Cattle Mutilations: Event Associated with a UFO Sighting in Argentina

Cattle Mutilations: Event Associated with a UFO Sighting in Argentina
By Andrea Pérez Simondini
An investigation by Martin Bertochi and Vicky Ziegler

This case contains nearly-ideal conditions for investigation, but for the inability to gain access to the expert report performed on site.

We would like to highlight, nonetheless, the valuable fact that this is one of the few cases in which the appearance of a light in the same time frame and geographic location can be associated with an animal mutilation.

Animal Mutilation + Light + Eyewitness

Martin Bertochi and Vicky Ziegler are the researchers who came across the case, based on the testimony of Maria Antonia, who often waited for the bus that took her from Concordia to Calabacillas, a locality in the District of Yeruá some 5 km from National Highway 14 and 6 km from the Uruguay River. Chance would have it that she would meet Martin’s father, who having learned of light sightings in the area from another woman, informed Maria Antonia of his son’s interest in [mutilations] research, and this is how the case came together.

María Antonia broke into a run the moment her bus dropped her off after seeing the lights. She ran home, causing her to trip and be injured.

When Martin and Vicki learned of the case, they paid a visit to the witness at home, learning that this was not the first time that these “lights” appeared in the area. The owner of a farm facing Maria Antonia’s house had come across a mutilated animal and was illuminated by a powerful beam of light at the moment he made the discovery.

Roberto Cutro’s Eyewitness Account

The family made up of “Cacho” and his wife, when interviewed by the whole team, seemed anxious to retell their encounter with the lights, with a mixture of excitement, stressing the truth of their experience.
[The researchers] received a warm welcome, as is the custom of country people. Kind smiles and firm handshakes defined, in a way, the hosts’ jubilant mood. They asked to come over to a sort of covered patio to get comfortable, and it was not before long that the first experience, only a few months old, was brought up (the exact date was not recalled).

…”They recall that it could have perhaps been during February of this year (2014). As was their daily custom, they were in their courtyard at night and a powerful beam of light turned the darkness to daytime. They realized that two lights were responsible for the luminosity.
They immediately phoned the police (noting that the authorities were hesitant to come over to the house). At first, Don Cutro thought that cattle rustlers bent on stealing his animals were to blame. Cacho is a man accustomed to walking around the countryside in the dark, as this is part of his daily routine. As he approached the tracks, where he saw the lights vanish, his wife called her aunt over so that she too could be a witness.

“They phoned their son in Concordia and apprised him of the events. Despite the fact that he is skeptical about such things, the son came over to his parents’ property to glean more information about the event. Weeks later, and aware of the places where the lights had been seen by the parents the night before, the son pointed in a given direction, asking if that was the site, to which the father said yes. At that time, both lights reappeared, seemingly approaching them through the countryside before vanishing. Later on, he managed to see a light that he went out to chase with a camera in his hand, jumping over a cattle gate. The light vanished without being captured on film.

The Mutilated Animal

We cannot begin to convey the case without first stating that the witness was interviewed with difficulty given over-exposure of the story by his own wife. We decided to re-interview him, returning time and again, about details of the event in order to obtain the story from his own experience. This is what you will find recorded in the narrative of the case, the product of several interviews. You will noticed these details in the audio that forms part of this research as well as the videotape.

The Husband's Story

“I was on horseback and was able to see a bright light wandering the fields while I conducted my survey activities. When I reached one of the corner points of the perimeter, I found an animal spread out on the ground. It was a cow.

“I approached the animal and when I did so, a source from above bathed me completely in its light. I had money in my pocket, so my first thought was that someone wanted to rob me. So I took off running, not knowing how – to this day – I crossed the wilderness and the cattle gates all the way to my home.

“The light was somewhat blue. It was lovely. When I got off the horse, I realized that my horse had seen the approaching light. It pulled the reins away from me, and that’s when I slapped it. It was then that the light covered me completely. When it did, I jumped back on the horse. I took off and don’t know how I made it through all the gates.”

The Wife’s Story

“When he came home, he told me: “Do you want to hear something?” I replied, “If it’s nice, yes, otherwise say nothing at all.” I could see he was very frightened. He went through a forest of eucalyptus trees and doesn’t know how he made it."

The Animal

“It was dead. I saw it alive the morning of that day. Its earlobe had been mutilated and burned. They pulled out all its genitals. Well removed, without a drop of blood. They also pulled out its eye, like someone grabbing it and pulling everything out, as if burning while they did it. That’s how the animal was found.
“The municipal vet showed up (from Concordia) and it was Dr. Olivera at the time. The first thing he did was cut off its head. It had no injuries to its muzzle. Its tongue was missing – they also took it. I don’t know how they did it, that was a strange thing.
“I found the animal dead around 20:00 hours. It was alive in the morning.
“They brought 14 dogs over, but none would approach [the cow]. They wouldn’t eat it, either. A grass analysis was performed. Dr. Olivera came with all of the people of the Concordia Police Department.”

The Light

“The light looked as if the sun had come and shed its light. What I saw most was that it was a lovely light. Beautiful light. It was bluish, a light you see seldom. There was a eucalyptus plant nearby. They wanted to take me to the doctor, but I refused. What for? I asked. Then I went to bed. He looked at my leg, which was injured and my (right) leg was completely muddied. This is the first time we’ve seen mutilated animals. We didn’t hear about our neighbors having any. There were no marks on the ground.”

Wife: “One had the impression that it was hoisted and brought down, because the animal didn’t even kick.”

Cacho: “The fetus had some spots (the cow was pregnant). And when the vet removed it, it looked like a dried-up thing. It spots on it as though it had been burned. According to the vet, it looked as though it had been done with a laser or with a poker.

Incident Involving the Horse

On several occasions now, the horse has turned up with marks, as though blood was being drawn from it. Little spots turn up. They’re oily. That horse has turned up two or three times with oil all over its back. It’s the same color as the horse, but darker.
Cows would run off to their pens. The animals couldn’t stand seeing a single light. You had to see the sense of desperation with which they took off running.
A week after finding the carcass, it was still possible to move the cow’s joints as if recently dead. The carcass disappeared completely 3 months later. Animals have died here, and their bones are still visible 4 to 5 years later. This one vanished completely.”

This then, is the statement by the witnesses regarding the events.

A separate factor involves the groups whose presence were made known in the case. It is striking. One of them in particular is a team of scientists that travels the entire country, investigating these cases, armed with major equipment. You should also know that the case you have just read never appeared in the national press and had no greater relevance beyond the local environment through radio station LT15 of Concordia. It is interesting to know that we are not the only ones looking into these cases: it seems that higher echelons are also concerned. Let’s see what we find the next time around.

The Research Team:

Walter TAULADA (Photography)
Vicky ZEIGLER (Field researcher)
Martín BERTOCHI(Field researcher)
Andrea PEREZ SIMONDINI(Field researcher)
Silvia PEREZ SIMONDINI(Field researcher)

[Translation (c) 2014, S. Corrales, Inexplicata, with thanks to Guillermo Giménez, Planeta UFO, and Andrea & Silvia Pérez Simondini, Visión OVNI]

Argentina: New Cattle Mutilations in La Pampa

SOURCE: CIUFOS-LAPAMPA
DATE: 16 August 2007

ARGENTINA: NEW CATTLE MUTILATIONS IN LA PAMPA
*** A Report from Raul Oscar Chaves ***

On July 30, 2007, two beef cattle specimens were found slain and mutilated at the "San Jorge" ranch located on Provincial Route No. 28, between rural routes 11 and 13 and between the locality of Cuchillo Có (some 250 km south of Santa Rosa) and the Sierras de Lihue Calel.

The mutilated cows were black Aberdeen Angus specimens with missing ears, tongues, incisions to their jawbones and missing udders. One of them was lying on its side and another on its back; the carcasses presented signs of extreme hardness in the limbs and hide. Upon being struck with a stick "...they sounded hollow, like a drum..."

Witnesses to the find were Marcelino Martinez and Hector Ruiz, a rural contractor and his employee, who were refurbishing and building rural homes.

It should be noted that there is no rural electricity in this region, and electrogenous units (generators) are employed for power. This circumstance keeps the locals from having access to television or radio (battery units excluded) and the only residents in the area are either transient or temporary.

At midnight on the night prior to the find, Ruiz decided to go out of the place he shares with Martinez to walk and smoke. It was here, and unexpectedly, that he saw a bright source of light at low altitude. It remained static "and gave out lights on all sides--red, green, blue, yellow..."

The light, whose width was equivalent ot the length of a cattle cage used for transporting livestock (some 10/12 meters), according to Ruiz's comparison, vanished after a few seconds and another smaller light appeared on the ground, but this time an intense bright green. Within this light was "...as small being standing some 50/70 centimeters tall, who remained motionless...". At this point Ruiz specifies "...I cannot say if it had a head and ears, but it was humanlike, since two legs could be seen..." This sighting lasted only a few seconds before the entity vanished altogether. The witness was deeply impressed by what he had seen, and decided to go back to bed and sleep.

Subsequently, and as is customary during work breaks, Ruiz and Martinez decided to explore the vicinity. Martinez found one of the cows in the proximity of a cutwater; the other cow was also found near another cutwater, both located within the rural premises. At this point they decided to inspect the place where Ruiz had seen the lights, some 40 meters from the place they spent the night. On the ground they located four holes measuring 2 cm in diameter and some 20 cm distant from each other, forming a square.

This ranch (San Jorge) was also the scene for several cases involving cow, horse, sheep and goat mutilations between 2002 and 2004. Both Martinez and Ruiz live in General Acha, some 120 km south of Santa Rosa, stating that in the area where the animals were found, it its quite common to see lights of various types and colors.

