High Strangeness: Not So Imaginary Beings?

High Strangeness: Not So Imaginary Beings?
By Scott Corrales © 2014

Some readers may look back with a certain fondness upon their youthful pastimes, such as the role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons, which allowed players to imagine an existence in a sword-and-sorcery setting under the controlling eye of a “dungeon master”, fighting all manner of impossible creatures in a hunt for treasure, weapons and spell books. Armed only with pencil, paper, dice of assorted geometries and a lead figurine marking the player’s position on the hexagonal chart paper of the dungeon, tens of thousands of teens and young adults shared in the common experience. Most important of all was the list of recommended reading that appeared in the introductory game modules, which served to introduce players to a number of written works – not just Tolkien and R.E. Howard, but older works such as Amadís de Gaula (the late medieval “book of chivalry”) and most importantly, The Book of Imaginary Beings by Jorge Luis Borges.

Inspired by the bestiaries of old, Borges – one of the leading authors of the 20th century – included creatures from different cultures and times, including fictitious beasts such as a reptile imagined by C.S. Lewis for Perelandra (second volume of his “Space Trilogy”). This illustrated collection of fanciful creatures included some with powerful roots in historic tradition, such as the Golem.

“The cabbalists,” wrote Borges, “sought the secret of the creation of organic beings in the sacred texts. It was said demons could create large and solid creatures like the camel, but not fine and delicate ones, and Rabbi Eliezer denied them the ability to create anything smaller in size than a grain of barley. Golem was the name given to the man created by a combination of letters. The word literally means amorphous or inert matter.” He then goes on to cite Austrian writer Gustav Meyrink, author of Der Golem (1915): “The origin of the story goes back to the 17th century. According to lost Kabbalistic formulas, a rabbi created an artificial man – called the Golem – to ring the bells of the synagogue and engage in hard labor. He was not a man like others, and was motivated by a shallow and vegetative life. He endured until night, and owed his virtue to the power of a magical text place behind its teeth, attracting the free energies of the universe. One evening, before prayer, the rabbi forgot to remove the seal from the Golem’s mouth and the creature fell into a frenzied state, running down the darkened alleys, smashing all those who stood before it. The rabbi ultimately managed to tackle it and shatter the seal that animated it. The creature fell to the ground, leaving nothing more than the squalid clay figure that is still visible today in the Prague synagogue.”

Was the great Argentinean writer, poet, translator and critic aware of certain facts that led him to include this figure among the denizens of his Book of Imaginary Beings?

Guillermo Barrantes and Victor Coviello, authors of Buenos Aires es Leyenda, include in their compendium of the urban folklore of the Argentinean capital the strange story of the Gigante de Once (the Once Giant), a three-meter (9.8 ft.) tall entity reported by the residents of the city’s Balvanera district. The towering presence, however, was seen as a guardian angel of sorts, keeping a watchful eye on every street and alleyway. Local residents interviewed for the project agreed that there was a belief in a gentle giant as tall as a tree, walking in slow motion, fighting crime much like a superhero. A student from the Colegio San José is reported as saying: “One of my classmates says his uncle was saved by a three meter tall giant. He crashed his car, and the giant pulled him out before the vehicle exploded.”

Mystified, Barrantes and Coviello conducted an exhaustive search of documentary sources in the hopes of establishing a provenance to this legend. A report from 1930 mentioned the presence of a “giant figure removing debris” after the destruction of a confectionary shop during urban violence. Another source mentioned the arrival of a rabbi in Buenos Aires in the year 1900, either with his own Golem or the ability to create one. The whereabouts of this creation, after the rabbi’s passing, are also the subject of controversy: “According to some documents, it is said that the rabbi locked the monster in a room that cannot be entered. Some believe this room to be located in an annex of the Hospital Francés in the Caballito district. The hospital was built without this enclosure having ever been touched.”

A 1916 text by one Mascimiano Funes (a fascinating name, bearing in mind that “Funes the Memorious” is one of J.L. Borges’s better known short stories) advises: “There is an alleyway that cannot be seen, except from a balcony no one can reach, and this hidden alleyway is the dwelling place of He-Who-Was-Not-Born-of-a-Mother, the forsaken giant, who wanders aimlessly in that place, waiting, waiting…”

Leaving no stone unturned, the authors of Buenos Aires es Leyenda came across another compelling lead. In the early 1890s, Maria Salomé Loredo, a healer and seeress, had turned her home in the Balvanera district into a temple where she could receive her thousands of followers. Some suggest that there was a connection between the healer and the enigmatic rabbi with the Golem, the latter having shared Kabbalistic secrets with her that represented the wellspring of her curative abilities. The creature remained in her care after the rabbi’s passing, and was seen for the last time at María Loredo’s funeral in 1928, when a tall, slow-walking man was seen to make his way to her coffin, place a hand on it, and mutter a few words. “Some stories identify the mysterious visitor with the Golem itself, which had come to say farewell to his last mistress before walking away along the streets of Once, destined to wander them for eternity.”

Vampires: Fact, Fiction and Hearsay

The traditional image of the vampire – castle, expensive attire, medals and casket – is not readily associated with the Spanish-speaking Americas, although it figured prominently in a number of horror movie productions, usually involving Bram Stoker’s Count Dracula or his descendants having made the journey across the Atlantic for unspecified reasons that are not important to the plot.

Mexico, perhaps, can boast of having seminal cultures that turned vampires into gods – among the most fearsome in any pantheon of the Americas. The Mayan god Camatzotz (“death bat”) was a terrifying entity sent down from the sky to behead the second race of men, created out of wood, since their condition did not allow them to venerate their deities. Worship of this bat-god spread throughout Mesoamerica, leading some to suggest that the giant vampire bat (Desmodus draculae) of the Pleistocene may have survived into historic times, prompting humans to consider it a deity to be feared and appeased. The goddesses collectively known as Cihuateteo also had vampiric qualities, wandering the night and attacking children, having themselves died in childbirth.
But not all such entities can be consigned to the safety of myth and legend.

A story has been making the rounds of the Mexican paranormal world for many years now. Efforts at finding its putative source (a radio broadcast from the early 2000s) have been fruitless, so it should be classified as hearsay or the ultimate FOAFtale. Nonetheless, it is sufficiently compelling to include in this essay on high strangeness and improbable entities.

