unknown creature.

García’s files include even more harrowing cases which have been previously mentioned in INEXPLICATA. One of them is the November 12, 1976 encounter between two young soldiers engaged in guard duty at the Talavera de la Real Air Base near the city of Badajoz (western Spain).

In 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 sub-machinegun'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".
These cases are not unique to Spain’s military. While the mainstream media has no problem running ghost stories when they find it "quaint" or timely (the flurry of supernatural stories that usually appear around Halloween), one of them stood out because of its unusual geographic location and the fact that it involved U.S. combat troops in a dangerous, active war zone.

Stories about Afghanistan's "Forward Operating Base Salerno" made their way across the Internet in 2004, involving American troops standing guard at an old tower overlooking a graveyard. Elements of the 2nd Batallion, 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment felt at one point that they were being subjected to an elaborate prank by other members of their unit, but no one else had heard the sound of eerie, high-pitched laughter of a little girl in the desert night, emanating from the soldiers' radio receiver.

The anecdote about the "ghost girl" harkened back to the experience of a couple of Marines who saw a young Afghan child walking a goat down a road in the darkness, their forms clearly visible through their night-vision goggles. However, upon removing their visual aids, the girl and the goat had disappeared. Stranger still, when the Marines put their goggles on again, they found the girl now standing on the guard tower's balcony. The battle-hardened soldiers had been trained to face a ruthless enemy, but not the paranormal: they ran down the stairs and abandoned the tower.

Nor was it a one-time incident. On successive nights, the guards found themselves huddling in fear by the radio receiver as an abnormal coldness invaded the tower, feeling an unworldly presence in their midst. The presence of a three-foot tall figure walking around outside the guard post was confirmed by watchers in another tower, but a physical reconnaissance of the surroundings did not turn up anything.

Soldiers Against The Unknown

These high-strangeness circumstances were also the subject of exploration by Michael Lindemann in his book Six Viewpoints (Wildflower Press, 1994). An interview with two UFO experiencers disclosed the fact that individuals working in “black projects” for the military appear to find themselves at the center of what could best be described as poltergeist phenomena, but clearly involving small non-human entities. Household objects will appear and disappear, much as during a poltergeist event, with the attendant strange noises and opening and shutting of doors. One of the experiencers – “Marty” –makes a compelling statement: “Through my experience with aircraft, I’ve met a lot of military. One thing that I’ve found is that they’ve experienced a similar thing. In Hawaii, I think the word is mini-huna, the small island gods or whatever. Talking with military personnel who’ve worked don the smaller islands out there, they say that that type of activity happened every day on the base – things moving, things disappearing, things showing up out of nowhere…”
In the mid-1970s, researcher Rufus Drake wrote a feature for Saga UFO Report on the strange activity that seemed to bedevil Williams Air Force Base in Arizona (“Air Force Base Besieged by Saucers”, UFO Report, July 1977, p.37). The incidents ranged from encounters with unknown flying craft chasing T-37 airplanes from the 96th Flying Training Squadron over the desert at relatively low altitudes. Maj. William Royce, involved in one such event, pursued an intruding UFO and managed to close in on it, making out interesting details on its surface as it flew at nearly four hundred miles an hour.

Even more fascinating details on the base’s activities at the time emerged from the article. Drake wrote: “Other super-secret projects at Williams are kept out of the public eye. In a fenced-off, stucco building on the base, the Air Force Human Resources Laboratory is reaching beyond the frontiers of science to probe the human mind, and to develop the means for waging war by disrupting the brain impulses of far-off enemy troops. On the desert, laser beam devices are being tested as potential death ray weapons. The store clerks, barbers and bartenders of Chandler know all this, but it isn’t officially admitted.”

Perhaps the most chilling detail in Drake’s assessment of the situation at Williams AFB has nothing to do with shiny objects harassing airplanes, but encounters between security personnel and unknown entities that mirror the events at Talavera de la Real in Spain or more ominously, those at Bentwaters AFB in the United Kingdom. It involves a civilian security guard named James Pitrelli, making his rounds of a bank construction in January 1976 only two miles distant from the air force base. A mass of red light appeared over the trees, moving downward toward a landing. The object settled on a tripodal “landing gear” before the eyes of the stunned guard, who was able to observe a humanoid occupant make its way out of the craft.

According to Pitrelli, the entity was humanoid up to a point. It had a massive torso supported by stumplike legs, and dangling arms that reached down to the ground. Worse yet, the unappealing sight appeared to be headed straight for him in strides. The contact experience was interrupted by the sudden appearance of a car along the road, causing the non-human presence to retreat to its conveyance, which rose into the air and vanished into the night.

(An interesting side note to this story is that Rufus Drake was a pseudonym – one of many – employed by Robert F. Dorr, a veritable powerhouse in then-burgeoning world of “Men’s Magazines”. Mr. Dorr is a respected author of military affairs and foreign policy with over 70 books to his credit).

Witches and Warlocks

Perhaps facing poltergeists, strange humanoids and UFOs are among the least of a soldier’s worries. What can we say when the average fighting man or woman has to deal with black magic?

Colombia’s El Colombiano newspaper (27 Dec 2011) published a compelling article by Juan Pablo Gómez about the experiences of elements of the Colombian Army with sorcerers and witches employed by the FARC guerrilla organization and other insurgent forces. A soldier from a guerilla-fighting unit encamped in a rural area suddenly began to emit hair-raising guttural sounds and howls, causing other members of the platoon to jump awake in panic. Twisting and turning in his hammock, the soldier could not be awakened from the nightmare that held him within its grip. Over half an hour later, the soldier calmed down and the rest of the platoon stood down, all the while fearing an attack from guerilla forces in the tropical darkness.
At first light, superiors inspected the soldier, startled to find his neck, torso and legs covered in strange bruises of unexplained origin. According to troopers interviewed for the newspaper feature, “there were recruits who would wind up paralyzed” after supposedly paranormal attacks, or else stricken with “strange illnesses that defied medical expertise.”

But the conscripts – largely of peasant stock – knew full well what was going on. These supernatural attacks were handiwork of local witches, whose spells would cause sleeping soldiers to jump awake in the night, brandishing weapons against their companions, spreading confusion and eroding unit cohesiveness.