(Translation (c) 2007, S. Corrales, IHU. Special thanks to Raul Oscar Chaves)
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Argentina: Cattle Mutilations in Rocamora, Entre Rios

Source: Planeta UFO
Date: July 3, 2014

Argentina: Cattle Mutilations in Rocamora, Entre Rios
By Daniel Ubaldo Padilla

A new avenue of research in the mutilation field opened in 2013, beyond what could have been predicted, and in regard to the information emerging from my research. The fact that an attack of such striking characteristics should have been made public – on account of the number, and on a single property in February 2013 – represents an exclamation mark in our line of investigation. This is the first time it has happened beyond the time period evinced since I embarked on this quest, but there are certain other elements that accompany this yearly periodicity reckoned in months.
In an effort to find an answer beyond the perpetrator, it is necessary to find the coordinates of the attack…of the moment…with the aim of coming face to face with the elusive culprit. As part of this search, and endeavoring to answer other mysteries that will channel an answer to the first, we tried to determine if there was a given moment for carrying out the attack, or whether certain conditions had to come about for it to happen. It was then that the statistics began to come together in an answer that had more than mere whiff of the esoteric.

The possibility of having access to many mutilations of the type we have called “traditional”, aside from peripheral observations of the facts, has led us to concentrate on the dates of the deaths, approximating the animal’s actual date of death as closely as possible. Based on “X” amount of mutilation attacks we were able to put together the following scheme, determining a “peak period” based on a lunar period and which from the standpoint of investigation, reflects a likely number of days per month in which attacks may occur, covering a yearly period running from April to September, which we have called the “annual period”, with a 98% likelihood of having a “predator moment”

2007: Two Equines and Four Likely Mutilated Bovines

In this 11-year search for the very intelligent entity behind the animal mutilation events, “mutilation harvests” are nothing new at the San Diego ranch owned by Edgardo Raul Slootmans. While my goal is to make this situation widely known, the material collected with regard to mutilations over these years is truly interesting, requiring its dosification through this blog. As I have told my associates, the material transcribed herein in columns is approximately 15% of all that has been documented during the access to this phenomenon. I hope my readers will forgive my evisceration of this information, but given the persistence of events in this region, it is necessary to refresh other important events that shed more light on current events.
Between October 15-18, 2007, the San Diego ranch was part of the mutilation wave that swept the province of Entre Rios. It was there that Lalo Slootmans watched two of his equines. His interest, a result of hearing the stories propagated in the media at the time, caused him to contact Dr. Roberto Lezcano, who at the time shared our “quest” to unravel the cattle mutilations. Accompanied by one of Lalo’s children, and thanks to his contact with Omar Izaguirre, who had official police duties in the dependency of Rocamora, we were able to gain access to the possible mutilation that very same afternoon. While no veterinarian was present, it was possible to ascertain the mutilation incisions on the right jaw and the absence of an eye on the left side, as well as a perforation of anus. But the most significant discovery was that for the first time we noticed micro-peforations throughout the animal’s body. Dr. Lezcano’s thorough observation led him to detect this nearly total correspondence in the majority of mutilation events, to a greater or lesser extent, with the subsequent observation and collection of fungi emerging from these perforations. Under the same inclement, intensely rainy conditions, nearly 100 meters from where the two equines lay, were four mutilated bovines in groups of two. Due to the considerable amount of water accumulated around them, the observation was made at a distance, unable to ascertain if these were really “traditional mutilations”.

Without expanding any further on the information on 2007 cases, I consider Lalo to have been another victim of the indifference and lack of response of the institutional authorities as a whole, and of those who govern us. When it comes to providing accurate explanations on events effectively recorded, which keep repeating in the area, they only fall into contradictions that are wholly detrimental to research itself, and denigrating of the influence which the scientific community should have.




2013: Eight Mutilations and Six Probable Related Deaths

On Tuesday, February 19, a phone call from Doctor Lezcano alerting me to the news should have been surprising…but it wasn’t. Although it was striking, considering that the event occurred beyond the specified annual period, it really wasn’t if we paid attention to specific concomitant patterns that accompany mutilation phenomena, such as the lunar period scheme, and the noticeable drop in temperature, unwarranted for those days in the month of February. The possibility of a traditional mutilation then gained strength, with eight documented mutilations, followed by five likely bovine deaths and the certain possibility of another mutilated horse in a neighboring field.

While the Rocamora Police appeared on Wednesday the 20th, they did not enter the area due to the inclement weather and the daunting hike required to reach the site: nearly 3000 meters (2 miles) from Route No. 39.



Accompanied by Lalo, Dr. Lezcano was able to perform an informal necropsy on one of the animals found, learning that the animal had died only a few hours earlier in comparison to the others. This animal was in the left lateral decubitus position, missing an eye, its tongue cut out to the root, with a mutilated anus and the beginnings of a chest mutilation, and an apparent squeeze to the groin. While these marks are startling, they are nothing new in cases of animal mutilations I have seen, but they do add quality to the ones already found. An inverted V mark, with its vertex pointing toward the head (like an arrow) and signs of apparent “clamping” in the groin are, to my humble understanding, a more than new contribution to research. Another observation centered on the animal’s heart: what startled the doctor the most was the presence of the entirety of the coagulated blood, which filled the various coronary cavities 100%. This is nothing new, from my perspective, since around 2002 we eviscerated an animal in the San Cipriano area, not too far away. We saw the same on that occasion, but by being a neophyte in the matter, and without the presence of an expert, the normality or abnormality of what was seen remained a mystery. Today we can say that the anomaly is real, since blood should be liquid in a carcass, beyond coagulation of the vena cava in a pathology that approximates traumatic reticultitis. But the question I pose here is directed at physicians: Is there a pathology in which the cause of death presents a total coagulation of the auricles and ventricles of the heart?

Diagnoses and Institutions

Upon reading subsequent statements made by the police to the press, I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Of course, over 11 years of research, there have been changes in positions in that institution, and many of them, to the extent that they all forgot the small “red-muzzled mouse”, the yellow jacket and the carnivorous insect offered as explanations. Some understood that it is necessary to resort to science and credible diagnoses, but the unfortunate tendency to keep justifying the unjustifiable. Thus it was that eight days after having found the dead animals, and 24 hours after gaining access to the site, the police said the following:

“Minutes before 23:00 hours, the radio [station] at Basabilbaso learned that the information gleaned by the police commission headed by Cancio implies death by anthrax. This is an infectious disease known since Colonial days, highly contagious and affecting ruminants mainly, being transmissible to other animals, even humans…”

Dr. Roberto Lezcano consulted a senior authority at SENASA, and based on filmed, photographed and verbal documentation, the presumptive diagnostic was: symptomatic anthrax, also known as blackleg or emphysematous anthrax. When consulted by the media, Dr. Lezcano stated plainly: “…the expert said that samples had been lifted from two animals “which had been dead for a few hours”, allowing him to gather evidence that led veterinarians to conclude that the animals “had died of blackleg, an acute highly infectious illness characterized by an inflammation of the muscles, severe toxemia and high rates of mortality, affecting young bovines aged 6 months to 2 years old, and whose etiology is a bacterium.” He hastened to add that according to his dialogue with veterinary physicians, “adult bovines are naturally resistant to infection by this microorganism, from an epidemiological standpoint.”

Foundering Between Scientism and Research

The apt notion or description voiced by John Carew Eccles on scientism fits this situation perfectly, in which we should eliminate all presumption of conspiracy theories despite the police department’s expeditious statement to the media. He says: “ A pernicious insidiousness arises from the presence of some scientist, even eminent ones, that science shall soon provide a full explanation of all of the world’s natural phenomena and all our subjective experiences: not only perceptions and experiences involving beauty, but our thoughts, imagination, dreams, emotions and beliefs as well. It is important to acknowledge that while a scientist may make this pretense, he is no longer acting as a scientist, but as a prophet disguised as a scientist. That is scientism, not science, but it impresses the layman greatly, convinced that science provides the truth. On the contrary, a scientist should not believe that he has certain knowledge of the truth. The most that we scientists can do is to approximate a true understanding of natural phenomena through the elimination of errors in our hypotheses. It is highly important that scientists appear before the public as what they really are: humble seekers of the truth.”

Now, the swift but detrimental police statement does not even reference the explanation – or lack thereof – for the mutilated parts. But Doctor Lezcano’s statements, offering guidelines for the SENASA’s institutional specialists to render a verdict without having been at the site, offer the perspective of one who places himself in the role of the humble seeker of the truth. Furthermore, Lezcano forces the veterinary expert to expand on the mutilated parts, being unable to offer an explanation on the subject. While the necropsy yields blackleg as the cause of death, what I am seeing is an evident thrombosis with excessive accentuation, in comparison with other cases of blackleg. When we add the anomaly of the blood coagulated in the heart, plus the mutilated part and the marks found on the carcasses of some animals, plus the opinion of an acknowledged university engineer, a specialist in meats from the Province of Cordoba, who noted that he was startled by the blood clot in the neck vein, which was out of proportion to blackleg, the place where the characteristic blood clot from clostridium chauvoei is found. I add to this comparisons with living animals not described here, arising from research, in specific information gathered over 11 years. For this reason, and given the evident clash between scientism and official research, I take the liberty of putting forth a new scenario for the deaths:

For some special reason, the central area of the province is chosen for repeated incursions by a cattle mutilating predator. I could say that this special reason could be a special element: WATER and the characteristic wetlands of the Argentine Mesopotamia. This significant element would foster intimate contact with our cattle. The inhospitable landscape of the San Diego ranch would propitiate an attack by the predator. The sighting made by Edgardo Slootmans is no small thing. As we stood in the apparent street of marked grass, we looked toward the Gualeguay River from east to west, and he said, could it be possible that the herd of young animals had been chased? That’s why they were scattered to one side and another of the lane that empties out to the river. Three of the animals followed this trajectory. Another three were lined up toward the end of the lane, close to the river and parallel to it, extending a hypothetical escape down the lane, limited by the river itself at the end. This caused the animals to turn around and run parallel to the Gualeguay, fleeing from a predator. One or two managed to escape; eight were left on the lane. The abundant, brusque signs of manipulation, marks and mutilations suggest a forceful, invasive contact, seen in the cornea of the animal’s blue-white eye, and on the other hand, the invasive “clostridial explosion” caused by the ANAEROBIC action of the bacteria, possibly clostridium chauvoei, whose swift progress is aided by the aggressive contact with the predator tied to a certain luminous action that would accelerate natural processes to higher degrees, producing multiple blood clots. High coagulation in the blood and in the heart, aside from the blindness often seen in natural processes of excessive exposure to sunlight in bovines. It is also worth noting that since the animal was found barely hours before its death, it’s body temperature was elevated to over 40 degrees, notable when performing the necropsy through a pair of rubber cloves. I understand that the accelerant that sped the deaths of the calves, a sudden death caused by the sudden appearance of clostridium, which favored by the lack of oxygen in some muscles due to clamping, added to the stress endured, precisely indicates the abominable action of the mutilation, the reason I consider to be the main cause of death of the animals attacked during that lunar cycle. In other words, they died from the wounds caused by the attack, a concept that bolsters the line of investigation I have been following in the cattle mutilation phenomenon.