A nurse phoned a Mexican radio call-in show to describe – with considerable trepidation – an incident that allegedly occurred in 1977 at a very specific location: The Hospital Civil de Guadalajara’s specialized medicine unit. While workmen took their sledgehammers to a wall as part of a remodeling project, they were shocked beyond belief to see the old masonry crumble to dust, only to reveal the body of a woman immured since the colonial period of Mexican history, judging by her heavy and costly garments.

Legends about “emparedados” (a word currently for sandwiches, but employed in the 16th century for the cruel practice of burying victims behind walls, literally walling them in while alive) are common in the chronicles of Viceregal-age Mexico. In such stories an old wall crumbles by design or accident to reveal the skeleton of a family member punished for disgracing the family or a number of other reasons. It has also proven a popular fictional device in classic works of literature such as The Cask of Amontillado by Edgar Allan Poe. The difference in this case is that the immured woman was apparently alive.

Stretching the limits of credulity to their most threadbare, the nurse said the woman’s body was free of any corruption, perfectly preserved in a glass case. The laborers and their foreman were shocked beyond belief, as were physicians and nurses who flocked to see the phenomenon – but their amazement and even cries of “¡milagro!” (a miracle) that may have briefly filled the air were stifled by the fact that an adorned wooden cross had been driven into the woman’s heart.

No specifics are given, but the physicians must have opened the glass case and actually touched the body, as the nurse added that the immured woman’s eyelids were raised for inspection and she had “intense blue eyes.”

Rather than contacting the authorities – continued the nurse – the hospital staff called in clerics, believing that the woman was a vampiresa. Church authorities reported to the hospital, workers placed the body into a wooden casket and “wrapped the body in tinfoil” (probably Mylar) and took it away. Medical students and doctors alike were enjoined not to discuss the matter, threatened with the loss of their professional credentials. The nurse waited twenty years before speaking publicly, closing her astonishing tale by saying “the incorrupt body had been sent to the Vatican under Papal instructions.”

The only other bit of tangible information was that Dr. Mario Rivas Souza of SEMEFO (Servicio Médico Forense, the Mexican medical examiners’ unit) had been a party to the mind-bending event, having been the senior administrator who dealt with the four clergymen sent to handle the situation. A search reveals that Dr. Rivas was in fact affiliated with that clinical branch at the time of the alleged event, but had not practiced medicine at the hospital since the 1960s. Further sleuthing suggests that the event – if there is any truth to it – would have occurred not in the gleaming tower of the Hospital Civil de Gualajara but in the “Hospital Civil Viejo Fray Antonio Alcalde” – the single story building on Coronel Calderón street, whose construction began in the year 1788 and completed in 1794, adding another solid detail to the incredible story.

Nor is this the only sample of vampire lore coming out of Guadalajara: the narrative of the vampire buried under a tree in the city’s Panteón de Belén cemetery is widely known and has acquired international standing.

For a more tangible Latin American vampire story we must go to Perú, where the citizens of Pisco are split between veneration and fear over a tomb in the city’s old Beneficiencia Pública cemetery. It houses the remains of Sarah Ellen, a migrant to South America who died over a hundred and fifty years ago. The place housing her mortal remains became notorious when it was among the few structures in the cemetery not levelled by a 7.9 earthquake in 2007.

Sarah Ellen was described as beautiful and infatuated with ritual magic. According to the inscription on her tombstone, she was born in Blackburn, England in 1872 and died in 1913. There are several contradictory versions of the story, but the likeliest one posits that she died while her seafaring husband – one J. Roberts – was in Perú on business. On her deathbed, Sarah cursed the neighbors who accused her of being a witch, saying she would come back from the afterlife in eighty years to exact revenge. Not taking any chances, her body was shipped to her husband in Pisco, where it was buried. Another less gothic account states Sarah was the wife of a sea captain; she took ill when his ship pulled into the port of Pisco, died and was buried. Among the remedies she consumed to treat an unspecified malady was a red liquid -- interpreted by some as a regular dose of blood.

Fact and fancy, thus intertwined, nested in the minds of the residents of the Peruvian city, passed along through generations until the year 1993, the predicted year of her resurrection. Crowds gathered in fear and excitement, wondering if the alleged vampire would come to life, and the authorities found it prudent to post extra security just in case. It was rumored that the slab covering the tomb had made a creaking sound, but the vampires did not emerge. This, too, was attributed to the fact that pilgrims and shamans had periodically come to pray at her tomb, in hopes of keeping the prophecy from coming to pass.

We shall end this section on a somewhat lighthearted note.

Cuban folklorist Gerardo Chavez’s Imaginario Popular: Mitología Cubana, a scholarly work, deals with the urban folklore of Havana and the legends that surround that city. One of them involved a 19th century grande dame who would have been considered a vampire by many, driven around the cobblestoned streets of Havana in a dark carriage, resembling a horse-drawn hearse, dressed in black. Described as a “pale and haggard woman who appeared to be on the verge of death”, her slim, veiled figure nonetheless projected an aura of unearthly mystery that men found alluring. The accoutrements of her colonial mansion were more proper to a funeral home.

Gerardo Chavez writes: “In this coffin-shaped bed she practiced the oldest trade in the world with the greatest discretion and skill for the high-ranking gentlemen of Havana. It is said that she was found well and truly dead one morning in her, apparently strangled by a client while playing at being lifeless, and was formally declared deceased.”

A 16th Century Poltergeist?

Anyone with a passing interest in the paranormal will remember “Gef the Talking Mongoose” – one of the strangest cases on record – involving an entity in the Isle of Man that held long conversations with the members of a household between 1931 and 1937. Around this same period of time, the Spanish city of Zaragoza was enthralled by its own “duende” (imp or goblin) that spoke to a family from the depths of a kitchen stove in 1934, becoming well known to readers of the local press and even overseas, as the London Times also carried stories of the unusual poltergeist.

A similar entity filled the chronicles of the Spanish settlers of the city of Valladolid in the year 1560, a scant thirty-five years after the destruction of the Aztec Empire.

Pedro Sánchez de Aguilar had been born five years before the first manifestations of the paranormal phenomenon. His grandfather had been among the first Spanish settlers in the Yucatan Peninsula and his siblings were “encomenderos” (land grant holders). As the youngest brother and landless, Pedro became a priest, rising to become a curate, the dean of the Mérida Cathedral, and hold other important posts. His writings on Mayan language and customs are still read today, but these are hardly as compelling as the story of the Duende de Valladolid, which appeared in Informe contra los adoradores de ídolos del obispado de Yucatán. (Barcelona: Linkgua 2007).

