Argentina: Disappearing Paranormal UFOs
By Roberto Enrique Banchs
UFO Press October 1977
[Another gem from the October 1977 issue of UFO PRESS, courtesy of Alejandro Agostinelli. Mr. Banchs needs no introduction – he is one of Argentina’s leading and most respected researchers, director of the Centro de Estudio de Fenómenos Aéreos Inusuales (CEFAI) and the author of Las Evidencias del Fenómeno OVNI (Buenos Aires, RAE, 1976) among other works. We are pleased to present Mr. Banch’s opinions on the subject – Scott Corrales]
It is well known that the extraterrestrial hypothesis (ETH) is among the most acceptable propositions with regard to the nature of the UFO phenomenon. However, there are those who feel that it barely offers an adequate explanation for certain aspects of the problem, such as the absence or scant detection of the phenomenon in space with astronomic devices, which contrasts with what occurs within our own atmosphere.
This may suggest that the phenomenon – interpreted as spacecraft – would not find it necessary to travel vast distances to reach our world, an absurdity if it is only observe us and study us for years or centuries.
Moreover, in numbers too great to be overlooked, many of these unknown artifacts have vanished suddenly or gradually into the air before the eyes of startled witnesses, in broad daylight, and under excellent conditions of visibility.
But is there a link between disappearances and the foregoing? Dr. J.H. Christenson, a tenured professor at the University of Columbia, mentioned a bold hypothesis that posits the existence of a phantom universe similar to ours, with a very subtle interaction between both universes, in such a way that we cannot see this other world that mingles with our own. It would be possible for UFOs to be denizens of this parallel universe, becoming perceptible in our universe through certain modifications, or being able to penetrate it.
However, the parallel universe hypothesis is rather recent and is only in the early stages of consideration, largely due to the difficulties posed by rigorous scientific verification.
Nobel laureates Lee and Yang discovered that the conservation of parity, one of the basic laws of physics, does not occur in certain K-mesons. In Dr. Christenson’s view, the strange behavior of the K-meson is due to a disturbance by the forces of one or several parallel universes coexisting with one another.
In our world, matter responds to physical constants, such as the speed of light, element charges, electron-volts, etc. Now then, if the constants were different in another universe, the thesis propounded by Jerome Cardan would be acceptable. He believed that “decisive scientific experimentation would consist of a special force field that would modify the universal constants of the matter of any object, causing it to vanish suddenly from our universe.”
I must point out here that the behavior displayed by UFOs shows a violation of certain natural laws. Apparent paradigms of the variation of physical constants, related to sudden disappearances, have led me to ponder on the possibility that we are facing ghostly objects that move in another order of matter.
In the summer of 1969, several people, including student Luis Esteban Martín, traveled by microbus through the locality of Florencio Varela in Buenos Aires. An oval-shaped object appeared before them suddenly, being of considerable size and following a rising trajectory to the north. Within seconds, the object, which emitted an intense bluish light, appeared to explode in the air, but without making the slightest noise.
It is likely that many of the alleged disappearances of UFOs are attributable to meteorites, cloud formations, refractions, etc., but a detailed study shows us that it is not possible to reduce the totality of cases presenting these characteristics to a natural interpretation.
Clérouin, the French captain, stated a theory that appears to be tied to these manifestations which are surely disquieting, but through which we may perhaps get to the core of the UFO phenomenon itself. He believes that these objects are not conveyances, in the strictest sense of the world, but rather vectors that exist in a dimension into which humanity will make future inroads.
As a supporting argument for this theory, Polish professor Valiksi lists a series of anachronisms that are similar to the ones helpfully mentioned in this article.
On 8 September 1958, military men witnessed a UFO in Offutt, Nebraska. It was cigar-shaped and surrounded by a thin black cloud. The portent vanished before inexplicably blending into the horizon.
On Wednesday, 14 February 1968, a device performing in a similar fashion was seen clearly and at length in the skies over Viña del Mar, in Chile, in broad daylight and by many people. The mysterious form, glistening in the sunlight, was suspended at a great height for moments, profiled against a clear sky. It was an elongated, silvery device that moved from north to south, emitting a sort of luminous smoke that spun in small circles. All of a sudden, the cigar-shape, which was perfectly horizontal, began to tilt, following an arc and plummeting toward the ground. As the phenomenon reached a low altitude, it began to turn invisible in the air. Thus, the befuddled witnesses who stopped to gaze upon the phenomenon at six o’clock in the evening were able to clearly make out the UFO as it evaporated from front to back, without leaving a single trace in the sky.
Months later, on 2 November of that year, in a community in Southeastern France, a respected physician witnessed an extraordinary event on a stormy day, from his home located on a hillside.
That night, summoned insistently by his young child due to the apparition of an intermittent light from the exterior, Dr. X saw two identical luminous objects at 3:55 hours. After a series of movements and strange structural modifications, the objects joined one another with a beam of light. They grew larger over the plain, until they turned into a single object, identical to the two previous ones, but of greater size. The UFO started to approach the witness in a straight line while the beam of light headed directly toward his home. The phenomenon’s disappearance was phantasmagoric. The first sound made itself heard at the moment that the UFO presented its red lower section, in a vertical position, giving the impression being incandescent metal or internal illumination: A sort of “bang” while “the object dematerialized,” according to the witness, leaving nothing but a whitish cloud in its wake. It immediately disintegrated and was swept away by the wind.