DEDICATED TO MY FRIEND EDGARDO RAUL SLOOTMANS AS PERSONAL SUPPORT AGAINST THE IRONIC REMARKS HE ENDURED DUE TO THE LACK OF ANSWERS STEMMING FROM THE INCOMPETENCE AND NEGLECT ON THE PART OF THE AUTHORITIES AND INSTITUTIONS RESPONSIBLE FOR PROVIDING ANSWERS AND RECOMPENSE HIM FOR THE EVENTS IN WHICH HE WAS THE VICTIM.
© 2013 – ALL CONCEPTS FROM THIS INVESTIGATION ARE THE PROPERTY OF DANIEL UBALDO PADILLA.

[Translation © 2014, Scott Corrales, IHU with thanks to Daniel U. Padilla and Guillermo Giménez]

Argentina: A Roundup of UFO Sightings

Source: El Norte en Movimiento
http://www.elnorteenmovimiento.com.ar/sitio/index.php?edicion_id=144&articulo_id=5203
Date: July 15, 2009

Argentina: A Roundup of UFO Sightings

15 December 2008: A Pampan pilot photographs two strange objects in different positions at the border between the provinces of Buenos Aires and La Pampa using a cellphone.
8 December 2008: Witnesses at Ataliva Roca see a powerful red light toward the west, oscilating under cloudy skies.
16 December 2008: A luminous triangle flies over Santa Rosa in a SE-NW heading. Object was sizeable and well-defined.
16 March 2008: UFO photographed in seen in Santa Rosa and photographed over General Pico.
10 January 2008: Several residents of Santa Rosa see a UFO in broad daylight, amidst a storm.
6 June 2009: Oscar "Chango" Guitierrez, a television producer, photographs a strange object as he travels along Rt. 35 from north to south, pulling over to take a photo of the sunrise shortly before driving into the town of Peru.
24 June 2009: Members of CEUFO photograph two strange luminous objects over Laguna Don Tomás in Santa Rosa.

Strange Beings

13 April 2007: A photograph is taken of an entity near an airplane parked at the Macachín Aerodrome. Entity is nearly 80 centimeters tall; image was enlarged and subjected to analysis, revealing such details as parts of the body, consisiting of head (with frontal eyes), upper extremities (arms or wings), torso and lower extremeties. The photo was taken by Fabian Romano, a photographer of that locality under optimal lighting conditions (noon) using a Minolta digital camera with 135mm and a 1/1000 speed. The image was only noticed when scrutinized on a computre.
September 2008: A hunter spotted a "critter" in the Pampan wilderness. "It gave me the sensation that it arrived floating, and it stopped near the stream," he said. [The entity] cause a horse to whinny and the ranch's dogs to bark desperately. The strange animal stood on four legs and the back of its neck was white, with protuberances in its head and ears the same color as the neck. The rest of the body was dark. The hunter opened fire with a 30.06 rifle, but only a small puddle of blood was found the next day.

At the same place on the following day, another hunter witnessed the presence of two strange "red-eyed" beings that approached the area, making a strange sound that he compared with that of a dog's whine. It rained heavily over the area, making the recovery of blood samples impossible.

Crop Circles

January 2007: During the aerial fumigation, strange marks were seen on a corn-planted lot in the rural area of Miguel Riglos. Attention was drawn to the fact that the missing foiliage within it showed odd characters similar to rectangles and circles where other irregular figures were also in evidence. Over 20 drawings could be seen, characterized by a suggestive alignment. An initial evaluation of these marks suggests a failure of the harvesting equipment in several areas.
However, some of the the figures do not contain straight-line incisions, and those resembling circles are predominant. There are also isolated irregualr shapes. The grouping of these alleged drawings is on the southwestern edge of the lot that borders the 33 KW line belonging to the provincial interconnected system. Curiously, the dispersion of these symbols corresponds to alleged and imaginary horizontal "axis lines" running from East to West or vice-versa, in the same direction as the cultivation.

Cattle Mutilations

April 2002: The entire country was shaken by the hundreds of animals found mutilated in the fields. Despite talk of the "red-muzzled mouse", the explanation did not convince many. Furthermore, strange lights had been seen around the phenomenon.
Over 700 mutilations were reported to the authorities during the first months of 2002. The majority of these cases involved bovines, althought to a lesser extent, they also included horses, hogs, wild boar, sheep and deer. The attacks became sporadic later on. Another attack occurred in September 2008 at Colonia El Indio, 20 Km from Santa Rosa. On March 28, 2009, a calf was mutilated but not killed -- an unheard-of occurence in this phenomenon.
26 June 2009: A Hereford cow is found slain in the Puelches area. Lights had been previously reported in the area and not even dogs would approach the dead animal.
21 June 2009: A mutilated dog was found by an official of the Agustoni commune. The animal's head and some vital organs were missing, but no trace of blood whatsoever was found.

Abductions

There are people who speak of attempted abductions. However, this case involves a policeman who vanished for 18 hours and was found later in a state of shock, lying in a fetal position some 40 km away from the place he was last seen.
"Tests were performed, and he was evaluated by psychiatrists from Santa Rosa and Cordoba, who ascertained that the young man had undergone a powerful experience," said Quique Mario. "During part of his testimony, he said that he could see the country side from above and in little squares, giving the impression that he had been flying aboard something that flew over the area. He described things that we later ascertained were real. For example, he described parts of the La Barrancosa ranch that can only be seen from above. He remained idle for a year, but later rejoined the police force in the Communications area. His poor health prompted authorities to grant him early retirement.
The event resulted in a court case that was given to Criminal Court No. 4, under Judge Luis Abraham. "The judge is willing to discuss the subject from a legal standpoint, as there are details that still lack an explanation. The Judge's openness is essential when it comes to documenting and making an increasingly more detailed investigation," noted Quique Mario.

Missing Water

Another of the notorious events of the year 2002 was the missing water from the "Australian Tanks" at the mutilation areas. Aside from the water absconded from these cattle watering tanks, there are incidents of water extracted from swimming pools in suburban communities such as Ugarte, Trenque, Lauquen, Toay, Parera, Miguel Riglos, Macachín and others.
In all cases, it was determined that the water tanks did not show any abnormalities that would have caused the losses. Nor were any spills detected in the areas surrounding the tanks.
In most cases, mutilated animals were found in the vicinity. And in several cases, local cattlemen reported seen "strange lights" nearby.

(Translation (c) 2009, S. Corrales, IHU. Special thanks to Guillermo Gimenez)

A Brush with the Netherworld

A Brush with the Netherworld: Improbable Entities
By Scott Corrales

"See those eyes so red/red like jungle burning bright..." sang David Bowie in his song to the 1982 remake of the classic horror film Cat People, in which humans turned into were-panthers to feast on human flesh.

The existence red-eyed, felinoid entities, however, can hardly be relegated to the cinema of yore and has few points of contact with the lycanthropic traditions held by nearly every culture on this planet of ours. Strange felinoid entities have been reported throughout history, and continue to make their presence known right up to our Internet-saturated early 21st century.

Whenever accounts of this nature surface in journals or online, skeptics decry the simplistic assumptions of the untrained, pointing out that the eyes of most animals tend to glow red under certain conditions. This argument is brought to bear even in cases where witnesses stress the phosphorescent, self-luminous properties of the entities' eyes. The dispassionate approach of "experts is a small consolation to the person who has just had a run-in with one of the hairy hominids collectively known as "bigfoot" or "yeti", or to the householder who has lost beloved pets to the crimson-eyed predator known as the Chupacabras.

Field researchers and journalists have speculated, over the past 30 years about how such visitors came to be among us. Some theories suggest that they were dropped off by alien spacecraft in the same manner in which Spanish explorers of the Americas dumped cattle on uninhabited islands, in the hopes of returning and finding an abundant supply of work animals, while others believe that they represent survivals of species considered extinct, ranging from the elusive Gigantopithecus (known to us only through its impressive dental work) to pterodactyls and other life-forms of the Age of Reptiles. That some creatures may possess the gift or ability of roaming in and out of dimensions has also been thrown into the mix, to the dismay of the paladins of rational thought.

Unlikely Hominids

Bigfoot researcher and journalist Peter Guttila mentions a case which occurred in Texas Canyon, California from October 1974, during which a group of teenagers driving through the canyon were suddenly faced by a dust cloud, similar to one raised by a motorcycle or dune buggy. To their dismay, behind the cloud was no desert joy rider, but a trio of "tall, hairy creatures with dog-like faces, human bodies and eyes that glowed." The teens added that the creatures threw sand and pebbles at the car as it went by, making noises they categorized as "monkey chatter". Perhaps more ominous was the fact that some of the vehicle's occupants got the impression that similar creatures--visible only by the points of light that were their eyes--were running down the canyon's side to join their fellows. Surprised at the fear evinced by their offspring, some of the parents visited the canyon but could find nothing aside from the smell of rotting eggs that usually accompanies monster sightings.

Guttilla also discusses a case involving a Bigfoot-like entity engaged in the theft of a pig. Accounts of the shambling creature appeared in the Saugus Newhall-Signal and included an interesting detail: the oversized, hairy thief was wearing a "glowing blue belt". Most descriptions of these frightening entities fail to mention any accoutrements whatsoever. It is interesting that a similar description would emerge during the course of a conversation between this author and Puerto Rican UFO researcher Willie Durand Urbina regarding high-strangeness events in the island's El Yunque rainforest. Durand mentioned that sightings of hairy manimals were nothing new in Puerto Rico, and certainly not in El Yunque. However, in the wake of the Chupacabras apparitions of 1995-96, there were now reports of Bigfoot-type entities wearing cinturones de luz (belts of light) emerging from the rainforest. The researcher added that these creatures tended to be more violent than their unadorned counterparts. Other investigators of the unknown in Puerto Rico have mentioned cases in which human-sized hairy monsters have committed acts of violence against eyewitnesses.