One might dismiss the beliefs of young rural recruits as fanciful, but officers have approached their superiors concerned over the use of magic by the enemy.
“Guerilla recruits,” states the article in El Colombiano, “are “prayed over” by the warlocks or witches of the towns they represent. One of these enchantments is meant to spread confusion among the troops. It is a prayer uttered in a kneeling position, and produces a camouflage effect.” The spell does not create a mantle of invisibility or anything of that nature; it causes “soldiers to see other things” than the person protected by the orison.

Government forces were also faced with “high strangeness” situations, such as the one experienced by a platoon camping along the banks of the Arauca River, a tributary of the Orinoco that acts as a border between Colombia and Venezuela. When the unit camped for the night during the dry season, the river was no more than three meters wide (10 ft) and no deeper than fifty centimeters. By daybreak, the soldiers were stunned to find themselves facing one of the wildest bodies of water they had ever seen: the roiling, rushing waters were completely impassable. The platoon leader was forced to tell his troops on the other side of the river to remain there until the waters went down. Three soldiers who had attempted to make a crossing were swept away by the river, but survived.

Conclusions

Skeptics may well argue that the military – especially combat troops – are subjected to such exquisitely high levels of stress that it can trigger hallucinatory experiences. Yet some of the cases presented here occurred when troops were at a normal, non-combat level of readiness. It could also be argued that the military has not been “singled out” by the paranormal any more than law enforcement has, yet the annals of high strangeness show us that police officers have more than their fair share of brushes with the unusual. Occultists tell us that spirits cling to battlefields and sites of mass carnage and that elementals are attracted to these very same places. These are forces that elude the scientist’s microscope, but are no less real to those who have to confront them…especially in the middle of the night.

Argentina: Alleged UFO OVer Nevado de Cachi

Source: Diario El Tribuno
http://www.eltribuno.info/Salta/223879-Una-maestra-fotografio-a-un-supuesto-ovni-en-La-Poma.note.aspx


Contributing Editor Guillermo Giménez has sent us a photograph of an alleged UFO (stress the "alleged" - this cellphone camera image has not been subjected to any scrutiny) taken over Nevado de Cachi, a geological formation readers of INEXPLICATA will have seen mentioned often.

This is the text as it appears in Argentina's El Tribuno newspaper:

"Malena Agudo, a teacher from Campo Santo, took a photograph of the lovely landscape of La Poma with he cellphone. She was surprised hours later when upon carefully reviewing the images, she noticed a strange flying object amid the peaks of Nevado de Cachi. The photo was taken near the home of Eulogia Tapia last month and, according to the teacher, sightings are frequent in the area.

"Some of my relatives are from La Poma and they say that sightings have been frequent for a long time. They look like streetlamps at night. People say it's the "luz mala" (the evil light," Malena told El Tribuno. "I didn't want to share it, fearing I wouldn't be believed, but my family prompted me to make it known."


[Translation (c) 2012, S. Corrales, IHU. Special thanks to Guillermo Gimenez, Planeta UFO and El Tribuno]

Chile: "Friendship" and Its Collateral Effects

[One of the most perplexing cases to ever come out of Latin America in recent decades has been known as the “Friendship” case – a mixture of encounters, audio recordings and sightings of strange characters, largely human, who claim to belong to “The Friendship” - identified by some as space aliens, Nazi survivalists by others, and even Protestant missionaries from North America. We have presented articles on Friendship since the 1990s, when Josep Guijarro visited the Chile and kindly allowed us to translate his findings for the INEXPLICATA Journal. Today, thanks to our friends at NOUFA, we share with our readers the latest information in the form of a series of letter and essays on this compelling subject – SC]

FRIENDSHIP AND ITS COLLATERAL EFFECTS
By Raul Nunez
NOUFA (Noticiero Ufologico Autonomo) #18 – Chile

A Letter From Antonio Bellcanto

My name is Antonio and I am 35 years old.

Allow me to tell you that I’m a researcher, and have spent 6 years looking into the “Isla Friendship” affair. It is a very long and complex subject, but I would like to tell you everything I know, because I believe I’ve discovered what’s going on there, and my duty as a researcher is to make it known to the world.

Well, in the year 1998 the “OVNI” program on TVN presented the case of a strange island located in southern Chile. The program visited [the island of] Chiloé and began conducting its own investigation until they came across people who knew something about the island. These people told them that a yacht bearing the name Mytilus II would come to pick up people at the Quemchi pier. These people described the yacht’s crew as foreigners (Gringos). The first clue of the case that the “OVNI” program was able to obtain was the name of the yacht, and we know that all ship or yacht registrations, down to boats, are kept by the Harbormaster’s office. Well, when Patricio Bañados and his team went to the harbormaster to ask about the Mytilus II, Navy officers looked through their records and found nothing. The yacht did not exist in their records. So, why is it that local residents have seen the yacht, and the Navy staff says it doesn’t exist?

Pursuing the investigation, Patricio Bañados was able to secure the alleged coordinates to Friendship Island. After approaching the Chilean Navy and obtaining a patrol boat to go to the coordinates, the entire team went out to find the island. Part of the crew were sailors. After nearly three hours’ voyage, the weather became steadily worse, but in fact it wasn’t. According to the sailors, the weather was not favorable for pushing ahead, so they returned to port. Upon failing in their efforts to reach Friendship Island, the TVN team returned to Santiago. Upon reaching the capital, they consulted a mentalist who told them that one of the sailors on the boat the day of the search changed the coordinates, sending them off-course, because he belonged to the Friendship.

My friends, this is the summary of what happened in 1998 to TVN’s “OVNI” program. In my investigation I will enumerate the discoveries made in recent times on the Friendship.

The Chilean Navy is concealing this information. The fact is that there are no extraterrestrials living on the island, only normal people. The United States is behind all this. Friendship is something like a branch of Area 51. In 1973, three months before the coup d’état against President Allende, two islands in southern Chile were sold. Their names were Isla Huapi and Friendhsip. There is a religion behind all this that will go unnamed. At the time of the coup, President Nixon gave Chile money to organize the attack on La Moneda [Allende’s presidential residence – Ed.]. The American strategy was to have Allende killed because he knew about the sale of these islands. These conclusions cannot be found on the Internet or in libraries.