But let us return to Chile. On 12 February 1969 at 17:00 hours, four miles along the coastline facing Quintero, the crew of the fishing boat “Carol”, witnessed an anomalous object over the sea as a Chilean Air Force (FACh) Grumman jet maneuvered around the UFO before it vanished in an instant.
On the afternoon of 17 April 1970, a district of the Atlantic city of Mar del Plata was taking advantage of the languid autumn sun when “something like a round airplane, but giving off a greenish halo” appeared to the west. The unknown object “showed itself, remained for a few seconds, and suddenly became invisible,” according to witnesses.
Sudden disappearances of this sort occurred again on 2 September 1973 in Gobernador Galvez, Province of Santa Fe. Hugo Boló and his wife were traveling by car along National Highway No. 9 heading toward Pergamino. It was a UFO shaped like two inverted soup bowls, suspended in midair. It was highly luminous, with a smooth, silvery surface. It vanished suddenly.
There are other no less spectacular incidents that ascertain the sudden disappearance of the piloting entities, their artifacts or “sources”, in the words of a European investigator.
On 14 August 1947, Italian painter R.L. Johannis was in the vicinity of the Chearso canyon in Villa Santina, when he noticed the presence of a disk-shaped object, some 10 meters in diameter, around nine o’clock in the morning, as it landed in the vicinity. Johannis immediately noticed two small beings, dressed with dark blue coveralls or jumpsuits. After some maneuvers, the entities re-entered the craft, which rose into the air and remained stationary. The artifact, in a vertical position, tilted and suddenly became smaller and vanished.
On the morning of 1 July 1965, around 5:45 a.m., Maurice Masse was getting ready for work at his lavender plantation in Valensole in the Lower Alps. Suddenly, he heard a whistling sound and glanced at the mountainside, expecting to see a helicopter. Instead, he saw a vehicle shaped like a rugby ball, standing on six legs with a central pivot plunged into the ground. Small entities stood near the object, looking at a lavender plant. Masse moved toward them, but when he came within a distance of 5 meters he was stopped, unable to move. [The entities] returned to their vehicle. With a sharp sound from the main pivot, it took off to drift away in silence. When it reached a distance of 20 meters, it simply disappeared. Traces of its passage, however, were found toward the town of Manosque.
Cases in which UFOs and their entities vanish without explanation, in violation of the laws of physics, are numerous. Unable to go into detail, and in order to present a partial list of these cases to put forth some hypotheses suggested by these events, it is important to seek their final elucidation within the scientific framework, as the phenomenon richly deserves. A statistical study on worldwide sightings made by Dr. Claude Poher in 1973 revealed that the sudden disappearance of the phenomenon takes place in 7% of the sightings.
Other more recent lines of thought lean toward a parapsychological explanation for UFOS, which is rather acceptable in interpreting this peculiar aspect of the phenomenon under discussion. This can be seen in through the ghostly nature of their disappearances, linked to such phenomena as teleplasty and telepathic projection or hallucinations.
The science writer Pierre Devaux believes that it is possible to believe in teleplasty, which explained by the law of ideoplasty, which can be formulated thus: everything that the medium thinks, everything it represents, tends to occur through long-distance actions or materializations, called “targeted dreams”. These fantastic creations, therefore, would be objective projections of what an individual carries within him or herself. Ectoplasm would be the constituent material – a physical extension of the subject, a fluidic, psychic substance. In the opinion of Sudre, it would be possible for this fluid to materialize, charging itself with atmospheric gases, perhaps even organic material. The substance manifests as a luminous fog, moving onto an organized phase, whose dematerialization occurs in the same way.
Nevertheless, the most common ghostly images respond to the so-called telepathic hallucinator. It is “objective” to a certain extent, since it does not take place only within the subject’s spirit, but also in the agent, who has sent it toward a specific target. The phenomenon then inserts itself into our three-dimensional reality.
In the enormous mass of telepathic hallucinations that have been catalogued to date, most have occurred involuntarily, that is to say, though the mechanism of the unconscious. Therefore, unconscious projection of UFOs could arise from the symbolism given to it.
I must make reference here to the Swiss psychologist Carl Jung, when he states that situations of collective anguish or a vital need of the soul could generate spontaneous psychic visions created in the dark chasms of the mind. The unconscious would then appeal for resources with which to make its content perceptible and projectable. Arising from this emotion, the “mandala” shape would come about, symbolizing totality, which in Sanskrit means “circle”. This symbol exists in the collective unconscious, being part of the common content, an archetype transmittable not only by tradition and migration, but also by inheritance – a latent form in the general substrate of the mind that transcends all differences in culture and conscience. It is a primitive image accompanied by vivid affective nuances.
In our times – Jung believes – this archetype could assume a solid and even technological shape. The round totality of the mandala, projected by man to his fellows, is identified with a fascinating exterior “something”. Therefore, lenticular formations may turn into space vehicles crewed by idealized figures instead of gods, as was the case in the past.
This would explain the wide diversity of forms described about UFOs and their entities, although almost always maintaining the circular shape for the object and the human appearance for its occupants. This gives rise to the need of exploring the phenomenon’s development over history, stressing its metamorphoses over time. It was Jung himself who anticipated the cyclic theory of mediumship. Could this correspond to the cyclic activity of UFOS?
However, the set of theories cannot dismiss the possible existence of a guiding intelligence for the phenomenon – of unknown nature, material, and in control of that which is beyond human understanding.
[Translation © 2013, S. Corrales, IHU with thanks to Roberto Enrique Banchs and Alejandro Agostinelli]