The Spawn of Anubis?

Perhaps our own biases toward the humanoid shape cause us to pay more attention to cases involving the more manlike entities and ignoring others which are equally important. These would be the creatures described as feline or canine, walking on four legs and sometimes on two, and clearly different from anything known in our world. One of the earliest reports involving these paranormal creatures, known as the Beast of Bungay, has been cited in a number of books and magazines. Elizabethan printer Abraham Fleming consigned the account in a black-letter brochure, describing the incident occurred in the month of August, 1577: "The parish church at Bongie (Bungay) did quake and stagger under the violence of a storm, such as never before hath been seen [...]. Immediately thereupon, there appeared in the most horrible shape and similitude to the congregation...a thing like a black dog...This black dog, or devil in such a likeness, running all along down the body of the Church with great swiftness...". Perhaps Mr. Fleming would be surprised to learn that such events are still occurring five centuries later.

According to Brazilian researcher and author Carlos Machado, director of the CIPEX group, the city of Sumaré in the state of Sao Paulo was visited by a number of bizarre entities between April 27 and May 10, 1997. One case involved a manicurist named María Vera, who was returning home at around 11:50 p.m. afer a having spent the evening at her sister's house. As she crossed an empty field to reach her house, she ran into a "horrible monster" described as an enormous, swift-moving ape that moved on all fours with large red eyes. Despite the initial simian description, María Vera likened it to a colossal dog that reeked of carrion. It towered over the woman when it stood before her on two legs. "It was a great work of evil. I didn't faint only because my faith is so strong," referring to her pentecostal beliefs.

Confirmation for María Vera's sighting came from Irene Rodrigues do Mata, a fellow churchgoer who would also describe the entity as "a giant dog". Even the local night watchman, Luis Carlos, claimed having seen the aberration five times during the same night. "The critter's already killed two cows," he told reporters. "Dead dogs have been turning up in the wilderness, and the living ones are making such a racket like I'd never heard before."

On April 29, 1997, Sr. Alirio, the gardener for the Prefecture of Sumaré, would be treated to a sighting at five o'clock in the morning as he headed for work. Again, the description offered was that of a "very large dog" with a slender body.

But the strangest of these reports from the Sao Paulo vicinity involves one such monster dog followed by a horde of normal dogs. According to eyewitness Anisio Cacheta, whose sighting occurred on May 17, 1997, the creature was black and hairy and had simian rather than canine features with spine-like formations running down the length its body.

The suggestion that whatever force is at work in these animal mutilations has a "protean" quality that allows it to change shape has also been debated, and there have been more than several cases in which such transformations have been reported. Perhaps none of them is quite so vivid as the event involving Mr. and Mrs Lew Lister of Point Isabel, Ohio, retold by the late Leonard H. Stringfield in his classic Situation Red, The UFO Siege (Doubleday, 1977).

In 1964, the Listers had been sitting in their car talking around 11:00 p.m. with the headlights off when a figure took "large hops or leaps" over to their vehicle. Passing with uncanny ease through a barbed wire fence, the entity lunged toward the car's windshield as the frightened couple tried to roll up the windows and make their escape. Retelling the story to Stringfield in 1975, Mrs. Lister had been hesitant to disclose what happened next: the attacking creature had changed shape, its hands transforming into paws and running away, vanishing into thin air.

Dennis Pilichis, author of Night Siege, a monograph about northern Ohio's rash of Bigfoot sightings in 1981, cites a case from Lewiston, NY, involving police efforts at finding the party responsible for killing a horse by snapping its neck and leaving a deep gash along its side. A police officer allegedly interviewed a man who reported seen a creature squatting, "sitting [in the snow] on its haunches as if it was eating." Feline footprints were also found along a ditch: the cat tracks suddenly vanished when they approached the ones made by the strange entities. "What happened to the cat?" asks Pilichis. "Was it eaten by the critter? Did it change into the creature? Who knows..."


The Felinoids

Perhaps the most frightening of the creatures encountered are the felinoids: during the course of a conversation with Spanish parapsychologist Eduardo Gregorio, he mentioned that a successful summoning of some nameless entity had produced the materialization of a hideous feline shape that darted into the surrounding darkness, much to the dismay of the would-be warlocks. Their dismay is quite understandable, given the fact that the very same thing had occurred to a famous occultist of the past. In his book The Goblin Universe (Llewellyn, 1987), cryptozoologist F.H. "Ted" Holiday describes the efforts made by the infamous Gilles de Rais, Joan of Arc's companion-in-arms. Rendered nearly penniless by his profligate lifestyle, the French nobleman sought to find wealth through sorcery. A necromancer named La Riviere seems to have conjured "a demon in the form of a leopard" which could allegedly be heard by servants as it walked on the castle's rooftops.

The United States has had its own felinoid cases: in the summer of 1996, a caller to The Laura Lee Show mentioned seeing a thin, shadowy figure like that of "a human cat" race across her backyard. In 1991, Strange Magazine ran a letter from a reader in Maryland concerning a creature known as "The Cat Man" which allegedly haunted a dumping ground near the city of Salisbury. The entity was described as black, hairy and having claws or hook-like fingernails; glowing yellow eyes completed the nightmarish ensemble.

Encountering one such entity is bad enough. Who could remain sane in the face of an infestation of said creatures? The question is not rhetorical: in 1985, residents of the communities of Rafael Calzada, Quilmes and San Francisco Solano (suburbs of Buenos Aires, Argentina) were forced to contend with precisely such a phenomenon.

According to researcher Gustavo Fernández, accounts of the felinoids' attacks were initially circumscribed to the police blotters of local newspapers. "One or more persons in feline disguise," standing almost 6 feet tall, had sexually accosted a number of local women. Victims and eyewitnesses had coincided in their descriptions, stressing the speed and agility of these figures.

As the number of cases increased, the police was prompted to take action. Over 40 law-enforcement agents at a time tried to capture one of the swift, shadowy figures without any success. On one occasion, the policemen converged upon one of the perpetrators in an empty lot, believing it to be hidden behind some shrubbery. When they ran toward it, the figure disappeared.

Fernández states that the number of creatures believed to prowl the suburbs was almost one hundred, and multiple reports were coming in from locations separated by considerable distances. As would occur with the Chupacabras sightings in Puerto Rico a decade later, locals began taking their own measures upon seeing the police's inability or unwillingness to capture or slay the creatures. During one incident, relates Fernández, two men "opened fire against a thin, black, hairy silhouette at a distance of 5 meters" and saw it fall to the ground following the bullets' impact, only to rise up to its feet once more and run away.

Fernández found himself drawn into the situation when his expertise in the occult was requested by locals who complained of the inordinate number of "possession" events taking place in the community. Catholic and Protestant clergymen were being called in to exorcise homes and individuals more than ever before. Although Fernández believed that the "cat people" were probably human terrorists, he was interested to learn that the appearance of the bizarre silhouettes coincided with the opening of several Umbanda temples (terreiros, in Portuguese) in the local woods.

The occultist investigated the case of a local family whose daughter, Elena, would awake every night at two o'clock in the morning screaming, weeping and convulsing. Standing guard outside the girl's room while she slept, Fernández was startled to hear her cry at precisely 2 a.m.. Barging into the room, he became aware that "something" had dropped off the roof of the house and onto the ground outside the open bedroom window, "a shadowy shape darker than the night sky".

Instinctively, Fernández --a practitioner of the martial arts--thrust himself at the window and rammed his left fist at the hairy figure. This is how he describes physical contact with a non-human entity: "The fact is that I felt a repugnant sensation under my left hand. Its body was very cold, colder than its mammalian exterior would suppose, and was soft. The best tactile image I can give you is that of a leather bag filled with jelly. Its bristles were hard and almost perpendicular to the skin, or at least so it seemed to me." The entity turned and ran as the researcher leapt out the window to chase it to no avail.

The paranormal infestation ended as abruptly as it had begun--a constant in most cases involving entities of this description. Reflecting on those utterly strange days sixteen years ago, Gustavo Fernández believes that the felinoids were the "byproduct of goetic activity" in the area and that their activity was strongly reminiscent of the Medieval incubi, who would materialize physically to sexually accost humans or disturb their spiritual harmony.

The reader would do well to pause and reflect after reading such an account. What were these slender shadows doing roaming around suburban Buenos Aires in 1985? Collective hallucinations by members of a society beset by economic and political woes? Or to make the story more palatable to UFO believers, saucer crewmen engaged in activities incomprehensible to the human mind? Perhaps, in the final analysis, the supernatural answer fits best.

The Quest for Answers

In the summer of 1996 this author was approached by parapsychologist and lecturer Peter A. Jordan, well-known for his even-handed and thorough research on the cattle mutilation phenomenon in the 1970s and for unmasking the "Amityville Horror" fraud. Jordan had become interested in the manifestations of the paranormal predator known as the Chupacabras or "Goatsucker" and sought to repeat an investigative approach that had served him well during the cattle mutilations in the Western U.S.: submitting physical evidence and photographs to psychics and psychometrists in the hopes of coming up with a solution to the mystery.

A number of photographs of farm animals mutilated by the Chupacabras provided by the Puerto Rican Research Group were made available to Jordan, and these were forwarded to psychometrists with a background of law enforcement and academic work in parapsychology. The experiment's results were startling.The impressions from the six photographs presented to a psychic collective known as the United States Psychic Rescue Squad suggested that some kind of ritual was involved in the animal mutilations. One sensitive received "fleeting impressions of men in white clothing resembling Santería [practitioners] or Mau-Mau." The focus of the ritual was "revenge and hatred" of an unspecified source. Another sensitive felt that "a reborn witch doctor" was involved in the mutilations; still another felt that "a type of devil worship was involved, yet not necessarily of an organized type," adding that the person at the center of the situation "believes he is the hand of God."