A Letter Received in Spain from Chile in 1999

My name is Zoila Zenteno Rubio, 65, a Chilean national, living in the Spanish city of Toledo for over 25 years.

I would like you to know that in the year 1954, my father was transferred to an inward island in the sea facing the coasts of Valdivia. My father suffered from angina pectoris due to his heavy use of tobacco. He smoked nearly three packs of unfiltered cigarettes a day, and was transferred there by a family of German origin whose farm equipment my father repaired. These Germans were very industrious, hard-working people, but also mysterious. They took part in none of the celebrations of the surrounding Chileans and spoke among themselves in their own language.

My father was a very smart man and very skilled with his hands, as well as gifted with the ability to learn languages. So it was that over the years, he managed to pick up German rather well. Upon returning from that island, which he described as small but with strange machinery he was unable to describe, he said he had been treated in a very impersonal manner, and was not able to endear himself to the people who took care of him, but noticed that they concentrated greatly on what they did, since after three days of being subjected to a “laying-on of hands” and some small metallic plates placed on his torso by rather elderly gentlemen, he noticed a significant lightening of his chest as far as stiffness and pectoral phlegm were concerned, a condition that made him suffer and caused him to cough repeatedly.

He returned aboard a very modern vessel, and only saw one of his neighbors, the oldest among them, who informed him that they’d made an exception in his case, as they thought him to be a person of pure feelings, devoted to nature and his family, but told him to never smoke again. Given that his German employers were very reserved and only spoke of agricultural matters, he tried to forget about the subject, repaying them with his work and the same discretion.

My father died thinking that something wasn’t right about the place where he was taken. He remembered nothing about the days he spent there, and noticed a series of “doctors” that looked more like angelic figures than local residents. He never suffered again due to tobacco and died wondering about the strange experience he’d undergone, and which remained unexplained.

NOTE: A follow-up to this letter was conducted in Spain and its author was located. She provided more information on her father and the unusual experience, and upon reading about Friendship, felt there was a certain similarity with her father’s cure.

Several Chilean Politicans Received Nazi Money

A book discloses new clues on the alleged purchase of a bunker-island in Southern Chile with the support of the Allende government. True or false?

In September of this year, a rather controversial book appeared in Europe, published by Victor Farias, a Chilean historian living in Germany, who states that as from 1939, prestigious national politicians received payment from the Nazis for an island in Southern Chile where a secret submarine base was to be built.

In this book, the author states that several Chilean politicians began receiving money from the Nazis to have an island turned over to them. The names of some major socialist figures are mentioned, such as Marmaduke Grove and Salvador Allende. A highly controversial book, bearing the name “Chile: el ultimo bunker de Hitler” (Chile: Hitler’s Final Bunker)

As one can expect, this book has unleashed a firestorm of controversy, mainly in the press and among readers. Farias also mentions the names of several Chilean diplomats in Europe, at the dawn of the Nazi movement, whose mission was to denounce the identities of Jews to Nazi operatives in order that the Gestapo could detain them and sent them off to the death camps. Some of the descendants of those diplomats hold important positions in the national police, creating a major scandal. Victor Farias, a historian and doctor of philosophy in Germany, was catapulted to fame and the courts of law after publishing another controversial work, “Los Nazis en Chile” (Nazis in Chile), stating that Allende was anti-Semitic and pro-Nazi, a statement which resulted in a lawsuit by former president Allende’s family.

The second part of the story has now appeared. Farias returns to battle against the former national leader. He states, in fact, to be in possession of receipts signed by Chilean politicians when they received funds from the German national-socialist movement (Source: El Observatodo)

Friendship: As Seen From Chile in 2003
By Raul Núñez – IIEE Website

The first impression the subject of Friendship causes in Chile is that it is a completely manipulated affair, and that certain characters have attached themselves to it whose presence adds to its complexity. Just recently in Chile there is talk of theories put forth in Barcelona (Spain) in 1997 on the Mormon connection, the presence of national-socialist elements, and many now speak of “the conspiracy in Southern Chile”. Each person tries to guide the subject into their own fold, and characters such as Miguel Serrano are now interviewed by veteran researchers. Others have recently started to incorporate elements of political and social interest to the matter – perspectives which were unthinkable some time ago within the Chilean prism. Certainly, the openness that the country is enjoying, whether it be mental or accelerated democratization to recover lost time, including the openness of television, trying to accept subjects such as divorce, homosexuality, those who disappeared in the days of the dictatorship, etc. as normal everyday conversation, has resulted in a true, healthy and necessary liberation of the mind, indispensable for any democratic society.

Within all this mental and liberating effervescence, new hypotheses and concepts have been integrated to the Friendship, and to discuss subjects like “Esoteric Hitlerianism” is no longer restricted to marginal elements, except for some persons related to the UFO subject in this country. They have lived in stagnation in recent years, showing questionable photos and videos but never presenting a public report, not even an analysis, about what they have presented, all the while resorting to naming the pompous names of organizations in English to back their hypotheses.

Letters Received in Our Newsroom Concerning Friendship

From Julio Azocar, Puerto Montt, Chile (Received 10 September 2004)

My grandfather, a lifelong fisherman, told me before his death in 1965 that he had had a strange experience in some small islands near the locality of Quellón in Chiloé. He met some foreign gentlemen who came to barter merchandise and foodstuffs from certain clandestine merchants who fished beyond the limits imposed in those years. They would pay with some strange metal resembling lead or platinum, and which was accepted by these chosen merchants, who kept these exchanges secret.
On one occasion, my grandfather made an exchange with these foreigners in exchange for a favor he did for them, securing parts for their vessel’s engine, and they paid him with a piece of this metal. Some days went by, and a couple of these merchants had a serious and violent encounter with my grandfather, taking the piece of metal from him. My grandfather avoided any further contact with the merchants after this encounter – at my family’s behest – and had no further contact with the odd foreigners.

My grandfather was a wholesome, honest person and I still don’t understand what he was telling me, and I can only come up with conjectures. What I’m clear about is that he did not lie or make up the story.