“The talking demon or goblin,” he writes, “would converse with anyone willing to do so between eight and ten o’clock at night, with all the candles out and in pitch darkness. The goblin spoke in the manner of a parrot, answering all questions posed by a noble Conquistador, Juan López de Mena, and yet another, Martín Ruiz de Arce. This goblin would speak and converse at these homes more than others, where he was asked to play the vihuela (a plucked string instrument), and it did so with great skill. It enjoyed doing this and laughed, but was not seen, nor did it allow itself to be seen.”



These displays of an amiable nature, however, were deceitful. “One cannot believe a demon,” cautioned Sanchez de Aguilar, “as they are the fathers of lies, untruths and seeders of discord. At times it would speak poorly of certain damsels, saying of one she had been mistreated by her stepfather. When asked who he was, he said he was a Christian, native of Old Castille, and would pray the Our Father and other prayers.”

Traditional poltergeist behavior was also part of its stock in trade, such as casting stones against walls and windows without causing any damage, and making noise on rooftops. A local cleric, writes the chronicler, tried to exorcise the spirit by visiting one of the homes where it normally made its presence felt. To this end, he concealed the preparations for the banishing ritual under his cloak, but the goblin did not materialize. After the priest departed, the entity laughed in the darkness and told those who remained: “The priest would like to seize me, but he will not. A surprise awaits him on his supper table.”

Apports – articles that appear or are transferred out of nowhere, produced by unseen entities – are common to poltergeist phenomena and were no exception here: when the priest returned home, he found plates of food on his table covered “with excrement from his mule” and the flagon of drink “filled with old mule piss.”

Artemio del Valle Arizpe, who included his own version of the story in his Obras Completas (Mexico: Libreros Mexicanos Unidos, 1959), describes the worsening of conditions following the incident with the priest. “The entire world lost the quiet enjoyment of its peace. The entire population was at a loss, and no saint in heaven would aid them. The goblin’s terrors and pranks became increasingly worse, sharpening his tongue against persons of good reputation.”

Sánchez de Aguilar’s original confirms this. “The Bishop, hearing of the lies of this goblin and the abuse directed at some, commanded that none should speak to [the entity] or make reply. Obeying these instructions, people ceased to address it, and this demon or goblin took to weeping and railing against the Bishop, making sharper noises and louder reports, astounding people and causing them to lose sleep. He then took to setting fires [unexplained fires being commonplace in poltergeist activity] to houses, which were largely made of straw and palm fronds. So the people asked the priest to find them a patron saint by drawing lots, promising to celebrate his feast with a procession to a convent.”

Picking up the story centuries later, Valle Arizpe writes that the chosen saint was Saint Clement, and that a carver of holy images “carved a statue of Saint Clement holding in his hand a chain to which a hideous demon was fastened, its mouth muzzled, covered in gold leaf.” The townspeople, however, failed in their promise to join the procession, and the priest took the statue to the convent alone.

“This goblin fell silent for over thirty or forty years,” writes Sánchez de Aguilar, “until the year 1596, when I was a priest in that town…it set fires to the huts of the poor Indians, and I was summed by devout Indians to conjure it and banish it from their village [Yalcoba], where it would enter at noon or one o’clock without fail in a whirlwind, kicking up a dust with a noise of storm and stone.”

Religious ceremonies seemed to offer only temporary relief against the entity, which ceased its activity in Yalcoba only to return to Valladolid, continuing its fire-starting activity. The Spanish settlers, notes the chronicler, believed that the cause was to be found in the native sorcerers and enchanters that filled the area. “This is a veracious and well-grounded belief,” he says, “as I myself kept a prisoner from the town of Tecoc, a great idolater, enchanter who would seize a viper or rattlesnake with certain gentle words to invoke the prince of darkness. I wrote them down out of curiosity, and they are not worthy of pen or paper.”

Argentina: A Goblin at the Cemetery?

Source: Planeta UFO and INFOBAE de Buenos Aires
Date: 03.09.08

Argentina: A Goblin at the Cemetery?

[Readers of Inexplicata over the years will remember the reports of strange imps, goblins or other diminutive creatures which, according to experts and some clergymen, appear to be more frequent in the days leading up to Holy Week--Ed.]

A group of teenagers allegedly recorded the apparition when they were chatting at a streetcorner in the early hours of the morning. Sigthing causes fear among local residents

"We were chatting about our latest fishing expedition. The time was 1:00 a.m. I began fillming them with my cellphone while they clowned around. Suddently, I heard as if someone were tossing pebbles at us. I looked to one side and noticed that the bushes were moving," recalls Jose, thinking back to the strange evening.

"I thought it was a dog, but when I saw that imp-shaped figure appear, I became very frightened. I recorded it for a little while, then we all took off runing," said the youth, who managed to capture the incident on his cellphone.

The strange event occurred in General Guemes, Salta Province. A group of youths had gathered at one of the last blocks of the San Isidro neighborhood, next to the local graveyard. Their animated exchange was interrupted by a strange sound. When they looked toward the bushes, the noticed that a strange figure was moving away with short hops, according to the El Tribuno newspaper.

"This is no joke. We are still afraid to walk past the place, just like the neighbors. One of my friends was so frigthened we had to take him to the hospital," stressed Jose.

(Translation (c) 2008. S. Corrales, IHU. Special thanks to Guillermo Gimenez)

Argentina: Ranchers Capture “Fanged, Hairy Humanoid”

Source: El Tribuno (Salta, Argentina)
Date: Friday, August 6, 2010

Ranchers Capture “Fanged, Hairy Humanoid”

The legend of the Ucumar Zupai is reborn in a wilderness near El Creston, some 40 kilometers west of San Jose de Metan.

Farm owner and nephew had gone out to round up the cows when the strange specimen appeared.

Two ranchers in the vicinity of Cerro El Creston, some 40 kilometers west of San Jose de Metan, hunted down a strange creature of humanoid appearance, but with unusually large and sharp incisors.

The similarity between this specimen and local tales of the mythic “Ucumar” – the manlike figure covered in short black hair – has renewed the debate in Salta over the existence of the local “yeti”.

The presence of a creature having such characteristics has been news for decades in the forested areas to the south of the province, particularly in Rosario de la Frontera, where eyewitness accounts have been collected.

Photographs of the remains of the specimen gunned down in the cloud forest of Cerro El Creston were taken by Martin, a resident of Metan who did not wish to give his name, at the property belonging to the ranchers who shot it.