Other psychometrists flatly refused to handle the material, feeling that the negativity of whatever had caused the animal deaths. The late Ron Mangravite sensed that the creature took great pleasure in killing, showing that the entity behaved in malicious fashion, betraying a keen intelligence. The image of the creature which formed in the psychometrist's mind had been that of a feline with "an elongated neck", adding the curious observation that the earth-energies in the place where the mutilations had taken place (in the vicinity of Puerto Rico's mysterious El Yunque rainforest) were "immense...strong enough to generate tulpas (the Tibetan thought-produced entities) or Tulpoid phenomena."

What these psychometrists did not know--could not possibly have known--at the time of the experiment was that veiled references were being made to a "Yoruba temple" (or more properly, a place of Santería worship) in Mameyes, a small town on the foothills of El Yunque, perhaps being responsible for the summoning of the Chupacabras. A lucky guess?

How Can These Things Be?

In his book Investigating the Unexplained (Prentice-Hall, 1972), zoologist Ivan Sanderson presents a cogent explanation for the question "how can these things be?". After stressing the fact that many so-called "intangible" creatures present clearly "tangible" aspects, he propounds the existence of an entirely new set (or sets) of dimensions separated from what we understand to be our normal space/time, but "so close to ours in either respect that bits and pieces fall through from one to the other, and then possibly back again..." Perhaps more important is the great researcher's assertion that we are increasingly surrounded by measurable evidence of these other dimensions in touch with our own, inhabited by denizens of unsuspected natures, ranging from "abysmal idiots to godlike entities."

Sanderson ends his exposition on the matter by postulating a number of concepts: that there are other universes intertwined with our own, that the number of these may be infinite, that intelligent life may be common in some of them, and more importantly, that some of these intelligences figured out how to make round-trip sorties from their home universes. Less consideration has been given to another possibility: the likelihood that these manifestations were forcibly brought into our reality--summoned--through the practice of sorcery.

It is understandable how such an possibility would receive short shrift from the outset. To believe in the summoning of entities involves a belief in ceremonial magic that not many are willing to concede, since the laws of the physical world demand that a given input be provided to obtain the desired output. No human has the ability--we would like to believe--to command the elements, coerce others to take action, or draw strange creatures from other realities for unsuspected purposes, but the record would appears to indicate otherwise. Indeed, journalist Ed Conroy, in writing about Whitley Streiber's abduction experiences (Report on Communion, p.249), suggests that one of the ways in which the issue of "visitors" may be approached is through the analysis of Western ceremonial magic practices, with their extensive tradition of contact between humans and non-humans.

1986: The Atalaya UFO - A Mystery Lost in Time

Source: Diario El Día
http://www.eldia.com.ar/edis/20130119/El-famoso-OVNI-sobrevolo-Atalaya-informaciongeneral3.htm
Date: 01.21.13

The Atalaya UFO – A Mystery Lost in Time
By Matías Kraber – Diario el Día

The object was seen by 7 members of the FAO (Fundacion Argentina de Ovnilogía). It took place on 4 March 1986 on the road to Atalaya, where the world record of [UFO associated] ground marks took place.

At first, they thought they were under attack, and that none of them would be left alive. However, the oldest among them, Avelino Mengui, pressed the shutter of his Nikon D80 and the image taken from a field in Atalaya went all over the world. It was all true, in the end: they kissed their fingertips and swore on what they’d seen: flying objects – luminous and circular – were prowling the area they would later christen as El Nido, the Argentinean UFO epicenter formed between southern La Plata and Punta Piedras, joining Routes 2 and 36 straight to the bay of San Borombón.

It was the first time they had seen something after a series of hints, ground marks and eyewitness accounts from local residents. First there had been a record number of mysterious ground marks – 150 of them – and two months later, their suspicions had been confirmed: they could see a UFO flying around in a 45-minute long aerial display. The core of media interest had installed itself right there – the press, radio and television – five kilometers from Atalaya and an hour away from Magdalena by road.

El Nido

A mysterious location known for apparitions, flying objects, ground marks, humanoids, cattle mutilations and other popular legends, suggesting a bizarre and unprecedented phenomenon. Right here, at the core of the borough of Magdalena and Greater La Plata.

“We had started to visit the area in October ’85. We would conduct watches at El Espinillo creek, heading toward Atalaya by road. It was very odd for us. Reports were coming in weekly: someone who had gone hunting or fishing, or local residents touring the countryside. Everyone saw something strange and everything was occurring precisely here, in what we began calling El Nido (The Nest),” says Luis Burgos, leader of the FAO (Federación Argentina de Ovnilogía), a resident of Ensenada who never stopped looking at the sky ever since the day Man landed on the Moon – 20 July 1969. He has spent some 43 years studying the phenomenon – between skywatches and investigations – and is a more than knowledgeable spokesperson for the subject.

A Record Number of Landing Traces

It was January 1986 and the world record of anomalous landing traces occurred in the San Luciano field: 150 UFO landing traces around an Australian tank and in a single plot of land: perfect circumferences, cylinders and figure-eights etched on the ground, with dehydrated grass. The media boom followed the next day. The press – El Dia, La Gaceta, El Argentino – printed “Mass UFO Landing in Magdalena”, radio waves carried the voices of local eyewitnesses, and Telefé and Nuevediario followed the story closely and in real time at a location where flying saucers were as commonplace as the hyperinflation of the Alfonsín presidency. After two months of skywatching, experts confirmed that the phenomenon was occurring both on the ground and in the sky.

Seeing is Believing

The obsession had been going on for some time. Since October 1985, experts of the FAO were breathing down the phenomenon’s neck. Dozens of reports from southern Rio de la Plata stirred the curiosity of the group – created in 1984 as a non-profit that would multiply throughout the country until it numbered 150 members of all backgrounds: accountants, engineers, enthusiasts, businessmen, parapsychologists, photographers and Tae Kwon Do instructors. They had no radars, pickup trucks, subsidies, research centers or meetings. It was a social network of bare-chested researchers who believed in the UFO phenomenon, or the need to unmask it.

Then came the day. 4 March 1986. They were seven, like the Magnificent Seven: Avelino and Fernando Menghi, Luis Burgos, Ana Piralli, Gabriel Cella, Norberto and Rodolfo Lamberti. Four of them riding in a Chevy and three in a Peugeot 404, heading to the countryside. They hadn’t spoken of anything else for 6 months and wouldn’t rest until they had seen something. The sense of intrigue was overpowering.

“Hey, look, look…it’s coming from over there.” Fernando Mengui was pointing at two objects dancing along the southeastern Rio de la Plata. Everyone stared at the sky for what seemed an eternity.

It was a starry night, and suddenly two lights as bright as planets changed colors from white, to blue, to a reddish hue. They executed an aerial ballet for 45 minutes – nine o’clock to a quarter to ten. They came, went, one above, the other below. It shattered anything conventional, Burgos says, pointing a finger at some clouds in the sky of Atalaya which just yesterday could have been UFOs.

No one spoke. They watched the object zigzagging, and suddenly it was upon them – approaching a little bit more, then more, until it caused them to panic.

“Let’s run, boys! There’ll be someone left alive to tell the story!” shouted Burgos.

Someone else ordered everyone to drop to the ground. Everyone – minus one – dropped face forward on the grass. Avelino remained standing. He rested his elbows on the Peugeot’s hood, activated the flash, selected infinity and pressed the shutter. It caused the giant light hurtling toward them to suddenly go dark, plunging them into absolute darkness.

Two days later, the photo was on the back cover of Diario Popular, and the FAO stepped aside from the case for a few months.

The Sightings by Numbers

Thirty-two landing traces were recorded in Santa Fe in 1968; some fifty seven in Chaco in 1974; seventeen in the town of Jacinto Arauz in La Pampa in 1980; 304 landing traces in the year 2000 at Sierra de los Quinteros in La Rioja, and some twenty in a traffic circle in La Plata, between 10th and 19th streets.

The hot zones do exist and are spread all over Argentina’s geography: from the Pampean plains to the mountains of Córdoba, from the valleys of Cachi to the heart of Buenos Aires province. Places where the phenomenon rears its head and sooner or later becomes a subject of conversation.

Atalaya, The Chosen Site

In the middle of all this data we find El Nido, whose hottest point is found in the premises of Atalaya. There we can find a creek known as El Espinillo, agricultural land and a dirt road leading to the town of Magdalena, founded in 1663 when Governor José Martinez de Salazar ordered the construction of some towers along the river’s edge to serve as lookouts to watch for enemy ships approaching the banks.

This is a place that could be as tourist friendly – if not more so – than Córdoba’s Uritorco, but which remains a forgotten plain in southeastern Rio de la Plata. There are no rest areas, no viewfinders, no lookouts, no hotels, no campgrounds, no magic charms and no gurus. There are no people around. Every so often, an old Falcon or F-100 pickup truck from another time shatters the silence with its engine sound, or perhaps the sound of a horse galloping in the distance, carrying a farmhand to the nearest store.

They have returned to this site some 50 times since 1986. And if they return, it’s because the case was a landmark in Argentinean Ufology, and there are always journalists or new curiosity-seekers who want to hold their ufological baptism with a skywatch at the creek. However, they never again beheld anything like it. “The site must be preserved for further research, keeping it from turning into a tourist or merchandising trap,” observes Luis Burgos, wearing the cap with the FAO logo, the insignia that identifies his group to everyone else.

Avelino – The First Witness

Twenty-six years later, Avelino is sitting in an armchair at his home in Ensenada. He is formally attired. In a few hours he will be nominated for the Fuerte Barragan Award as a renowned personage in the city. There is a book of photos and newspapers on his table that attests – among other things – what the father and son witnessed with their own eyes as photographers and researchers in recent years.

“I saw what I saw, and I will remember it ‘til the minute I die. I base myself on facts. After 4 March 1986, there was no need for me to go see anything else. That’s it. You can go to the countryside every day and maybe you’ll never see anything. I grew up watching the sky and I can assure you it wasn’t natural. Let anyone come to disprove it,” says Avelino Mengui, 85, “and I’ll knock any debunker senseless. I’m not some old scam artist.”