From Pedro Ignacio Herrera, Ancud (Received 7 October 1999)

Being the son of a fisherman, when I was 15 (I’m now 45) I recall having been fishing near Punta Tajamar near the locality of Abtao. It was evening and we were getting ready to return to the coast when we saw a strange vessel pass in front our barge. It looked like a large tourist yacht, modern and nearly glowing white, but when our eyes adjusted to the glow, and we overcame our initial stupor, we realized that the yacht was not on the waterline, but some meters above it. In other words, it floated and traveled quickly over the waterline. It moved silently and there was no crew visible, nothing beyond an unusual sense of majesty. My father never mentioned the subject to me again. Many local residents told me jokingly that maybe we’d seen an upgraded, modern version of El Caleuche [The Chilean “Flying Dutchman” – Ed.]. I’ve never forgotten this. Having read an article about Friendship, I’ve chosen to tell you my story.

From Maria del Carmen Robles – Talca (Received 15 January 2000)

I was born in Quetalco and my parents relocated to the Chilean interior on account of my health problems. I recall that my mother had heated arguments with my father for a while due to an incident he experienced while fishing near the islands facing Achao. My father vanished for nearly a week without his whereabouts being known. His two fellow fishermen never wanted to discuss what truly happened, and it was clear that my old man didn’t drink any type of liquor and didn’t even smoke.
Over the years, I found myself spending New Year’s Eve in Chiloe and came across one of my father’s fellow fishermen. He told me that a large light had hovered over their boat, and when they awoke from a prolonged sleep, they found my father was no longer there. The other fisherman had died from mental illness, babbling about a large light and some tall luminous beings.

My father had been found wandering along the coast. It was believed that he’d suffered an accident and fallen into the water. The arguments with my mother had to do with whether he still worked for at the place where he’d disappeared. My mother knew something about it, but never told me anything. When I would ask her, she would reply that “there are things it’s best to know nothing about.” My father avoided the subject and experienced a change in later years, becoming partial to deepest mysticism.

From Fulgencio Paredes (Personal statement from Mr. Paredes to Raul Nunez in 1993)

“I was a fisherman in Chiloé from 1942 to 1954, when I saw the ghost ship “El Caleuche” with my own eyes. It sailed in front of my boat and I heard its music. I never went back to the sea. I know what I saw and I am not lying.”

[Translation (c) 2012, S.Corrales, IHU. Special thanks to NOUFA - Noticiero Ufologico Autónomo]

Mexico: Official Report on the Popocatepetl "Bolide"

INFORMATIVE NOTE ON THE IMAGES OF A LUMINOUS OBJECT OVER THE POPOCATEPETL VOLCANO ON 25 OCTOBER 2012
Secretaria de Gobernación (SEGOB)
Sistema Nacional de Protección Civil
CENAPRED

At 20:44 hours on 25 October, CENAPRED's cameras, located at the Altzomoni Station for continuous virtual monitoring of the Popocatepetl Volcano recorded the manifestation and transit of a luminous signal, intensely bright, in the upper left hand quadrant of the image, moving at great speed, increasing its brightness, and apparently introducing itself into the volcano's crater (Figure 1a). The presence of this signal in the image has an approximate duration of 3 seconds.

The CENAPRED's camera at Altzomoni is located 11 kilometers from the Popocatepetl Volcano's crater, and a few meters away from where the Televisa corporation has installed another camera on which similar images were recorded and rebroadcast on the "Noticiero con Joaquin Lopez Doriga" program on the night of Friday the 25th (Figure 1b). It should be noted that differences in shape, length, shadows and brightness between the images taken by the CENAPRED camera and the Televisa camera are related with technical aspects particular to each item of equipment, mainly their resolution. Moreover, the framing in the case of the CENAPRED images is much more open, while the Televisa camera is much more light sensitive.

Figure 1. a) Image of the CENAPRED camera at 20:44:45 on 25 October and b), Image of the Televisa camera on the same day.

During the luminous signal's descent, none of the volcano's stations registered relevant seismic signals. The seismic record shows no modification or signal that could be associated with the possible impact of an object within the crater or its vicinity.

The Popocatepetl Volcano's behavior in the days surrounding the event remained within normal parameters. The seismic monitoring system recorded between 35 and 70 emanations per day. These emanations were of low-to-moderate intensity with emissions of water vapor, gas, and small amounts of ash. 45 emanations, specifically, were recorded on 25 October, mostly of moderate intensity.

The most relevant emanation immediately prior to the sighting of the luminous object described was recorded at 20:42 hours (Figure 2). The volcano issued a pulse of water vapor and gas that headed in a west-southwest direction and increased the incandescence over the crater slightly, which was observed in a constant manner throughout the entire night (Figure 2b).

Figure 2. a) Emission of water vapor and gas related to a moderate intensity emanation recorded on 25 October at 20:42 hours. b) Light incandescence visible most of the night on Thursday the 25th.

The framing differences between both cameras is significant, since the wider visual field of the CENAPRED camera enables the viewer to see the apparition of the luminous signal and the increase in its brightness, while in the images shown by Televisa, the object has already achieved its maximum glow when it enters the frame.

It must also be considered that both cameras are night vision type, that is to say, they are particularly sensitive in low-light conditions, and the pixels are easily saturated by a bright light, exaggerating its size and keeping it "lit" for a longer period of time, which explains the rectangular shape acquired by the object when it achieves its maximum glow.

A detailed observation of the images allows us to state that the object did not fall within the crater. Rather, it traveled along a much more distant plane. Its appearance in the upper part of the atmosphere, its trajectory and the increase in its brightness seem to indicate that it was a particularly bright meteorite, also known as a bolide.

At this time of the year we find two active "meteor showers". First the Orionids, active from 2 October to 7 November, reaching their peak of up to 25 meteorites per hour on the night on 20 October, and secondly the Taurids, active from 1 October to 25 November, reaching their maximum of up to 5 meteorites per hour on 5 November. They are given these names as the meteorites follow trajectories that appear to originate in the regions of the constellations of Orion and Taurus, respectively.

While the Orionids tend to be meteorites that enter the Earth's atmosphere at high speed and are small in size (grains of sand), producing long trails that last less than a second. The Taurids are made up of somewhat larger fragments (gravel) and travel more slowly, frequently generating bolides, that is to say, very bright meteorites (may exceed the brightness of Venus) that travel for several seconds before consuming themselves.