The photo – taken with a cell phone – clearly shows a hominid specimen with long fangs and protruding eyes.

The Story

The ranchers are an older man, 79, whose initials are J.S. and the other is his nephew, E.S. Both requested anonymity to ward off curiosity seekers.

Almost shyly, Martin told El Tribuno about his experience with the strange being during a visit to his friends the ranchers. “That Saturday I arrived and they told me what had occurred during the morning. I entered the home and there it was, hanging from its feet, its hands tied to one side and extending down to the floor.”

Unhurriedly, he continued his story: “I asked him what it was, and they couldn’t answer. They only said that in the dark of night, they thought it might have been a puma or a goblin, because they only saw its enormous green eyes shining by light of the flashlights.”

According to the young man, J.S. and E.S. had gone out on the evening of 23 July to round up cattle, as they were planning to brand the livestock on the following day.

Amid the darkness, they heard a nearly deafening sound on the edge of one of the hills surrounding their property. They cast light upon the source of the noise with the flashlight, and found themselves staring at two enormous green eyes that nearly froze their hearts. “They told me they thought it was a goblin, and to scare it away, they fired a shot. They were unlucky enough to hit it in the head.”

Apparently, the bullet entered through the lower left side of the jaw, exiting through the upper right eyebrow ridge. Due to this impact, the alleged “Ucumar” collapsed instantly. “The dogs that were with us, accustomed to finding wild pigs, ran toward the carcass, and when my friends chased them, they came across that thing.”

The two gauchos carried the remains back to their ranch to analyze it at length. The next day, with sunlight, there was no doubt about it: they had shot an Ucumar, although to confirm this, it would be necessary to go into deeper study. For the time being, all we have are speculations and suspicions.

What can indeed be confirmed is that the veterinary specialists consulted by El Tribuno state that the specimen “hunted” by accident is not native to the region.

Carcass Hurled Down a Canyon

Martin continued to relate his experiences with the ranchers of Cerro El Crestón. He noted that “On Saturday morning, J.S. asked us to cut off his head and throw the body far away, as he did not wish to be the victim of any revenge.”

The revenge that Martin referred to is that the being they had found was allegedly a “cub” of an Ucumar, which could take reprisals against him for having shot and killed its young.

The state that it was a “cub” due to the diameter of the specimen’s skull, which measured some 15 centimeters. They calculate the creature’s height at some 60 to 70 centimeters.

“Overall, the people who live in these parts believe greatly in these things: goblins, the Ucumar...matter of fact, I must admit I felt afraid. At one point I thought about bringing the body to Metán, but I got scared,” said the fellow who spoke with El Tribuno.

Martin explained that “we cut off its head, which remained at the ranch. But we wrapped up the body in several bags and threw it down a canyon.”

J.S. the owner of the ranch where the strange events transpired, lives alone in the area. His nearest neighbor is 15 kilometers away. The man is visited by his nephews every so often.

“It Had Fingers and Toes”

The witness who got to hold the body of the hunted hominid explained that “it was covered in short black hair all over its body, except for the face. It was impressive to see the size of its incisor.” He added that the manlike figure had fingers and toes.

“The truth is that it was a one of a kind experience. I had never seen anything like it. When we go to the ranch at Cerro El Creston, we find hairs stuck to the tree trunks, as though “it” was scratching itself against them. There are many animals in the area, but none with fur resembling that of the creature they hunted,” Martin explained.

“I Never Saw Anything Like It”

Marcelo Choque, a forensic veterinarian for the Provincial Police under the Environmental Division of the service, was startled to see the photographs of the strange specimen’s skull, shot by a rancher in the heights of Cerro El Creston in Metán. “I never saw anything like it. It’s clearly an anthropomorphic figure, but I can’t tell you the species. And I could much less explain the exaggerated size of its incisors, which give it a monstrous appearance.”

The expert paused to think for a moment and continued. “There are no anthropoids in the are where they shot it. And the ones belonging to our fauna do not possess in any way the humanoid characteristics showing in the photo. If it is a monkey of some sort, it would be a rarity, an unclassified species or a genetic aberration. I’m stunned and I think it would be necessary to travel with a team of experts to the area where the skull is kept in order to conduct an analysis of the remains.”

(Translation (c) 2010 S. Corrales, IHU. Special thanks to Mercedes Casas)

Colombia: The Paranormal Stories of Armero

 Source: INFOBAE

Date: November 23, 2025

An article by Johan Manuel Largo

Paranormal stories of Armero: tales that cross the boundary between tragedy and the inexplicable

Years after the avalanche, stories of goblins, witches, and benevolent presences circulate among those who dare to explore the old town, adding new layers of mystery.

In the early hours of November 13, 1985, Armero, Tolima, was buried under tons of mud from the Nevado del Ruiz volcano. The avalanche wiped this prosperous town off the map, claiming between 23,000 and 25,000 lives and forever transforming Colombia's collective memory.

Four decades later, the silence of its ruins is not absolute; supernatural tales continue to circulate among visitors and former residents, fueling the mystery that envelops Armero. These are some of the accounts reported and documented by Howard Gutiérrez of *Conexión Enigma*.

The Scarecrow

One afternoon, a family decided to tour the ruins of Armero, including the famous grave of Omaira, the cemetery, and the destroyed hospital. Despite warnings to remain respectful, the children began to play: one of them picked up bones in the cemetery and threw them at his cousin; later, he put on a necklace taken from one of the graves and, laughing, ran off down the hillside.

Shortly after, the boy began screaming for help, saying something was chasing him. Panic mounted when the cousin vanished before everyone's eyes. Only the witness's son insisted that a man dressed as a scarecrow had snatched him. Guided by the screams only the boy claimed to hear, they found their cousin in a state of shock—his eyes rolled back and his body rigid—beneath a tree.

As they tried to free him, they discovered a strange necklace that was difficult to remove; while they struggled to break it, the guttural cry of a bird echoed overhead. They finally managed to break the necklace amidst prayers, and the boy eventually recovered, insisting that something—to him, a witch—had tried to take him away. Since then, his family has dreaded memories of Armero, convinced that something inhuman haunts its paths.

The Goblin

A story dating back to the 1970s in the old town of Armero recounts the experience of three children playing near the cemetery. While squabbling over a swing, they spotted a tiny doll moving at high speed and darting into a hollow beneath a log. Driven by curiosity and playfulness, they tried to flush it out by throwing stones and poking it with a stick, but the doll responded by grabbing the stick with supernatural strength.