[Translation © 2013, S. Corrales, Institute of Hispanic Ufology. Special thanks to Luis Burgos (FAO) and Guillermo D. Giménez, Planeta UFO]

South America's Procession of the Damned

South America’s Procession of the Damned
By Scott Corrales
(c) 2010

The recent news stories surrounding the “Hopping Phantom of Calchín” led us to remember other similar experiences involving improbable transient creatures that appear in our midst out of nowhere. These apparitions are sometimes bestial, sometimes quite normal, and at others completely otherworldly.

Raul Núñez of the Instituto de Investigacion y Estudios Exobiologicos (IIEE) in Chile has drawn our attention to a case featured on his website (www.iiee.cl). The lengthy report bears the title “¿Qué Pasó en Cutún en 1976?” (What Happened in Cutún in 1976?) and is written by Sergio Alcaya, a systems engineer who has taken it upon himself to re-open the case, which is one of the strangest I’ve heard of, and straddles the “high-strangeness” no-man’s land of UFO, paranormal and parapsychological investigation.

Cutún is a community in northern Chile’s Valle de Elqui, a tourist destination favored by the country’s contactee groups as they endeavor to make contact with the ever-present “kindly space brothers”, a South American Sedona, if you will. But it appears that a particularly virulent poltergeist event also occurred here, one that draws our attention due to the presence of a Man-in-Black with a singular characteristic not reported in other cases.

In February 1976, a man named Nicasio Torres, the protagonist of the story, barged into the home of his neighbors, Angel and Gabriel Orrego to ask for help. The brothers did their best to calm him down and asked him to tell them what was going on. Gasping for breath, Torres told them that absolutely impossible events were taking place inside his modest home: stones were raining on his roof, but out of thin air. Assuring him that a childish prank was probably involved, the Orregos send Torres on his way, only to have him return the next day asking for assistance – the stones were now falling into his house, through the roof. Another person interviewed for the story recalled that whenever Nicasio Torres came looking for help, “all the dogs in the area would start to howl.”

Neighbors who lent their assistance in the case reported seeing doors and windows that wouldn’t close despite their best efforts, showers of rocks and human bones (including bones that came through windows without shattering the glass panes), intense whistling noises within the Torres home that drove every one out, and a rag doll – used as a pin cushion by the lady of the house – that would leap about, chasing Nicasio Torres’s small daughter, and was seen to jump out of one of the open, uncloseable windows.

“Many parapsychologists and mentalists,” writes Alcaya, “tried to find solutions to the phenomena taking place in Cutún, but none of them was truly effective. Neither the crosses made of Palquí, which were destroyed by invisible hands only minutes after having been placed, nor holy water were powerful enough against the phenomenon.” A pair of Argentinean parapsychologists urged the Torres family to place an altar in honor of Our Lady of Andacollo within the house, but on three separate occasions the same angry force toppled the plaster image. “When the parapsychologist learned that the force present within the home was too powerful to face, he decided to leave the area quickly, never to reappear.”

So far we have the makings of a poltergeist account that could sprung from the pages of Hereward Carrington’s Haunted People or a similar text devoted to the more frightening aspects of parapsychological research. The case received considerable media coverage and Alcaya’s interviews include newspaper clippings from 1976 describing the grisly events at Cutún. But there is an aspect that brings the incidents surrounding Nicasio Torres and his family into UFO/paranormal arena: the presence of a Man-in-Black (MIB), and a very different one at that.

Haydé Carvajal, one of the witnesses and a friend of Nicasio’s wife Rosa, had a fascinating story to tell. One evening, both women were startled by the sudden appearance of “a pale, black-haired man of average height, who asked if Nicasio was home.” When told that Mr. Torres was at work, the strange figure said that “he would wait for Nicasio at five minutes before midnight over there,” pointing at the summit of Cerro Cutún, a hundred meters distant from the house. This strange character “had red eyes”.

Gabriel Orrego also remembered the strange figure, telling the interviewer: “I was never so frightened in my life as when I had to face that man. He came around three times looking to Nicasio, always saying the same thing to [Mrs. Torres]: “Tell him I’m waiting for him – he knows where to find me.”

“The conclusion reached by several parapsychologists looking into the case,” recalls Orrego in the interview, was that the MIB represented “an agglomeration of negative forces.” Orrego had the chance to run into the character in broad daylight elsewhere in the community. “I noticed the man’s presence and I went out to challenge him, however, when I came to within four meters of this character, I was able to see that [he was] a pale man wearing a brown blazer, impeccably clean shoes and black hair, passing in front of the gate to my property. I saw him and was paralyzed. To my surprise, this man was floating some 50 centimeters off the ground, and made a sudden, ninety degree turn to look at me fixedly and deeply. For the first time ever, I knew what fear really was, and I broke into a sweat. The man made another ninety-degree turn and continued on his way before vanishing down the road.”

Other people also saw the bizarre apparition. Cab driver Nelson Alcayaga and his wife Ruthy Chelme saw a man “wearing a brown or green three-piece suit” drifting in the air toward them, as they drove along in their car. “The impression we had was that this man was floating toward us only centimeters off the ground, and Nelson hit the brakes, nearly flinging us against the windshield. When we looked again, he was gone.”

This blend of supernatural factors appears to be a constant in cases emerging from South America. On the other side of the Andean Range, Argentina has supernatural beliefs that combine native lore and European ceremonial magic. For those who believe that magic comes in two colors only, “red magic” can be obtained only through blood sacrifices, such as through Santería rituals. Red magic, it is believed, can be an offshoot of black magic if the blood employed in the ritual comes from someone else or through a sacrifice, and can come from white magic if it is one’s own blood. The belief in this third variant of occult lore is widespread, far from sophisticated urban centers like Buenos Aires or Mendoza, and it is a source of fear for the small farmer or landowner. This fear was exacerbated in the summer of 2002 by the high-strangeness events accompanying the wave of cattle mutilations that swept over Argentina and spilled over into neighboring countries.

On the night of June 20, 2002 personnel at the Puente Dique bridge over the Rio Colorado saw an object "giving off a powerful red light" whose intensity waxed and waned as it moved in bursts. Jorge Martinez, an operator at the bridge, added: "some say the lights are connected to the dead animals."

The lights were now appearing elsewhere in the country and causing physical effects in humans and machinery alike. Argentina's TELAM news agency reported that two young girls--Gabriela and Miriam del Valle Salto, ages 7 and 13 respectively, had been hospitalized in Santiago del Estero (northern Argentina) after having witnessed "multicolored lights". Other locals attested having seen potent violet lights in the sky: one woman said that an intense light shone outside the windows to her home while the internal lighting system dimmed. The mysterious lights seen over the town of Fernandez Robles between June 11-14, for example, were able to interrupt television signals, cause TV sets to shut down "without any interruption to power supply" or even change channels on the receivers.

The strange lights gave rise to much paranormal speculation. Residents of La Chiquita in northern Argentina blamed the mutilations on "red magic", an appellation possibly derived from the color of the strange lights that were seen hovering at treetop level over darkened fields. Daniel Acuña, crossing the darkened fields of La Chiquita on his way to work, saw the lights, which prompted him to remark "it was like an evil light, which I was told was those who practice red magic." The luminous presences had been seen prior to the mutilation of a horse (tongue ripped out, anus and eyes missing) in the vicinity--a death which deprived a local widow of her only means of earning a living, since the animal was used to haul coal and firewood for sale. Strange lights in the wilderness had been a factor decades earlier: In August 1968, disturbing luminous forms were reported over Santa Fé, Argentina, in the dark winter nights of the Southern Hemisphere. Farmers setting out on their chores were greeted by the surprising sight of circular burn marks on their properties following these sightings. Livestock losses mounted as a “sort of radiation” in the region was blamed as the cause. During these troubled times (as Argentina was experiencing political unrest as well ) a local family witnessed a jeep carrying four men in black coveralls drive up to their home. One of the men asked the owner what was the best way to get off the property. UFO sightings over the region ceased shortly after the incident involving these jeep-riding MIB.

In cases like the Cutún “poltergeist” – to find a convenient drawer to place it in – research or accident usually provide an answer in the end: the accursed property was built over a burial ground or something similar. But random manifestations of strange and unsavory figures, who remain for a brief period in our midst before disappearing and becoming part of the Fortean menagerie, often lack a provenance. In April 2004, the Argentinean town of Justo Daract was disturbed by a strange entity dubbed El uñudo (the clawed one) by the local media. Newspapers like Diario de la República ran the story of a child who had been attacked by the unknown entity. Multiple witness cases soon emerged, such as the group of young women who encountered the creature – a frightening, black-masked entity with taloned fingers -- as they left their night school classes at 23:00 hours.

Local radio reporter Maura Avila spoke to several local witnesses. "I was informed that there was a great deal of movement in Barrio Norte, near the hospital, and we headed there just as the police arrived. We learned that El uñudo had appeared -- a character who has gained notoriety in Justo Daract because he/it has been appearing for several days now, and has now terrified an 11 year-old on the corner of Liniers and Los Andes [...] Those who claim having seen El uñudo [say] that it doesn't have human form, rather an animal one, adding that it walks on four legs and hops, being capable of very swift movements." Avila added that the locals had discussed the existence of “black magic cults” in the area and feared that El uñudo could have been an entity summoned during the course of some unspeakable ritual – especially as the timing of these manifestations coincided with Easter Week.

As has occurred only recently with the “Hopping Phantom” in 2010, the good people of Justo Daract formed search parties aimed at tracking down El uñudo: aided by the local police and members of the neighborhood watch, found themselves walking along the train tracks in the dark due to a report that claimed the creature had climbed to the very top of the grain silos by the rails. The dangerous climb to the top of these structures revealed nothing of interest.