Furthermore, the trajectory of the object visible in the Altzomoni cameras coincides with one that might be followed by a Taurid, considering the fact that they point toward S 18 degrees East (Figures 3 and 4)

Figure 3. Sequence of images taken with the CENAPRED camera every 25 seconds, showing the bolide from its appearance until it vanishes behind the volcano. Considering that the crater is 800 meters wide, the bolide's luminous trail never exceeds an apparent 200 meter in length. apparently. Its trajectory, slightly tilted from left to right, when projected upward and above the camera, would come from the Taurus Constellation, which at that moment was in the horizon to the northeast of the camera (behind and to the left).

Figure 4. Image generated by the Stellarium 0.7.1 Program available at www.stellarium.org, showing a map of the sky over Altzomoni on 25 October at 20:44, showing in yellow the trajectory followed by the bolide, and the extension of its trajectory in red toward Taurus near the Pleiades. The trajectory is curved due to the curvature of the celestial vault.

Conclusion

1. In accordance with the analysis performed by specialists from this Center, this event bears no relation whatsoever with the Popocatepetl Volcanos activity. At the time of apparent contact between the luminous object and the crater in subsequent moments, no changes in seismic signals were recorded. This leads us to state that while visually, the luminous phenomenon appears to enter the crater, it very likely is traveling along a far more distant plane behind the volcano. This statement is bolstered by the fact that none of the other four cameras of the visual monitoring network surrounding Popocatepetl recorded the object in question from their respective angles of vision.

2. The luminous signal in the atmosphere, recorded by CENAPRED's camera in Altzomoni as well as by Televisa's camera at the same location, could be associated with an astronomical event, specifically a bolide from the Taurid meteor shower, given its characteristics and its trajectory. That is to say, it was probably a meteorite that entered the Earth's atmosphere, leaving a luminous wake produced by friction.

3. We cannot dismiss, however, the possibility that the object was a fragment of an artificial satellite that left a luminous wake similar to that of a meteorite as it entered the atmosphere.

4. It should be noted that for the two hypotheses mentioned above, an exhaustive validation and analysis by institutions and experts in astronomy and space science is necessary.

Done by: Office of the Deputy Director of Geological Hazards of the CENAPRED Research Office, 30 October 2012.


[Translation (c) 2012, S. Corrales, IHU. Special Thanks to Prof. Ana Luisa Cid, www.analuisacid.com.mx.]

1987-1997 Puerto Rico's Incredible Decade

1987-1997: Puerto Rico’s Incredible Decade
By Scott Corrales
(c) 2010

[Author's note: This feature appeared originally in the United Kingdom's sadly defunct UFO MATRIX magazine and formed part of my regular Orbis Tertius column -- its title being a nod to that extraordinary Argentinean author and translator, Jorge Luis Borges. The "incredible decade", too, is a nod to M.K. Jessup and his description of abnormal activity in the late 19th century. Some of the information presented may be "old hat" to readers of my work in Tim Beckley's UFO UNIVERSE or FATE magazine, but it might give new readers an appreciation of what was going on two decades ago in the Caribbean. -- SC]

Looking back at major outbreaks of UFO activity always has a dream-like effect. In later years it becomes hard to believe that perfectly ordinary parts of our world can be swept up in a frenzy over unusual activity, bordering on hysteria. Perhaps for this reason, the Spanish-speaking countries have used the term “psychosis” to characterize the atmosphere surrounding a saucer flap, for example. The image that best characterizes this is the tabloid cover photo of a police officer and a knot of teenagers looking up at the night sky, with the screaming headline “¡platillera psicósis!” referring, in this case, to the 1991 UFO events in Mexico City.

Similar circumstances occurred in Puerto Rico, an island known for its heavy UFO activity, usually centering on two specific areas: El Yunque Rainforest in the northeastern corner of the island, within a stone’s throw of the capital city of San Juan, and the island’s southwestern corner, where unusual events centered around the communities of Cabo Rojo and Lajas. Unidentified flying objects had made themselves at home in the Seventies, resulting in localized “flaps” the received worldwide attention, and even prompted politicians to call for an official study into the nature of the phenomenon. The leading theory explaining the recurrent UFO appearances over that particular zone involves the unusual magnetic fields found in the vicinity of Maricao State Forest, which has been a notorious materialization point for unidentified vehicles over the years. Laguna Cartagena is in the state forest's vicinity, and excessive interest in Laguna Cartagena prompted police and Civil Defense authorities to cordon off the area and have discouraged investigators from visiting the area, citing "disruptions to the lagoon's fragile ecology".

The southwestern corner of the roughly rectangular island has for centuries been the stage for paranormal events. In the 1600, the Blessed Virgin appeared in the town of Hormigueros, where many Lourdes-like cures have taken place; in 1953, a boy named Juan Collado had been visited by an entity claiming to be the Virgin, who instructed him to tell his parents and other adults that she would re-appear near a well on a given date. Thousands of people from around the island flocked to the site of the "miraculous" well, standing in hurricane-season rain to wait for the Blessed Virgin to appear. The situation, reminiscent of Fátima in 1917, led to many sudden healings, and although there was no "miracle of the sun", many observed a glowing UFO land upon a hill not distant from the well. In spite of the torrential rain, the UFO managed to set the dense tropical vegetation on fire. In 1974, a UFO flap coincidental with the wave taking place stateside produced hundreds of sightings, abduction reports, mysterious human disappearances, numerous mutilations of cattle and, oddly enough, the Blessed Virgin staged a reappearance, producing more miracles. The Eighties, however, were quiet – a silence that was in step with the lack of UFO activity worldwide – and many researchers who had been active during the previous decade returned to “civilian” life.

Dawn of a New Saucer Age

An incident in Cabo Rojo on May 31, 1987 served as the metaphorical starters pistol for the resurgence of a decade of UFO and paranormal activity in the island. Puerto Rico’s south-western coast was rocked by an explosion and an earthquake at a reported depth of some 80,000 feet. Witnesses reported plumes of bluish smoke emerging from cracks in the ground along with a series of aftershocks. Seismographs soon issued conflicting reports: originally, the tremor’s epicenter was under Laguna Cartagena at a depth of 8000 feet. Later, it was moved out to sea, somewhere in the Mona Passage.

