Spain: A Humanoid at Fuengirola (CE-3, 1976)
By Manuel Ramírez, “Ovnis en Andalucía”
On the night of 9-10 July, 1976, a group of young photography enthusiasts agreed to travel to a small country home owned by one of them in the vicinity of Fuengirola (Malaga). They reached the house at around one o’clock in the morning on a warm summer evening. The main purpose of their journey was to test new photographic gear and spend some days at the beach. As they settled in, a member of the group (as told by Manuel Linares to researchers Miguel Peyró, Emilio Linares, Inés Pérez, Ignacio Benvenuty, Ricardo Lineros and Manuel Ontivero of the CIEPE group) informed his friends that according to word of mouth, a flying saucer had been seen to sweep across the skies “like a luminous stain”. No one took him seriously.
However, shortly after taking photographs within the house, the new arrivals began hearing a deep, powerful respiration, comparable to a strange animal panting outside the dwelling. The five young men went outside with more curiosity than fear, thinking that it could be a prank, or the likelihood that a burglar had taken advantage of the cover of darkness to conduct his activities, as the summer house was normally unoccupied. Armed with axes and machetes, the young men turned on some flashlights and set out to explore the surroundings, hoping to find the source of the odd panting they had heard in the silence of the night. The heavy panting stopped the minute they turned on their flashlights. The silence became more intense. It seemed that alleged animal, or whatever it was, had vanished.
At five o’clock in the morning, Manuel Linares was roused from a deep sleep by some strange noises. He alerted his friends and all of them were able to hear the sound of panting respiration once again, punctuated by a whistling sound resembling the sound made by a car braking on pavement.
Three of the young men ran toward a hallway with a window that opened precisely toward the location the sounds were being heard. The approached it at a crouch, fearing discovery by the strange visitor. When they reached the window, they saw the source of the loud panting they’d heard...and it made their blood run cold.
Standing beside a tree was a sort of very tall man, taller than the tree itself, with two very bright sources of light where his eyes should have been. The figure’s outline was lost in the darkness, although the figure appeared to be enveloped in a black robe.
Following a few minutes of genuine panic, their reaction was to find the machetes with which to fight off a possible act of aggression from the strange prowler. Upon leaving the house, they found that the figure had either concealed itself or vanished. The only possible clue was that the surrounding temperature became considerably warmer, and a powerful smell of sulfur filled the air. Manuel Linares returned to his room, from where he saw something even stranger.
“I saw a shadow walk past the doorway, neither quickly nor slowly. I turned on the lights and tried to hide. The shadow, making noises like the sound of deep breathing, walked right by.”
Linares and his buddies took shelter in the house and didn’t dare leave again. Shortly after, a new sound startled them: strange footsteps could be heard on the rooftop. Momentarily, “something” started banging on the doors and windows, as though trying to enter the house. The feeling was could not be described. The banging sound faded after a while and there was no further sign of the “visitor”, but they’d experienced enough, and returned to Seville immediately. The long night siege was over.
Only some facts bear out the story told by the five youths: in that very same area, more or less a year before the night siege, a series of unexplained events had taken place. Many animals of various species had been found dead within a short span of time. No natural cause was found to account for their deaths.
(Translation (c) 2012, Scott Corrales, Institute of Hispanic Ufology. Special thanks to José Manuel García Bautista)