On 8 April 2004, another young woman returning home at 03:00 on her bicycle reportedly saw the strange character jumping from one rooftop to the next at the 331 Viviendas neighborhood of Justo Daract. Terrified beyond words, the girl pedaled furiously back to the local bus station – ten city blocks away – in order to take the bus home. Drivers and workers at the terminal attested to her distraught condition. Something strange – whether human or not – was scaring the hell out of the locals. Descriptions of El uñudo now ranged from “large and with a mask and horns; small and apelike, black or brown, with a nude upper torso and covered with tattoos; walking upright or on four legs; leaving goat-shaped hoof prints; climbing trees, pipelines or metal silos; jumping over wire fences and large lagoons, swift and elusive,” according to El Diario de la República.

Other sources reported that despite their failure to locate the supernatural intruder at the grain silos, officers had managed to apprehend the creature at some point, but that it eluded capture in a display of inhuman strength and “the slippery nature of its body” – a quality it shared with the Malaysian orang minyak or “oily man” who became a focus of mass hysteria in the 1960s.

Argentina: A Horse Mutilation from 2007

Argentina: A Horse Mutilation From 2007
By Silvia Pérez Simondini - VISION OVNI
Entre Rios, Argentina

In spite of the number of mutilations that we've seen along the length of our country, we have never witnessed what a cattleman who visited the UFO Museum had to show me.


It's a horse -- not just any horse, as it was a wild colt that no one could tame. However, it appears that someone managed to do so.

On October 1, 2007, in the Moscas Sur District, Department of Uruguay, separated from Rosario del Tala by the reiver bearing the same name, Mr. Edgardo Raul Slootman of the San Diego ranch found one of his colts in the manner shown in the photograph that appears above.Regrettably, this photo is not perfectly clear, as the gentleman did not have the negatives and it was only possible to take a photo of the photo. But as it is nevertheless important, I ask that you concentrate on what it shows: on the animal's neck, and toward the bottom, it is possible to see some collar-shaped lines caused by some element that stripped the colt's flesh as it slid threw. These lines end in a sort of fungus that multiplies as it becomes larger. This is something we had never seen before, and it truly concerns us, as the subject of mutilations appears to be changing directions little by little. These events have never ceased to occur since 2002.

According to the tests performed, says Mr. Slootman, [the fungus] is a living matter of unknown origin that reproduces in colonies and is resistant to chlorine. The strangest part of all was the disintegration of edge of the scalpel that came into contact with this matter [INEXPLICATA's italics]

Another interesting detail is that cellphones would shut down whenever their users approached the animal's carcass.

The conclusion is that a liquid slid down the colt's neck. It is totally corrosive and peeled the animal's hide as it did so. This cattleman's horse herd occupies a 90-hectare spread, and four or five mutilated cows were found that same day.

What makes the UFO Museum wonderful is the willingness of the public to bring us their evidence and eyewitness accounts. We are enormously grateful for this, since as occured in this case, we obtain information that was completely unknown in the cattle mutilation phenomenon. Our sincerest thanks to Mr. Slootman for his cooperation.



(Translation (c) 2009, S. Corrales, IHU. Special thanks to Guillermo Gimenez and to Silvia and Andrea Pérez Simondini)

Mystery Animals: Yesterday and Today

Mystery Animals: Yesterday and Today
By Scott Corrales


A curious news item made its way to the Reuters World Service in October 1996: Elements of the Egyptian police had allegedly shot and captured two strange savage animals of a pack that had terrorized the small Egyptian town of Armant, a community in the Nile Valley some three hundred miles south of Cairo, killing three villagers and wounding dozens in a series of nocturnal raids against the population.

The news item went on to say that the bloodthirsty creatures resembled "large hyenas or wild dogs." Known to the locals as salaawwa, the beasts allegdly belong to no known species of canids. Egypt's Ministry of the Interior offered the theory that the animals had been driven northward from the Sudan in search of new hunting grounds. Armed villagers joined the gendarmes in efforts to ensnare the bizarre animals, ultimately managing to wound a specimen as it emerged from the farmland bent on attacking individual homes. Another such creature had been shot dead, and no further information was available on the beasts.

In a world in which new species are added to the roster every year, the news of hyena offshoots attacking humans in the Nile should simply be chalked up to animal reactions resulting from changes in the environment. But the Egyptian news story has a curious ring of familiarity to it.

In the year 774 A.D., during the reign of Emperor Leo IV, called "the Khazar", the Eastern Roman Empire was swept by a plague of quasi-biblical proportions which was followed by the appearance of bizarre carnivorous animals which could be dead-ringers for the one in the Reuters item. A Syriac priest and chronicler of the time, Denys de Tell-Mahre, describes the creatures as having no fear of humans and resembling wolves, but with smaller and narrower muzzles and horse-like ears. "The skin on their dorsal spine resembled the bristles of pigs," adds the medieval chronicler.

Swarms of these strange canids fanned out across Anatolia, devouring dozens of farmers and villagers. The animals fought their human attackers fiercely, unafraid of weapons, brazenly carrying off children out of homes and fields.

Soon, however, we begin to encounter clearly paranormal overtones emerging from this Syriac chronicle: the nameless beasts were able to "abduct children from their beds" and dogs refused to bark at their appearance. Entire herds of cattle were destroyed, and "when one of them attacked a herad of goats, or flock of sheep, it took away several at a time," adds the chronicle.

In a medieval fairy-tale of the same period, a paladin would doubtlessly have appeared to redress the situation, but what happened in real life was far more prosaic: the monstrous creatures simply moved on to a new hunting ground, apparently what is today northern Iraq. No mention of the creatures is made in subsequent Middle Eastern annals.

Paranormal creatures of every shape and size conceivable appear and disappear around the world, causing physical damage and preying on domesticated animals. The same pattern has repeated itself over the centuries well into the twentieth century.

The Moca Vampire -- Deja Vu All Over Again

On Februrary 25, 1975, a Puerto Rican newspaper ran one of the very first headlines concerning the wave of mysterious animal deaths to occur in the vicinity of the small town of Moca, on the island's western side.

The creature, christened "The Moca Vampire" by the press, began its activities in Moca's Barrio Rocha, where it killed a number of animals in a grisly fashion never seen before. Fifteen cows, three goats, two geese and a pig were found dead with strange puncture marks on their hides, indicating that some sharp object --natural or artificial-- had been inserted into the hapless bovines. Autopsy reports invariably showed that not a single drop of blood remained within the animals, as if it had been consumed by some predator. Police officers were adamant about ascribing the deaths to dogs, since they correctly believed that not even the wildest of feral dogs could climb some of the fences surrounding the dead animals' pens.

On March 7, 1975, a cow belonging to Rey Jim‚nez was found dead in Moca's Barrio Cruz, presenting deep, penetrating wounds on its skull and a number of scratches around the wounds on its body. Jim‚nez's cow was added to the growing list of victims, which now totalled well over thirty.

As the number of victims grew exponentially, the Moca Vampire acquired an identity of its own, much in the same way that the Chupacabras would twenty years later. Speculation as to its nature was rife: many believed it was a supernatural "bird", like the one seen by Mar¡a Acevedo, a Moca resident who noticed that a strange animal had landed on her home's zinc rooftop in the middle of the night. According to Acevedo's testimony, the bird pecked at the rusty rooftop and at the windows before taking flight, issuing a terrifying scream.

The UFO phenomenon did not wait excessively long before manifesting itself in the dark skies over Moca: on March 12, 1975, Luis Torres, together with his son and daughter-in-law, witnessed an object which resembled "the lights on a police cruiser" spinning in the night on the outskirts of town. Torres and his family estimated that the object had been engaged in an overflight of the fields in which mutilated animals were being found. A few days later, on March 15, farmer Cecilio Hern ndez notified authorities that the elusive Moca Vampire had slain thirty-four chickens on his property at some point during the night. The supernatural entity was by now responsible for ninety animal deaths in a two week period.

A false moment of hope marked this critical period in the Moca crisis: Luis Torres, the same farmer who had reported seeing a UFO over Moca's outlying regions, became the man of the hour after slaying two enormous snakes (Puerto Rican boas) measuring an unheard-of six-foot length. Torres had captured the creatures as they stood ready to attack a 600-pound heifer. The media hailed this act of heroism as the "solution to the mutilation riddle"; citizens could finally issue a collective sigh of relief.

However, the Moca Vampire had its own agenda. On March 18, 1975, two goats belonging to Hector Vega, a resident of Moca's Barrio Pueblo, were found drained of blood. Puncture marks on the goats' necks were the unmistakable sign that the strange creature causing the deaths was still at large and hungrier than ever: it returned to Vega's farm the following night to finish off ten more goats and wound another seven. The horrified farmer also discovered that ten additional goats had gone missing.

It was this last spree of vampiristic activity that finally prompted official action in the form of a visit from the Senate Agricultural Commission, led by Senator Miguel A. Deynes, Police colonel Samuel L¢pez and a number of functionaries. After talking to the affected parties and to local law enforcement officials, Senator Deynes requested that Astol Toledo, the Superintendent of Police "redouble his efforts in getting to the bottom of the situation," as there was no doubt in his mind that no animal could cause so many deaths. (In yet another curious parallel between the Moca Vampire and the Chupacabras of the nineties, the Superintendent of Police 20 years later would be Pedro Toledo).

Supporters of the "killer snake" theory which had gained adherents in the wake of Luis Torres' exploits had their hopes dashed yet again by Dr. Juan Rivero, a Mayagez-based herpetologist who stated in no uncertain terms that the Puerto Rican boa, a non-poisonous reptile, was physically incapable of killing animals as large as a goat, much less a cow. The herpetologist added that snakes' mouths were not adapted to suck blood.

Felix Badillo could not believe his eyes when, on the morning of March 23, 1975, he found a ten pound piglet dead in it pen. The tiny porker was missing an ear and had a sizeable hole on the side of its head. Badillo was haunted by the fact that such a thing could have happened to one of his animals, since his fierce watchdog had neither barked nor growled during the night and there was no sign of a struggle. The pig farmer was hardly comforted by the expert opinion of Dr. Angel de la Sierra, a specialist with the University of Puerto Rico, who noted that the cut on the piglet's ear stump was similar to certain incisions made in experimental surgery to study deafness.