The earthquake had a most unusual aftermath: those living in the immediate area of Laguna Cartagena were evacuated by military personnel while figures garbed in decontamination gear conducted a thorough survey of the area, including samples of earth, water and vegetable matter. The day following the event, rural residents saw what appeared to be a military helicopter hovering above the lagoon, lowering what appeared to be sensitive equipment into the water. This unknown instrumentation package proved to be of great interest to someone else: on June 3, 1987, at 10:30 p.m., a cylindrical object resembling a giant hot-water tank with red and blue “navigation” lights on either end emerged from the Caribbean and positioned itself directly over the lagoon, to the consternation of onlookers. The silent UFO repeated its manoeuvre at the same time of night on June 4th and 5th. Unidentified flying objects in myriad configurations would become, from then on, a staple of south-western Puerto Rico

Whatever the strange objects in the sky were, and whatever unexplained intelligence was behind them, returned to the scene with an intensity that exceeded earlier flap events. The phenomenon was now chronicled in the press – daily papers and specialized publications alike – and recent sightings, encounters and abductions competed for space with older stories that could now finally be told as experiencers felt encouraged to share them with the public. And some of the newer cases were mind-boggling: jet interceptors absorbed by menacing, behemoth triangular craft, the whereabouts of their pilots unknown; diminutive humanoids reported at road crossings, streams, beaches and -- most disturbingly -- bedrooms; rumors of an increase in activity by U.S. military personnel and Federal agents aimed at maintaining a “cover-up” merged seamlessly with intense official action against native terrorist groups (the so-called “Macheteros”) creating a palpable atmosphere of excitement tinged with fear.

In October 1988, a witness living in La Parguera, globally famous for the microscopic marine life that causes its bay to become “phosphorescent” on moonlit nights, reportedly saw a gigantic UFO “as large as a 727” airliner, studded with lights, hang silently in mid-air before sinking quietly into the nearby swampland. Melvin Rosado, a resident of Lajas, saw something even more disturbing on one of the hills that comprise the coastal range known as Sierra Bermeja. From his home overlooking the hills, he witnessed an event that falls squarely within the confines of “high strangeness”: he claims to have seen a structure resembling “an elevator” emerge from the ground, and that four humanoids stepped out of it. The humanoids were escorted by a small hairy hominid which Rosado described as “moving like a robot” which would follow indications given by one of its “handlers.” The witness added that the metallic elevator box appeared to become transparent at one point, as if shielded by a “cloaking device.”


Vanishing Jets and Official Legerdemain

These spectacular (and admittedly questionable) events, however, could not compare with the aerial phenomenon supposedly seen in the night sky over the town of Betances and over the Sierra Bermeja region. Well over 100 witnesses on the evening of December 28, 1988 were treated to the sight of Navy jets, allegedly F-14’s, manoeuvring around a mammoth triangular UFO shaped like a guitar plectrum and with blinking lights.

Harassed by fighters diving and spinning around its massive structure in an effort to force it down, or else follow a given trajectory, the giant UFO turned around with uncanny ease as one of the jets blocked its flight path. The massive intruder remained motionless, suspended in mid-air, like something out of a high-budget science fiction thriller.

What happened next is unclear, but there is unanimity among the witnesses that the whine of the F-14 Tomcat’s engines was extinguished after closing in on the floating UFO. Whether it collided and disintegrated, or whether it was absorbed or “captured” by the UFO is unclear. The second interceptor vanished as well. The colossus then proceeded to split in two ) and each half took off in a different direction, one toward the southeast and another toward the northeast. This case was vividly described by Wilson Sosa, an onlooker turned researcher, before the those gathered at the 1991 International UFO Conference in Laughlin, Nevada.

Officialdom did not delay in offering rebuttals about the strange going-on in South-western Puerto Rico. Aníbal Román, Civil Defense Director for the Mayagüez Region, reassured the population over a radio broadcast that neither UFOs nor strange lights were being seen in the south-western corner of the island. A vast effort was undertaken to demonstrate that the “cause” of the lights seen in Laguna Cartagena was attributable to lights of the Candelaria neighbourhood of Cabo Rojo reflecting upon the lagoon’s waters: The Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority (PREPA) left hundreds of homes without electricity for thirty minutes on October 2, 1991. Ramón Montalvo, an engineer at the PREPA plant in San Germán, claimed that the unusual lights vanished from the darkened sky “the minute the power was cut off.” Lt. Rafael Rodríguez of the Lajas police argued that the blackout proved the lights believed to be UFOs were merely the reflections on the lagoon’s surface.

Although authorities went to the extreme of placing a series of large reflectors on the crest of Mt. Candelaria, the experiment was an abysmal failure: no-one saw the expected reflections, despite the official affirmations. Any individual armed with a map could have told that the lights of the Candelaria neighbourhood (20 miles away) could not possibly account for the situation being experienced on an almost daily basis by the residents of the Lajas Valley.

In late January 1994, a Californian cable TV crew visited the island to prepare a documentary on the strange goings-on that had caused such sensation in earlier years. The crew, led by interviewer Tom Zennes, spoke to Israel Acosta Meléndez about a sighting occurred on January 16 of that year. Acosta claimed that he and a group of friends had seen a large blue light illuminate the night sky near Lajas, adding that the light remained at some distance above them for a long time before taking off toward an unknown destination at high speed.

Acosta told Zennes that he had also had the opportunity of witnessing a circular, brass-colored vehicle that crossed the sky from Lajas to Cabo Rojo. The object had at least a dozen lights running along its sides. The Lajas resident had grown accustomed to these sightings and felt no fear of the unknown objects, although the same couldn’t be said for his trusty horse. He recalled heading for Cabo Rojo on horseback one day when he saw a UFO hovering briefly on the horizon before splitting into three parts. Acosta’s mount was so startled it nearly threw him off the saddle.

On November 27, 1994, a UFO described as having a triangular shape crossed the heavens at 5:00 p.m. witnessed by Aracelis Valentín, a resident of Mayaguez's Jardines Housing, who was "astonished" by the sight.

