A Survey of Close Encounter Experiences

 

A Survey of Close Encounter Experiences

By Scott Corrales, Inexplicata

 

On February 16, 2001, forestry technician Ingrid Sperberg, 26, a resident of the city of Angol in northern Chile, managed to meet her cyberpal Patricio Vallejos, 25, a systems analyst from neighboring La Serena. The two had agreed to meet in person after a long friendship over the Internet, and Sperberg offered to show the out-of-towner the sights of her home town.

     Vallejo arrived at Angol's bus terminal at eight thirty in the evening, as sunset crowned the city. At the station were Sperberg and her friend María Cristina Sepúlveda, 42, who had agreed to provide the transportation for the city tour and act as an unofficial chaperone on their meeting.

     Maria Cristina drove the cyberpals around Angol and at one point, the three of them agreed to visit a scenic lookout from where it was possible to see the entire city of Angol brightly lit and standing out against the surrounding darkness.

     Arriving at the lookout at 10:15 p.m., they were surprised to find they were the only car at the location, which is variously known as "El Mirador" or "Las Piñas" by the locals. They parked their car some four meters away from an iron gate adorned

with cartwheels, which guards the entrance to a field planted with pine and eucalyptus trees. Sperberg and Vallejo got out of the car to enjoy the view while María Cristina remained beside her vehicle.

     When the forestry technician and her friend looked back toward the field, they witnessed a white light ascending vertically from a distance estimated at some four hundred feet away. Rejoining María Cristina by the car, the trio witnessed a beam of light spreading open, fan-like, orange colored its base and soft violet at its top. According to their account, which appeared in a local newspaper, the beam of light "lit up everything some 40 meters around. Dry grass, depressions, the green of the trees and shrubs could be clearly seen."

     The phenomenon lasted for some three to four minutes, during which a very frightened Ingrid Sperberg excused herself from her companions to get back into the car. A self-confessed skeptic about the UFO phenomenon, Sperberg stated, "I don't like seeing strange things."

     A few more minutes elapsed before a solicitous María Cristina Sepúlveda went to check on her friend, discovering that the car's dome light, which had been hitherto working perfectly, did not activate upon opening the door. Puzzled, Maria Cristina repeated the maneuver a few times to no avail. It was necessary for her turn on the light source manually.

     Meanwhile, Patricio Vallejo remained outside the car, taking in the veritable light show. Vallejo, who suffers hearing problems, did not notice the sound of "ringing bells" that the women had been clearly able to distinguish during the event.

     The lights and sounds came to an end when the UFO abruptly vanished. Vallejo coaxed his cyberpal out of the car by assuring her that the coast was clear and that all had returned to normal.

     He couldn't have been more wrong.

     Sperberg became aware of a sound in the now-still night: a noise similar to that piece of metal being dragged over the loose paving stones of the country road they were on. "That's when I looked up, and behind the iron gate I could see two figures standing 1.20 meters, tall, dark, nearing the gate. They weren't walking‑‑they were dragging themselves along."

     According to the event's protagonists, the beings' faces, hands and legs were invisible, and the entities gave the impression of being shadows. The nature of the sound was also elaborated upon later: Sepúlveda characterized it as sounding as though the beings "wore metal booties".

     "When I saw them," Sperberg told journalists, "I looked at Patricio, who was alert to what was happening. At first I thought it could be people, as I struggled to find a rational explanation to what was going on. I heard the sound of metal. I’m sure that the figure on the left carried something strange, like two metal rods, but I'm not sure what they were."

     The entities halted their progress only a few feet away from the decorated iron gate. The one on the left crossed the iron obstacle as though it were non-existent, and following a small walk-around, made an about face and returned to the field, rejoining its companion. The shadowy pair moved away from the stunned onlookers; Maria Cristina shone her car's high-beams on them as they departed, but there was nothing to be seen.

     Ingrid Sperberg's plea to her companions about leaving the place as soon as possible was well received: the three boarded the car and left the scenic lookout behind. By their calculations, they returned to Angol at 10:40 p.m., so the entire event lasted 25 minutes. María Cristina would later add that as the car departed, she was able to see one of the dark entities through the rear view mirror, apparently pacing the car, before dissolving into an amorphous black mass.

     In retrospect, Sperberg and her companions agreed that the ghostly entities made no attempt to communicate with them, but that the beings made a noise similar to speech, a "mumbling" sound; during the event, all three agreed that the immediate temperature appeared to be much greater than it should have been for that time of night. The heat appeared to be concentrated in the area occupied by the witnesses (microwaves?). The unusual heat was accompanied by an odd smell reminiscent of "burning wiring" or "burning rubber".

     Although Ingrid Sperberg was the one most ill at ease with the paranormal events, it would be her friend María Cristina who would experience the unusual aftereffects of the ordeal. Ever since the close encounter on February 16, Sepúlveda claims to have been roused from sleep by the sound of metal being dragged on loose stone--the clangor made by the shadowy figures. Given her religious beliefs (an Adventist) she has refused to consider hypnotic regression and has attached religious significance to her experience, particularly after a healing experience which may be related to the encounter.