At that moment, the figure began to grow, transforming into the silhouette of a wrinkled old man with a white beard and strange clothing. Fear paralyzed them until a terrifying scream sent them running. The terror left them with a ringing in their ears that lasted for three days. Years later, the mother of one of the boys identified the figure as an evil goblin—similar to those seen in movies—insisting that the vision had been real and that they never forgot it.

The Doctor

Not all supernatural experiences in Armero are tinged with horror. A woman struggling with suspected witchcraft and a complicated pregnancy visited the site where Pope John Paul II had prayed for the victims of the tragedy. During her visit, she claims, she was surrounded by luminous energies and saw a man dressed in white who looked like a doctor but had wings made of light.

The being spoke to her, assuring her that she was healed and that, in the afterlife, anyone can become an angel if they live in harmony with God. Her mother and brother also witnessed the lights, and a sense of relief washed over them. Later, they learned that the woman who had been harming them had fallen into misfortune that very same day. For this family, the episode was a revelation that benevolent forces also inhabit Armero: “There are not only evil spirits but also the souls of people who help and watch over others.”

On the farm

In the rural areas of Tolima, another story unfolds. A man recounts how, on a dark night—after an argument regarding the care of a pregnant relative—he was pedaling back to the farm on a broken-down bicycle. Suddenly, a man dressed in black and wearing a hat appeared beside a tree and asked for a light. As he lit the man’s tobacco, sparks briefly illuminated the stranger's face, yet he could not recognize him.

After the brief encounter, a gust of icy wind made him shudder; he felt that the man was not of this world. Driven by terror, he raced back to the farm in one go, despite his damaged bicycle. Upon arrival, he could barely speak, as if an invisible force had taken away his voice. His alarmed cousin managed to calm him down. That night, fear kept them from sleeping. The question lingered in the air: who—or what—had crossed his path in the heart of rural Tolima?

The girl

The strange nature of Armero also affects unsuspecting travelers. A family from Antioquia was making their way up the Nevado del Ruiz when, without veering off course, the landscape turned inhospitable: the signal was lost, the camera malfunctioned, and an overwhelming sense of dread gripped them as they advanced through terrain increasingly ravaged by sulfur. Upon returning, they realized they had lost several hours and ended up at a nearby hostel, where the owners informed them that the path they had taken was the one leading to the old town of Armero.

That night, neither wanted to go back near the area; they only returned to the mountain the following day, dismissing the incident as a mere anecdote. Yet, the unease never truly left them: the sensation of lost time, disorientation, and fear remains vivid in their memories. Some attribute it to fate and the volcano’s environment, while others point to something beyond explanation.

Amidst the ruins and the mist, Armero lives on in the memories and voices of those who traverse its territory—a place where pain, faith, and mystery intertwine. Whether there is truth to these stories is for each visitor to decide for themselves upon stepping onto the soil where the past still whispers and the supernatural seems but a step away from reality.

[With thanks to INFOBAE and Johan Manuel Largo]

Video: Argentinean "Goblin" at the INFOBAE website

Argentinean "Goblin" video at the INFOBAE website

http://www.infobae.com/contenidos/368460-1100795-0-Un-duende-asusta-cementerio-salteño.

Scott Corrales
Inexplicata

Reflections on March 2008

March 2008 ends with a bang and not a whimper (J.B.S. Haldane?) at least in terms involving UFO and the paranormal in general. Argentina, basking in the warmth of the southern hemisphere's summer season, has boasted some of the most intriguing UFO photographs taken in recent memory...images that have been praised for their quality by some and derided as mere "BlurFOs" by others. The Argentinean "flap", to use that hallowed word from the early years of ufology, shows no signs of abating, with more cases and photos being added even as the country drifts into a stormy fall season that has been characterized by unprecedented winds and tornado activity. March also brought us the controversial footage of the "goblin", which caused a stir worldwide. UFO activity over Mexico, witnessed by professionals in the aviation field, remains as steady as ever, and new information continues to emerge on the bizarre CE-2 that occured at the beginning of this year. This is probably the first time that I've been moved to write some kind of wrap-up to mark the end of a month on the INEXPLICATA blog, but such constant activity had been unheard of since the days of the Argentinean cattle mutilation wave of 2002. I'd like to offer my sincerest thanks to all the members of the Institute of Hispanic Ufology for their hard wordk and dedication, and our friends and readers around the world for their support and unwavering interest as we "make our way through the dark mountain pass that leads to the following month" -- a shameless paraphrasing of a line by P.J. O'Rourke that I've been dying to use for years!
-- Scott Corrales, INEXPLICATA

Forteana: A Witch in Mexico's Bosque de Heno?

Forteana: A Witch in Mexico's Bosque de Heno?

Prof. Ana Luisa Cid has posted a video interview with Daniela Flores, a tour guide who takes visitors on nocturnal excursions of the forest known as Bosque de Heno in Huasca de Ocampo, state of Hidalgo. During one of these jaunts, she saw a fireball on one of the treetops and managed to photograph it. These lights are known as "brujas" (witches) and are commonly seen in forests and hilltops. The anthropologist Oscar Lewis - in his landmark study of urban poverty in Mexico, Los Hijos de Sánchez - mentions the effect that these "brujas" had on pilgrims to the holy site at Chalco, as the objects bobbed from one hilltop to the next.

"The photo was taken in Bosque de Heno and is approximately 15 days old," Ms. Flores tells Cid. "I stayed behind with the group, and then we saw that a fireball was over the trees. Then I took a photo, and that thing came out." She adds: "I was rather skeptical, until I got to see certain things. One of them was the fireball." She goes on to recommend a visit to the forest to undertake "la caminata de los duendes" (the Goblin Walk) for possible sightings of fairy folk. Prof. Cid inserts a blurry photo into her video showing what appears to be a traditional gnome sitting cross-legged.

Video: https://youtu.be/a-ihDOzPots

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.

Ships and Saucers: UFOs at Sea

Ships and Saucers: UFOs at Sea
By Scott Corrales

The waters of the Western Mediterranean, while not as mystery-prone as the legendary Atlantic, have nonetheless been a source of enigmas. In the 1960s, Spanish ufologist Antonio Ribera posited the existence of a “triangle” (it was, after all, the age of the Bermuda Triangle, the Devil’s Triangle, and other anomalous marine geometry) between Mount Canigó in Spain, the Balearic Islands, and North Africa, with the Sea of Alborán – the body of water between Spain and Morocco – being the main scenario for these events. While disappearances of surface vessels and aircraft were few, it made a name for itself in the UFO chronicles of the time.