Mrs. Valentín explained that the UFO, which was "shiny and metallic," moved south from a northwesterly direction. "I was there with my 2-year old son, when I saw an object resembling a stingray," Aracelis averred during an interview with a journalist. She pointed out that the unknown vehicle was very large and clearly visible in the clear skies. As in other UFO cases, the craft allegedly sighted by Mrs. Valentín made no sound whatsoever. She insisted that it could not have been an airplane, helicopter, or balloon, since the object in question was incredibly bright and moved at a breathtaking rate of speed. "The phenomenon frightened me considerably," she told reporters from a local newspaper.

The Mayaguez resident was by no means the only one to report UFOs: unknown to her, an entire neighborhood had sighted a triangular UFO a week earlier in the town of Añasco, located to the north of Mayaguez. According to one of the residents of Añasco's Daguey suburb, the triangle "...crossed the skies silently, leaving a trail of light similar to a fluorescent lamp," as it crossed the evening skies on November 23, 1994

One resident claimed to have seen the triangular UFO vanish rapidly, heading southward from the North. The object itself gave off a brilliant light and flew at a low altitude, which enabled the witness and three relatives to see it clearly. "At first I thought I was seeing white pigeons flying in formation, but I later realized it was something none of us had seen before," said the witness, a government employee, who insisted on anonymity when interviewed by reporter José Victor Jiménez. "I don't want my sanity called into question, but my immediate family and other neighbours saw the very same thing." The regular sightings were a certain omen that the sightings were coming back with renewed intensity, with regular reports appearing throughout the Christmas holidays and into the new year.

World attention was suddenly thrust upon Puerto Rico again on May 6, 1997, when reports of a UFO crash near the town of Lajas (famous for the Laguna Cartagena incidents in the late 1980s and early Nineties) at 3:25 a.m. erupted on the news wires and on the Internet, producing renewed interest in the island's UFO landscape. All accounts coincided on the fact that something had happened near Lajas, producing an intense brush fire in the habitually arid region, but the source of the fire became a bone of contention: one band of ufologists claimed that a spacecraft had hurtled out of the sky and exploded, causing the conflagration, along with reports of Federal agents who denied the local police access into the area. Another ufologist appeared on television denying that there was anything to the event aside from a meteor impact which triggered the fires, and suggested that the celestial event was being manipulated by a band of government-infiltrated saucer fanatics to discredit UFO research on the island. To everyone's surprise, an astronomer took the side of the pro-UFO faction, insisting that a meteor of that magnitude would have left a tremendous crater, possibly obliterating Lajas and the neighboring towns.

A Military Solution?

On May 7, 1997, Univision's Spanish-language Primer Impacto program presented a dramatic roundup of the events surrounding the mysterious Lajas incident: the interviewers reported claims that the Army had reported to the area to collect debris from the impact site and that the consternation among the locals was clearly visible. It was also pointed out that unusually heavy UFO activity had been reported over Puerto Rico's southern tier, and that a woman from the city of Ponce had taken a video of a silvery, rhomboidal object crossing the skies.

Lucy Guzmán, an investigator affiliated at the time with the Puerto Rican Research Group, based in Hato Rey, P.R., posted a radio news story to the Internet which indicated Lajas mayor Marcos Irizarry's belief that the explosion and subsequent fire had been caused by U.S. military experimentation in the area. Irizarry added in the newscast that a growing number of local residents were coming forward with accounts of a glowing object that fell from the sky, and that three distinct explosions had been heard. An area radio station also experienced technical difficulties shortly after the detonations occurred, suggesting the possibility of EMP (electromagnetic pulse radiation). The defunct San Juan Star (the island's only English-language newspaper at the time) briefly mentioned that one resident, Francisco Negrón, said the fire burned with an unusual redness, which almost bordered on the supernatural. Tipping its hat toward the non-meteoric theory, the U.S. Coast Guard suggested that "an airplane crash" may have occurred at that time.

An interesting feature appearing in the distinguished Bulletin of Atomic Scientists (May/June 1997) discussed an interesting addition to the U.S. nuclear arsenal: the earth-penetrating B61-11, a twelve-hundred pound warhead that replaced a number of older nukes. Whereas older nuclear devices had to delivered by a bomber due to their considerable weight, the lighter B61-11 could be dropped by a jet fighter. Capable of perforating the ground, this improved weapon of destruction employs "ground coupling" to produce a shockwave capable of demolishing subterranean facilities.

While such capabilities may have called for by military planners bent on destroying superhardened Soviet command posts deep under ground, the end of the Cold War and the standing down of forces on either side has made such a sophisticated weapon redundant. But in spite of this lowering of tensions, there were tests of earth-penetrating nuclear warheads in 1988 and 1989 having far greater yields than required. Could the UFO enigma play a role in such an arbitrary decision?

UFO investigators have repeated their belief that a subterranean "base" of some kind exists in the southwestern corner of Puerto Rico, either in the vicinity of the Sierra Bermeja mountains or offshore. These assertions have been generally supported by the considerable number of UFO/humanoid sightings in the region. Spurious maps of such an underground base (staffed by a joint complement of humans and aliens, as in the best tradition of early 90's "Dulce Base" accounts) were even circulated, showing underground "saucer hangars" and a submarine inexplicably "parked" in an underwater cavern.

The article in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, which pointedly described the B61-11 as a "mystery weapon", indicated that planners have actively considered the use of small "dial-a-yield" warheads against Third World countries, particularly in their ground-penetrating capacity. Could we speculate that Puerto Rico may have proven an interesting test site, not only for its unique position, straddling the First and Third Worlds, but also for the perceived problem that hides beneath it surface?

Saucers or no saucers, it is a fact that thirteen Puerto Rican military facilities (the number has gone down in the past years due to base closings) have been used for the storage of nuclear weapons ranging from underwater demolition mines to more sophisticated nukes -- all of them under the generic cover of Advanced Underwater Weapons (AUW). This situation is explained in William Arkin and Richard Fieldhouse's masterful Nuclear Battlefields (Ballinger, 1985). Even though the island falls squarely under the jurisdiction of the Treaty of Tecamachalco, which declared the island a "nuclear-free zone" along with the rest of Latin America (a special protocol of this treaty deals exclusively with the Puerto Rican situation). Antisubmarine bombers, armed with nuclear weapons, had made use of the defunct Roosevelt Roads Naval Base during wartime as their base.