     Sepúlveda told the press that she had had a dream in which an entity completely different from the shadow beings--an angelic, luminous entity she describes as "a beautiful person"--healed her of a fleshy mass that was growing in the back of her throat, and for which she had sought medical attention. She awoke from the oneiric experience to discover that the lump was inexplicably gone: a fact confirmed by her physician.

     UFO researcher Ernesto Escobar states that the four friends were not alone in their experience, since his UFO study group was investigating a case which occurred on March 16 involving a group of five friends who had come to Angol to visit with friends and decided to stop at the scenic lookout, where they were startled by three beings standing in excess of six feet tall and with long arms and legs, who emerged from behind some shrubs. After talking among themselves -- at least that was the eyewitnesses' impression -- the entities turned around and vanished.

     Escobar's team has focused its attention on collecting soil samples from the ground allegedly trodden by the tall entities, and upon an anomalous spring not far from the metal fence where the sighting took place. The liquid coming from this spring has been described as having a "gelatinous" quality and "an unknown type of chloration was discovered upon analysis", stated the researcher to reporters from the Diario Austral de Temuco, adding that "the importance of these apparitions resides in that they are events which repeat themselves at the same place, the number of people who have witnessed them is significant, the object are highly mobile and close to the ground, and feature the apparition of humanoid figures."

     Skeptics have always complained about the reliability of CE-III's, regardless of the country in which they occur. The opinion of a trained witness--usually a police officer or other uniformed personnel--is believed to carry greater weight than that of the casual observer faced with the unknown, as in the cases we have discussed so far.

     But the situation acquires a wholly different complexion when members of the military are involved. Soldiers, sailors and airmen, given the nature of their training, are therefore believed to have greater accuracy in their statements. The following accounts involve recent CE-III's with military personnel.

     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.

  From the late 1980s and well through the 1990's, the Caribbean island of Puerto Rico held pride of place as the no-holds-barred strangest place on the planet: sightings of UFOs in the air, land and sea, strange creatures like the Bigfoot-like Comecogollos and the ubiquitous Chupacabras, and the possibility of collusion among the military and island authorities to keep these matters a secret, filled the pages of many a book and magazine around the planet.

     In spite of these and other paranormal goings-on, it is still possible to come across traditional CE-3 cases. One of the most compelling ones occurred on July 31, 2000 in the densely populated Bairoa sector of Aguas Buenas, a bedroom community of metropolitan San Juan.

     According to researchers Lucy Guzmán and Edwin Plaza, the Aguas Buenas incident began in the early morning hours of the 31st, when Marie Molina, the witness to the events, was awakened by an unusual sound on her corrugated zinc roof at exactly five o'clock in the morning, followed by the sudden and frantic barking of her neighbor's watchdogs. Parting the items of clothing she'd hung across the window in order to peer out into the darkness, she was startled beyond words.

     Standing with its back to her, at an estimated distance of 15 feet, was a tall creature with pallid, wrinkled skin, long ears, arms and legs, and an egg-shaped head. Ms. Molina was apparently able to see the corners of its elongated white eyes with black centers, but unable to make out the details of its mouth and nose, nor the number of fingers on its hands.

     But the most curious detail of this backyard encounter was the fact that the strange entity shook its body incessantly, with its hands clenched in what Molina took to be a prayerful attitude. The witness would later tell Guzmán and Plaza that the creature's shudders reminded her of "a person afflicted with a muscular cramp and who is trying to relive it [by shaking]."

     Ms. Molina watched the creature for approximately fifteen minutes until she developed a sudden, perhaps irrational, fear that the shaking creature would somehow try and get into her house. This prompted her to reach for the phone and call another person (described as "a sister, friend or neighbor" by the researchers) who urged her not to call the police for help, since "she would not be believed", and asked her to hold on while a relative was sent out to rescue her.

     Five minutes after having made the phone call, Ms. Molina decided to check on her unwanted visitor again, but this time accidentally bumping her leg against an object near the wall. The sound caused the creature to stop its activity (but apparently not its shaking) and turn to look at her. Clearly able to see its face now, the witness remarked that it appeared to be giving her a telepathic command to shut her eyes. This prompted her to step back from the window and rub her eyes repeatedly in an effort to focus and somehow break the suggestion placed by the entity. The fact that it had been able to "command" her to take action only served to ratchet Ms. Molina's fear even higher--if the shaking creature could control her mind so readily, what might be in store for her?

     Another five minutes of barely restrained panic elapsed until Molina heard her name being called from the street--it was the person that her telephone contact had sent to rescue her. Perhaps feeling heartened by this, she ran back to the window to see if the creature was still in the backyard, but it had vanished. In an article for Inexplicata (Fall 2000), Lucy Guzman notes that Marie Molina had experienced some mild changes in the wake of the event: a chain smoker all of her life, Molina no longer felt the urge to smoke, "nor was she in bad mood over not smoking."