It is precisely these deep waters that concern us here.

Thirty-three years ago, in the month of February, 1979, a merchant vessel named the Tamames, carrying a load of butane, left the port city of Alcudia on Majorca, the largest of the Balearic Islands, heading to the city of Cartagena in Southern Spain. The butane hauler belonged to CEPSA, a major player in the Mediterranean bunker fuel business. The ship’s captain, Jose Luis González, was a no-nonsense mariner who was very mindful of the delivery timetables, running a relatively tight ship.

The butane hauler’s humdrum routine would be forever interrupted on Tuesday, February 6 of that year – unlike horror yarns or sea stores, no sudden gales appeared out of nowhere, no rogue waves smashed against the ship. At 21:00 hours, only few leagues distant from the island of Formentera, the duty officer approached the captain to say that an unknown vessel was visible to the south of the ship, on a westward heading. The duty officer, however, was unable to see the proper number of running lights on the vessel. Other bridge personnel soon noticed that the object had two lights, suggesting a normal vessel, possibly another merchantman. Their satisfaction at having unraveled a minor mystery soon gave way to alarm as the number of lights on the horizon began to multiply, becoming four, then six, then ten.

Captain González asked for his binoculars and noticed, to his astonishment, that the sky immediately over the lights had turned orange; the lights now arranged themselves into unusual patterns – side by side at times, vertical at others, and finally a horizontal layout. Of particular note was a light that seemed to be producing the kind of smoke associated with a flare. His officers agreed that it was probably a vessel in distress and the Tamames changed course to render assistance. The radar operator, however, noted that he was unable to pick up any objects on the horizon, even thought the coastlines of Majorca, Formentera and the Spanish mainland were crisply outlined. The radio man observed that the stricken ship – if that’s what it was – did not issue any calls for help.

The Tamames assistance mission found itself brought to an abrupt halt when the lights suddenly vanished from sight, along with the odd orange luminescence. Captain González ordered a new course change back to Cartagena, upset, no doubt, at the delay caused by his earlier decision. But the radar – this time witnessed by all present – began displaying highly unusual signals that remained constant until nearly midnight. Bizarre radar echoes plagued the ship, suggesting they were approaching something. The echoes vanished a few miles away from the vessel and reappeared from all directions.

The thoroughly unusual situation prompted the captain to radio other ships in the area to find out if they were encountering a similar anomaly; a lighthouse station near Cartagena replied that no naval maneuvers had been scheduled for the area. The radar echoes kept appearing and disappearing, leaping around the butane hauler like invisible acrobats. The situation was insensibly changing from annoying to disturbing.

At 0300 hours, Captain González contacted the lighthouse authorities again, requesting confirmation that no military maneuvers were indeed being carried out, and describing the conditions experienced by the Tamames. Astonishingly – and possibly a “first” in maritime history – the watch officer at the lighthouse wondered openly if Captain González might be seeing a UFO. Given the strangeness of the situation he found himself in, the captain suggested that any explanation would do at this point. In all his years at sea, he had never faced a similar predicament. The lighthouse officer explained that only a few days later, a foreign ship had reported the presence of a UFO not far from the Tamames’ present coordinates.

In spite of the unusual and frank exchange, the captain never truly believed that his ship was at the mercy of intergalactic pirates and restricted his entry in the ship’s log to the strange lights and bizarre radar echoes.

Things would become “curiouser and curiouser” in coming days, when an official explanation for the anomaly was put forth: the crew of the Tamames had seen students from a military school conducting nocturnal parachute drops carrying flares in their hands. Captain González was far from convinced by the explanation: these alleged maneuvers had taken place seventy five miles away from his ship’s position, and inland, to boot.

In southern Spain, UFO researcher and author Jose Manuel García Bautista has looked into the possibility that an "extraterrestrial submarine base", for want of a better name, may exist in the water of the Sea of Alborán. Sightings in these water go back at least thirty years: in 1974, passengers aboard the ferry Virgen del Africa were witnesses to a strange artifact that emerged from the water, remained suspended in mid-air for a minute, and then plunged into the sea once more. On August 20, 1976, three irregular-sized lights would to the same thing: emerge from the water, plunge into it again, and then re-emerge. This event was witnessed by a group of vacationers.

"I was able to ascertain," writes García Bautista in an unpublished paper, "the manner in which these waters are been customarily a place for intense UFO sightings. This location meets a series of highly attractive characteristics: the location between two continents; the presence of foreign bases such as Gibraltar, Rota and Morón, where experimental spy-plane prototypes have been tested; a number of electric generating facilities ranging from simple reservoirs to nuclear power stations; significant mining installations near Rio Tinto." Factors which could be taken into account, suggests García, if an aliens were to locate a base or lookout point anywhere in the Mediterranean.

Garcia's theory has been substantiated in recent years: In August 1999, four youngsters rented a pedal boat in the sea town of Chipiona near Cádiz and went quite far from the shore, plunging into the water and keeping the pedal boat nearby. While Diego Moreno, Elena Delgado, Rafael Dominguez and Paula Gomez frolicked in the warm Mediterranean water, they suddenly became aware of a huge, bright light underneath them. Paddling furiously toward the precarious safety of the pedal boat, the now terror-stricken vacationers noticed how "a thing" of considerable size moved around beneath them. According to the witnesses, the light was neither the reflection of the sun nor a diver using an underwater light source. To make matters worse, the object appeared to sport with the frightened onlookers, spinning around their pedal boat and threatening to overturn it. The experience with the unknown came to an end when a lifeguard motor launch sped toward them, advising them to return to the beach line.

A second experiences took place the same month, this time in the town La Jara, not far from Chipiona. Amparo and José Hidalgo, two young beachcombers enjoying the sunset, were startled when a strange luminous sphere descended slowly into the water as it changed colors. Once underwater, the witnesses saw the object follow a trajectory leading it to deeper waters, "to some hidden point under the waters near Cádiz", as García Bautista suggests.

That same month, other unidentified objects were seen along the Cádiz littoral and were reported to both the Spanish Navy and Red Cross.