Incident at Adjuntas

While la zona suroeste of the island commanded the lion’s share of ufological and media attention, a fascinating sub-plot was taking place at Puerto Rico’s heart, where the arid Caribbean environment gives way to sharp, verdant peaks. The mountain community of Adjuntas, part of the island’s coffee-growing belt, had attracted the attention of mysterious lights for decades. A 19th century town with a population of 35,000 scattered throughout the surrounding municipality, is located to the northeast of the city of Ponce, following the tortuous curves of Rte.10 and the narrow defiles on each side of the road. A community firmly rooted in the culture of Puerto Rico’s central mountainous region, it is largely known as a coffee-growing region. It is a little known fact that during the 1870’s, the island’s coffee was the most prized variety in the world, far exceeding the beans supplied by Brazil or even the Far East. The café society of 19th century Vienna was fuelled by coffee beans harvested in central Puerto Rico.

Almost twenty years later, the island-wide reactivation of mysterious forces caused lights to manifest again, this time in a very specific location: the test-pits for potential mining operations in central Puerto Rico, known to contain considerable quantities of copper and to a lesser extent, gold. It has been speculated that this mineral wealth has attracted non-human interest as well, or that it serves as a beacon for anomalous activity. Elderly residents of Adjuntas’ Barrio Pellejas alleged that bizarre vehicles and even stranger-looking “people” could occasionally be seen in the region containing the copper mines. In an interview, Mrs Rafaela Hernández indicated: “My father would tell us that there was something strange there, a great mystery. That those people supposedly from another world had a base there, and that late at night, saucers would land and a great glow could be seen down there.” At the height of the 1991 flap, it was said that some of the enormous steel plates employed to cover some of the copper test pits dug by Kennecott during decades past had been torn asunder by an unknown force, possibly beams emanating from UFOs. Photo and video evidence alleging the destruction of the enormous steel plates covering the test pits was circulated around this time. The Adjuntas events reached such intensify that Rigoberto Ramos, the town’s mayor, felt the need to contact President George W. Bush to apprise him of the situation:

“Adjuntas is a little town in the Central Range of Puerto Rico, and at this moment, we are very intrigued by some unusual events that are affecting our daily lives.
Some years ago, we noticed the presence of Unidentified Flying Objects (UFO) in our skies. At first, we did not give great importance to this matter, but lately these things have appeared again and our citizens are distressed over this. Many, many persons have witnessed the presence of these objects in our surrounding space (evidence of these apparitions is included).
Our purpose in writing you is to ask for your help to clarify what is really happening by ordering an investigation so that the people in our community can keep calm.”

Interestingly enough, another mayor of Adjuntas had had his own UFO experience: In October 1972, Roberto Ramos, had his own sighting of unidentified aerial vehicles one night in the Barrio Garzas section of his community. A disbeliever of such manifestations, the mayor actually prided himself on his utterly rational approach to anything vaguely inexplicable. But sitting in the front passenger seat of a roofless jeep, along with other passengers, he was left speechless when three disks crossed the firmament right over their car. Ramos would later describe the objects as a trio of light-emitting disks, changing colour and intensity as they crossed the sky. As they flew overhead, there was no doubt in Mayor Ramos’s mind that he had witnessed an unexplained phenomenon.

In November 1992, journalist Julio Victor Ramirez reported on a fascinating – and frightening – incident in the mountain community: uncommonly large luminous objects were reportedly descending on a hill known as El Gigante in the precise sector of the municipality where the mining test pits were located. The witnesses to the event included members of the local police department, who would subsequently retell the experience to radio personality Edwin Plaza: “That thing had a set of lights beneath it, and a white ray of light issued from its bottom, lighting up the hill.” Despite its tremendous size, the vehicle made no sound whatsoever.


According to the law enforcement agents, the massive luminous object had appeared in the early hours of the evening, bathing the slopes of El Gigante in white light. The unknown object reportedly had lights underneath it and the source of illumination came from a single beam projected against the hillside. What made this sighting interesting – as if its magnitude were not sufficient to make it important – is that the object’s beam was apparently seeking a particular location: an agricultural school on the slopes of El Gigante that looked into “improved cattle ranching techniques”. With what we know about the presence of the UFO phenomenon in the world-wide epidemic of cattle mutilations, is it unreasonable to suspect a connection in this case?

Within a few years, the UFO sightings in Adjuntas would give way to the earliest reports of the paranormal predator known as “el Chupacabras” in the mountain municipalities of Orocovis and Morovis.

Conclusion

Unusual activity in Puerto Rico remained steady even as the Nineties gave way to the first decade of the new century, but never again reached the fever pitch of the 1987-1997 period. Using past performance as an indicator, there will certainly be similar bursts of activity in the future, but as always, specifying the exact moment is an elusive art.

The UFO situation on the island during the Nineties, however, differed significantly from all the past waves by a significant new addition: the role of “alien abductions” and the appearance of the diminutive “Greys” instead of the taller, more clearly humanoid-looking aliens of decades past, conforming to a worldwide pattern. Although significant cases were reported during this period, the abduction phenomenon did not reach the magnitude that it achieved on the mainland U.S. or elsewhere. In retrospect, there appear to have been more encounters in broad daylight (or even moonlight) with non-human entities than bedroom visitations. The start of the Chupacabras mutilations effectively ended the initial “phase” of abnormal activity, and few if any UFO reports were collected during this period – a fact that repeated itself in Mexico in 1996, with the onset of mutilation activity in that country.

Perhaps the most salient feature of the Puerto Rican wave of the 1990s was the amount of domestic and international media coverage it received. Local researchers were interviewed by news outlets from Spain, the United Kingdom and Japan (NHK television produced one of the most complete documentaries ever on the subject) and hosted visits by Stateside personalities such as Jacques Vallée, Linda Moulton-Howe and Timothy Good. Less fortunate, perhaps, was the trivialization of the UFO/paranormal events by commercial interests.