     The 2000 Aguas Buenas case brings to mind another Puerto Rican case which occurred in mid-'70s during the UFO wave which included the mutilations caused by the Moca Vampire. On April 17, 1975 Orlando Franceschi, an ambulance driver for a hospital in the city of Ponce, on the island's Caribbean shore, returned to his house  after 8:00 p.m. that evening  only to become aware of the fact that something unusual was going on in his backyard. Franceschi's could see his watchdog jumping into the air in a frantic effort to clear the fence get away from whatever it was. The homeowner, tired after a long day's work, angrily set off for the backyard, taking the precaution to arm himself with a shovel which he kept against one of the house's exterior walls.

     Nothing could have prepared the ambulance driver for what he found in his backyard: a bizarre entity with long, pointed ears, a long nose, lipless mouth and greyish, ashen skin. Franceschi would later describe it eyes as being "black spots", and having a jawline reminiscent of an ape's. The creature walked toward the homeowner with a jerky, stiff gait.

     In a mixture of fear and anger, Franceschi struck the five foot tall intruder with the shovel, but was surprised to see that it was unharmed by the terrific blow. Oddly enough, the entity backed off, perhaps deliberately allowing Franceschi to deliver a second shovel-blow without any effect. But when the human was winding up to deliver a third strike, he began to feel his body becoming numb and paralyzed, leaving him at the mercy of whatever it was that could withstand such physical punishment without flinching. Helpless, expecting the worse from the non-human figure, the ambulance driver was shocked to see the entity (which he described as a "zombie") fade into thin air.

     Although some rough similarities exist between the creatures--the black-centered white eyes, pointed ears, pallid skin and apparent ability to employ mental powers against humans--there are no unexplained craft present in these CE-III's, and therefore the beings cannot be properly be considered "ufonauts" (although this should not really pose a problem, since many accepted CE-III's like the Kelly-Hopkinsville event in 1955 did not feature UFOs. Perhaps both of these Puerto Rican cases, separated from each other by a gulf of 25 years, would benefit from the revisions to the classification system set forth by Jacques Vallée in his book Confrontations (Ballantine,1988). Vallée proposes a complementary classification of "AN" for anomalous events, paralleling the CE 1, 2 and 3 classifications. His AN-3's would apply to "anomalies with associated entities. This class could include ghosts, yetis and other instances of cryptozoology as well as elves and spirits" (p.217).

     We do not know if Mr. Franceschi benefitted from his encounter (in fact, we can only infer from the text that the ambulance driver shared a characteristic exhibited by "Lucky" Sutton during the Kelly-Hopkinsville case--the unnerving astonishment that the intruder was immune to harm), but we can see that Ms. Molina's ability to quit smoking indicates that an unexpected benefit was derived from her sighting, much in the same way that Mrs. Sepúlveda in the Chilean case was inexplicably healed of her condition after the event. The Spanish sentry does not appear to have benefitted in any way aside from a very welcome furlough.

      Liliana Flotta and Eduardo Grosso, researchers from the Argentinean city of Rosario, believe that healings in the wake of CE-3's or AN-3's are commonplace, particularly in their country. They cite the case of a young married couple, Sergio and Sandra A. (ages 26 and 27, respectively) who were startled to behold an unexplained phenomenon taking place in the inner courtyard of their building, which was on the same level as their ground floor apartment. The husband saw only a luminous floating sphere, while the wife was Cleary able to see a diminutive floating being. "According to Sandra," write Flotta and Grosso, "their upstairs neighbor was terrified that night by a ball of light that appeared inside her apartment." The researchers were able to confirm this event after interviewing the party in question.

     Prior to the experience, Sandra A. had experienced health concerns involving a fibroma, but shortly after that fateful evening in July 1992, she started having dreams about a diminutive entity coming into her room and inserting a needle into one of her ovaries. Such was the intensity of the pain that she would wake up screaming.

     Soon after these "dreams" and the experience shared with her husband, Sandra A. discovered that she was pregnant and that a sonogram showed no trace of the fibroma. "Sandra and Sergio have since relocated to Greater Buenos Aires, where she gave birth to a boy," conclude the authors.

      In our age of abductions and post-abduction trauma, looking at cases that involve UFO occupants or unusual humanoids as they go about their enigmatic business in our countrysides may seem hopelessly antiquated. However, unlike most abduction experiences and bedroom visitations, traditional CE-III's have the benefit of taking place away from the home and under circumstances involving more than a single witness to the event. To a certain extent, it helps that witnesses to traditional CE-III's are usually fully awake and engaged in other tasks (talking to friends and sightseeing, standing guard at an army base or having just returned from work, as in the cases we've seen here). Although the media has celebrated a number of breakthroughs in securing evidence of alien abduction, the ability to collect samples, such as the soil and anomalous water in the Chilean case, serves to bolster a case's credibility. Unfortunately, none of these things brings us closer to solving the riddle posed by these experiences.