There are times when the unidentified objects don’t take great pains to conceal themselves, such as the July 1970 case involving a young scuba diver engaged in underwater fishing in the waters off Alcocebre (Castellón de la Plana, Spain) at one o’clock in the afternoon. Some 70 meters from the beach, and at a depth of 8 meters, the diver was surprised to find a stubby cylindrical object, seven meters long by three meters wide. It had no rivets or seams, and shone like brushed steel in the sunlight hitting the seabed. Bravely, the diver pulled out his knife and attempted to score the perfect surface without effect, and the object gave no signs of having magnetic properties, either. Bracing himself against a rock, the diver tried to exert pressure against the object, hoping to make it move. His efforts in vain, the diver returned to his normal pursuits before leaving the water altogether.

At three in the morning, the diver – this time with his girlfriend – was aboard a small rowboat in the same vicinity, watching the stars. The young woman told him that she had seen “something shoot out of the water” skyward, but he himself was unable to see anything. Upon returning to the site where the cylinder had rested on the sea floor, he noticed it was no longer there.

Long-time readers of INEXPLICATA may remember a similar case that took place nineteen years later and thousands of miles away. In July 1989, Inocencio Cataquet, an expert skin-diver from northwestern Puerto Rico, was on a fishing venture in the late afternoon when he saw a huge object moving underwater, estimating its size at two hundred feet in diameter. Fearlessly, the diver reached for his equipment and plunged into the water, managing to touch the object. The object in the waters off Puerto Rico was not metallic, but rather porous and filled with small holes. The driver was driven away by the fact that the water began to heat up around the object; subsequently he would see it moving away at high speed underwater, eventually breaking the surface and heading skyward as a "tiny little point of light."



Under Grim Waters

Ever since Charles Fort began saving newspaper clippings on odd news stories in shoe boxes, the belief that strange objects--some of them luminous, others completely opaque, some amorphous, others having decidedly geometrical shapes--move freely under the waters of the world's oceans. This line of thought has been translated into a number of books and documentaries in many languages, sometimes associated with "unusual" areas of the seas known by their colorful and often incorrect names.

"UFO bases", locations where putative alien spacecraft can constitute one of the pillars of belief in the ETH (extraterrestrial hypothesis); the possibility that many of these bases could be located undersea has been approached by many authors, most notably Ivan T. Sanderson in his book Invisible Residents (NY: Avon, 1970). During World War II, Sanderson saw so many strange objects in the high seas that the Admiralty asked him to please refrain from reporting them.

In this classic work, Sanderson divides USO's into several types--historical USOs, objects which are seen entering and leaving the sea, objects which appear to move exclusively within "hydrospace" (a term coined by author Martin Caidin) and the disappearances of vessels and their crews.

One of the most significant cases reported by Sanderson is the oft-repeated incident involving a U.S. carrier group involved in the "Springboard" military exercises in the waters off Puerto Rico in March 1963. The Cuban Missile Crisis had occurred only a few months earlier and the Cold War between the superpowers was at its peak, so the need to prepare for a future "battle of the Atlantic" was paramount. At least four submarines equipped with the latest electronics of the time formed part of the exercises (including the SSN-585 Skipjack); in the skies overhead, Grumman S-2 antisubmarine aircraft practiced shadowing and detecting the "enemy".

But something unusual occurred: one of the subs broke away from the exercise to pursue what it considered to be "an unknown object." The fleet was unsure if the object was a decoy meant to form part of the exercise or not, but there was clearly something strange about it--the alleged decoy was moving at the unheard-of speed of 150 knots an hour. At the time, the maximum velocity for a submersible stood at 45 knots.
Communications were hindered by the fact that each of the warships was trying to advise the command ship--the carrier Wasp (CVN-18)--of the strange event. Thirteen captains would enter the incident in their ships' logs.

Sanderson notes that the technicians aboard the vessels informed COMLANT that the object not only traveled at the aforementioned speed but that it was also propelled by a single screw. Was this the real-life counterpart of Jules Verne's Nautilus?

The intruder made its presence felt for four long days, plunging to tremendous depths (27,000 feet); despite the Navy's best efforts in ascertaining its identity, the strange object vanished after 96 hours and was never seen again...

A year after the Puerto Rico incident, Flying Saucer Review would make the "UFOs of Golfo Nuevo" known to the world. In February 1960, the Argentinean Navy had spent two frustrating weeks in an effort to sink or surface a pair of "Soviet submarines" which constantly eluded its surface warships thanks to their dizzying speed. The FSR article would declare emphatically that "it is absolutely true that there is a flying saucer base in the depths of Golfo San Matías (separated from Golfo Nuevo by the narrow Valdés Peninsula). These events are a matter of common knowledge throughout a wide region of Patagonia, where it is normal to hear people making reference to Martians."


War of the Submersibles

In the late 1990's, a "disclosure" effort having nothing to do with UFOs came about: the U.S. Navy allowed a number of seamen and scientists who had been in the service to speak publicly of their experiences and participation in some of the most sensitive missions carried out during the Cold War against the USSR. Most prominent among these books are Blind Man's Bluff by Sherry Sontag and Christopher Drew, and The Secret War by scientist and naval engineer John P. Craven.

Blind Man's Bluff discloses the fact that many submarines participated in operations worthy of a James Bond script, such as the mission to intercept Soviet Navy communications from Siberia's Sea of Ohthosk by placing an enormous "spy buoy" over an underwater cable. Also revealed were the mysterious "impacts" suffered by these vessels of the deep as they ran into each other or surface vessels--events which had frequently been associated with USO activity.

In 1969, the USS Gato collided against a Soviet sub in the Barents Sea shortly before the superpowers sat down to negotiate a disarmament treaty; in 1970, two submersibles collided in the Mediterranean without the Department of the Navy ever informing the White House about the event. But in late June 1970, the USS Tautog penetrated the Soviet radar network at the Kamchatka Peninsula, traveling under the vessels of the Soviet Pacific Fleet at the shallow depth of seventy feet. The submarine's mission consisted in analyzing any pulses which may represent missile launches and if at all possible, capture them on film.

Another high-priority goal, according to Sontag and Drew's book, consisted in shadowing an "Echo II" Soviet sub, which did not take long to accomplish. But given the fact that submarines are virtually blind under water--seeing the world through their sonar arrays--the Tautog's captain didn't know that upon giving the command to surface, the object of his mission lay directly above him...

Six thousand tons of U.S sub slammed into the "Echo II", whose propellers sliced into the Tautog's skin without breaching the hull: a tribute to the high quality of the Navy's HY-80 alloy, according to the authors.