The Moca Vampire had apparently tired of its diet and was ready for a new treat. At ten o'clock at night on March 25, laborer Juan Mu¤iz was allegedly attacked by a "horrible creature covered in feathers," as he would later describe it. Mu¤iz was returning home to Moca's Barrio Pulido when he saw the unsightly entity. The laborer threw stones at the creature to frighten it away, but only managed to provoke its anger: the creature flew toward him, prompting Mu¤iz to seek shelter behind some bushes before running to a neighbor's house. An armed group of locals sought to find the strange being, but no trace was found.

By April 1975, the "vampire" had transcended the narrow confines of Moca, embarking on an island-wide spree of animal killings. Among its first depredations outside the San Juan metropolitan area was the slaying of a pig on a farm belonging to one Benigno Lozada in Guaynabo, P.R.. Meanwhile, an all-out effort to apprehend the suspected human element behind the mutilations had been set into motion by the police, while on the other hand, the media bent over backward to find a "rational" or "scientific" explanation that would dismiss the strong supernatural air surrounding the unknown predator. When some "odd bats" were discovered in a limestone cave near Moca, hope welled in newsrooms throughout the island. However, it was soon pointed out that the bats were in fact of the ordinary kind, who live on fruit and do not attack animals.

On April 2, the predator paid a visit to a farm owned by Isauro Melgar in Corozal's Barrio Negro. The Moca Vampire killed eight goats and a dozen rabbits on the property. This loss was particularly painful for the small farmer, since the breeding rabbits had been quite valuable.

Fearing that the unknown creature would stage a return on the following evening, Melgar mounted a watch all night, spreading poison on the ground to eliminate whatever it was seemed interested in his bunnies. Joined by a group of armed neighbors, Melgar kept watch until three in the morning. The moment the men disbanded, whatever it was returned with a vengeance to slay more animals. This only strengthened the farmers' determination to remain awake all night, if need be.

At half past midnight on April 5th, Isauro Melgar and his companions were startled by a deafening sound which suddenly blanketed the otherwise silent countryside. Amid the unearthly din, the farmers saw a shadowy figure running swiftly through the trees, away from an open pasture. They would later discover that four more goats had been slain. Stoical despite of his losses, Melgar told the press that "whatever killed my goats was definitely not human. I don't believe in vampires, of course, but I really can't say what kind of creature killed my animals."

Two months into the Moca Vampire scare, official declarations began appearing in the media and in government communiqu‚s. Dr. Benedicto Negr¢n, a veterinarian for the Puerto Rico Department of Agriculture, noted that "the situation was a concern" to his agency, expressing a fear that the uncanny events might unleash hysteria among the population. In an April 9th editorial, the now-defunct El Mundo ran an editorial requesting greater leadership from the government in solving the bizarre mutilations.

As was the case during the Chupacabras events in 1995, it would take more than an exhortation from the media to prompt official action, so the killing spree continued. A variety of ducks, chickens and other poultry were drained of blood at locations as disparate as Aguadilla (on the island's western shore) and Guaynabo (a suburb of San Juan). Heavy UFO activity was reported over the metropolitan suburbs of Santa Rosa and Cerro Gordo, while a massive cigar-shaped UFO, emitting strong yellow lights through rectangular portholes, hovered some 1500 feet over a family home in the suburb of Cupey, giving the homeowners and their neighbors a leisurely, 45 minute-long look. Researchers found scorched vegetation the following morning, presumably at the location where the unknown vehicle had made a furtive landing.

On May 13, 1975, Jos‚ Santos, of Corozal's Palo Blanco sector, reportedly encountered a round-headed, hairy-tailed and large-eyed creature which issued growls similar to those made by a small dog. Santos believed that whatever the small creature was, it was definitely not native to the island. Back in Moca, however, three roosters, a rabbit and five goats belonging to the municipal treasurer met untimely ends at the hands (fangs?) of an unknown intruder.

UFO activity had increased to a record high during May 1975, paralleling the rise in animal mutilations. A group of three objects, two of them resembling stars, flew over Fajardo, P.R. with impunity. Among the witnesses were an astronomer and a Ph.D in psychology, who were absolutely positive in classifying the objects as neither natural nor of human manufacture.

At nine thirty p.m. on May 17th, a UFO flew low over a home in Park Gardens, Rio Piedras. Three women who had been engaged in conversation on the front porch were startled to see a large ball of powerful yellow light engage in a series of complex maneuvers overhead. Simultaneous sightings were taking place elswhere over San Juan: three witnesses were surprised to see a house-sized luminous craft spinning in the night skies over a historic landmark -- Fort San Crist¢bal -- in the city's old section. An object surmounted by a red light flew in front of an apartment building facing the Condado Lagoon. According to the professional couple who witnessed its maneuvers, the object turned its light off as it flew by, remaining a dark mass against the sky.

The Moca Vampire's activity persisted well into the summer: On June 25th, it killed 25 farm animals outside of Isabela, P.R.. Fourteen fighting cocks were later exanguinated by the same predator, this time in Yauco, P.R.. As the summer wore on, the "vampire", its appetite seemingly sated, diminished its activity before vanishing altogether in August 1975.

UFO researcher and journalist John Keel, in his landmark book The Eighth Tower (Dutton, 1975), makes several observations which can be applied to the paranormal events which occured in the Caribbean during the '70s and which would repeat themselves years later. One of the reasons for the apparent imperviousness of these so-called monsters to bladed weapons or bullets (the reader will recall the number of Bigfoot cases in the U.S. in which high-power rifles apparently have no effect on these entities) is due to the fact that they are composed of "highly condensed atoms" such as those in plutonium.

Keel goes on to theorize that if dense, probably radioactive, atoms account for these creature's composition, it would explain why these manifestations have such brief existences in our material world. When first materialized, Keel suggests, these creatures pose no threat to humans, but as their atomic integrity deteriorates, they might easily project lethal radiation. Investigators following the trail of the Chupacabras in 1995, both in Puerto Rico and Central America, reportedly found considerably high radiation readings at the locations in which the entity staged its attacks.

Across the Mona Passage

Another puzzling streak of animal mutilations occurred in the Dominican Republic -- separated from Puerto Rico by the narrow body of water known as the Mona Passage -- three years after the Moca Vampire entered into legend. The killings took place on the Dominican Republic's border with Haiti, near the sugar-producing region on the Bay of Ocoa, between late 1977 and early 1978. The grisly events were almost a replay of the Puerto Rican scenario: mutilations, accompanied by strange lights and bizarre creatures, tormented the cane-cutters of the town of Barahona, who claimed that a "gigantic dog" was slaying and eating domestic animals in the dead of the night. This monstrous canine possessed above average intelligence, being apparently able to enter locked pens and cages to extract the last drop of blood from its victims, which consisted largely of cats, hens and rabbits. Dominican officials scorned any extraterrestrial or paranormal suggestions, stating that the mutilations were merely "a joke in the poorest of taste" perpetrated by the poor inhabitants of this agricultural area. The fact that the locals could ill afford sacrificing their animals for the sake of a prank was deemed irrelevant.

The Dominican newspaper El Caribe reported in its December 18, 1978 issue that a strange animal with canine characteristics was devouring chickens, roosters, rabbits and other domestic animals: "According to the locals' beliefs, the baca or dundun (Voodoo entities) of some local merchant is responsible for the carnage. They say that it might also be an "evil spirit" sent by a rural warlock, or a witch who broke her covenant with the Dark Powers and is roaming through the night."

A ghostly entity was in fact reported in the wake of the Barahona mutilations. Eyewitnesses to its activities described it as having the body of a long-haired woman clad in black, but with her mouth, eyes and nose appeared to be covered "by something resembling cotton" (ectoplasm?).

The mutilations were closely followed by a number of "occupant" sightings as the flap reached its peak: Cone-shaped beings were seen in November 1978 by five women in Santo Domingo, the island-nation's capital. Three creatures,twice the height of the tallest human, carrying lanterns on their abdomens, descended a steep hillside to surround an automobile that braked to a screeching halt. The automobile's headlights died as the witnesses heard sounds which they assumed were blows being inflicted upon the vehicle by the conical trio. Their terrified screams attracted the attention of neighbors, who came to their aid. Not a trace was found of the bizarre creatures, nor of the automobile they had apparently surrounded.

Wings over Miami

The city of Miami is generally associated with events of a worldlier nature. After all, we hardly need to be reminded of "Miami Vice" and its attendant fashion statements. But even the Sunshine State's largest city has not been immune to paranormal events involving strange creatures.

One such event took place on January 9, 1976: Sergio Cervera and his teenage daughter Mercedes had been driving along Miami's 9th Street at two o'clock in the afternoon when a shadow fell over their car. Thinking at first that it was merely another cloud, Cervera suddenly became aware that the shadow had a distinctly bird-like configuration, measuring between 16 and 20 feet across. Experiencing a moment of confusion, he turned to his daughter and asked her if she had noticed anything unusual. Mercedes, rather frightened, said that she'd noticed the ghostly form of an enormous bird flying over their vehicle, and even heard the beating of its unearthly wings.

Neither Cervera nor his daughter ever saw the phenomenon again, but the former was suddenly reminded of a series of strange experiences he had undergone earlier that same week: he had been followed everywhere he went by a strange-looking man dressed in black, whom he at first thought to be a priest but without the white clerical collar. The mysterious MIB kept his distance, and quit following him precisely the day before the phantom bird incident.

Conclusions

In many respects, apparitions of unknown predatory creatures appear to follow a sort of pattern which defies our understanding. As exemplified by the enigmatic hyena-like beasts seen in Egypt, it appears to be a slightly modified replay of events which can be traced as far back as medieval times. The points of contact between the Moca Vampire and the Chupacabras are too numerous to mention, but foremost among them are the unknown predator's dietary habits and the almost identical response to it by officialdom and the press. Not only were there curious coincidences (such as the similarity of surnames among the police superintendents), but the very cyclical nature of the mutilations appeared to repeat itself twenty years later.

Both in the 1970s and 1990s, the phenomenon transcended the island of Puerto Rico to manifest itself in other countries (although descriptions of the entity, always contradictory, varied from one nation to the other) before extinguishing itself altogether. Does it then follow that in as the vernal equinox of 2015 rolls around, we will be treated to another "bout" of strange bloodsucking mutilators?