The paranormal press of the time mentions collisions between unknown objects and ships in the high seas. "The trawler Star of Toronto," writes John Keel in the Fall 1974 issue of Saga UFO Report, "was mangled when it smashed into "a surfacing submarine off the coast of Scotland on Feb. 3, 1965. Another trawler, the Silveroe, ran into an unknown object that could have been a submarine along Sweden's Baltic coast in November 1969 [...] If we simply discard the saucer-type stories and concentrate on the mystery airplanes and mystery submarines we find that there is considerable evidence indicating that someone is operating a clandestine air force and navy on this planet, and that they have been doing so for many decades."

It is nonetheless possible that a considerable number of unidentified submarine objects could be experimental devices belonging to the fleets of the world's Great Powers -- something that does not seem so surprising when we think that the first turbine-powered vessel caused consternation among the 19th century British Navy and was considered "a secret weapon" belonging to another country. Whether the world's government's aware, and if any measures been taken, are matters of speculation. We can only hope that the lyrics to the Led Zeppelin song "Carouselambra" do not amount to prophecy: "And powerless the fabled sat/too smug to lift a hand/Toward the foe that threatened from the deep..."


The Paranormal on Ice

Tempering the rational alternative to the USO phenomenon there is another theory that sets aside the extraterrestrial hypothesis to embrace the paranormal.

In 1984, the late F.W. Holiday mentioned that it was still possible to come across cases of "sirenism"--the sea madness which afflicted sailors in certain latitudes, causing them to react like the crewmen accompanying the legendary Odysseus--in certain parts of the world, specifically in the cold waters of the North Sea and the Arctic Ocean. Holiday refers interested readers to the work of Rev. Donald Omand, who performed an exorcism of Loch Ness in 1978 which banished allegedly malevolent creature from its waters (curiously, a 2003 news story specified that a British warlock was employing sorcery to cause the Loch Ness Monster to reappear).

Holiday believed that sea serpents and related creatures were related to the mythical and malevolent creatures of the Celtic and Scandinavian tradition, which were often placed at the entrances of ancient Scottish and Irish churches and collectively known as "the dragon." The lakes in these two regions are plagued by these astral visions, according to the author, and had been reported to exist in bodies of water as small as ponds.

Reverend Omand, whose reputation as an exorcist in the Church of England stretched as far back as the 1940's, received a curious request from a Norwegian sea captain: would he consider performing an exorcism of a certain point of the Arctic Ocean? Captain Jan Andersen of the vessel Nordlys claimed to have knowledge of a point in the sea at which "men lost their minds." This paranormal black hole or vortex was located in the waters off Spitzbergen, almost facing the great arctic ice barrier.

In his childhood, Omand had heard his grandfather--a stern Calvinist minister--say prayers against "the seduction of the great depths" to protect sailors and those who worked at sea, and took and interest in the case.

"Please exorcise this part of the sea," pleaded the Norwegian mariner in his letter, "but do not ask me to return to it until the exorcism has been performed. When you reach the place, offer spiritual protection to all who are with you and to the ship as well."

Hiring a vessel to reach the Arctic was very nearly impossible, so it would be necessary to join one of the tour ships that visited Spitzbergen every summer so that passengers could enjoy the midnight sun. It was thus that Reverend Omand sailed with Captain Pedersen -- a friend of Captain Andersen -- to the great ice barrier.

After visiting Spitzbergen, the liner made for the coordinates indicated by Captain Andersen and Omand performed the rite of exorcism, praying the old Mozarabic rite and scattering holy water through an open porthole. He subsequently blessed the ship's deck and the forward and aft deckhouses.

But something unexpected occurred: Reverend Omand had forgotten to protect himself during the ritual. "I was overcome by a sensation I had never experienced before and I pray to God I never feel again," wrote Omand in his book The Man Who Exorcised the Bermuda Triangle (Barnes & Co, 1978). "I hadn't thought that there was a person of Nordic origin aboard who had not received protection against the sea-madness. That person was me. All of my life I have loved the sea and things related to it, but at this moment I felt that the depths were calling me. Almost sobbing, I headed for the door leading to the lower deck. I suddenly heard a clear and powerful voice that caused me to stop: It is not the sea who calls you, but the Father of Lies himself. It was the voice of my grandfather, who died when I was twenty years old."

The reverend returned to the table and sprinkled holy water over his face. The trance was broken.

Omand would subsequently return to Norway to exorcise the Fjord of the Trolls, known as the most sinister body of water in Scandinavia (employed by the British during World War II to supply the Norwegian resistance movement). In the prologue to F.W. Holiday's The Goblin Universe, Colin Wilson recounts Omand's entry into the fjord aboard a small motor boat, feeling the sinister atmosphere turning menacing. Suddenly, the waters boiled and two enormous humps were seen to break the surface, suggesting the existence of a sea monster far greater than the one at Loch Ness. The reverend feared that the enormous beast would capsize the boat, but the pilot told him that "those things" never harmed humans, despite being evil. Although, he cautioned, they could ruin men's characters.

In 1972, Omand attended a conference in Sweden where a distinguished psychiatrist read a paper on the Lake Storsjon monster. The scholar's conclusion was that said beings have a negative effect upon human beings --- on both those who hunt them as well as those who see them with regularly, resulting in domestic tragedy and moral degeneration. It was from that moment onward that Reverend Omand conjectured that all of the creatures seen in the ocean and seen described as strange objects or sea monsters were not solid entities, but projections of the prehistoric past to our own era, and possibly related to the Biblical Serpent....

A Embarrassment of Theories

Regardless of the theory that is most palatable to the reader, the fact remains that the cold waters of our world are the lair of objects or entities which can not only elude the best monitoring systems known to our military establishments, but can also damage vessels. Could this be proof, as John Keel believed, that there are private armies and navies in our oceans that nothing to do with the governments we know, much like Captain Nemo's fictional submarine?

The more practical and rational-minded among us will agree with Colonel LeBlanc and his theories of foreign submarines belonging to countries that covet his country's untapped natural wealth, and will believe that the mysterious forms seen under the sea are nothing but American, French, British or Russian warships playing out the "great game" of international politics.

Perhaps others will be more inclined to share the explanation put forth by the late Reverend Omand: "The answer to these extraordinary apparitions, in my view, does not lie within the realm of science but in the world of the supernatural..."