In January of 2009, a research team from Open Minds paid a visit to photographer Arturo Robles Gil at his home in Mexico City, Mexico. Robles had been documenting mysterious objects in the sky with some frequency, and Open Minds hoped to capture closer, higher quality photos of these UFOs above Mexico City. The team and I arrived at Robles’s home at approximately 8:00 AM to get an early start scanning the skies.

Extreme air pollution in Mexico City builds as the day progresses, so sky viewing is best done in the early morning. Robles observes many mysterious objects in the sky from the vantage point of his building’s rooftop. After evaluating the location, the Open Minds team set up a camera with the hope of photographing one of these sky creatures. This high-powered camera kit included a Nikon D3x (Nikon’s flagship 24.5 megapixel digital SLR camera) and a Sigma ultra-telephoto zoom lens (APO 200-500mm F2.8/400-1000mm F5.6 EX DG), the largest high speed zoom lens available. At the time of this trip, this premiere lens was one of only two existing in the United States.

The sphere above Mexico City (credit: Jason McClellan/Open Minds)

Once I had successfully spotted the sky object in the camera, I focused the lens, and I began snapping photos. I had trouble remaining focused on the task of capturing as many images as possible because I was so amazed at what I was observing on the camera’s 3-inch super-density LCD monitor. My initial thought was, “This might be a weather balloon,” but after only a couple of seconds, I was convinced otherwise. Even though the object was nearly 20,000 feet away, I could clearly see it on the screen, and the object reminded me of a creature I have seen many times before—not in the sky, but in the sea. I can best describe the characteristics and movements of the object as jellyfish-like. The object was semi-see through, and it billowed and undulated as it moved. I believed I was watching a living creature, not a balloon or a rigid mechanical craft.

The UFO and its fiery tail (credit: Jason McClellan/Open Minds)

Less than two minutes later, the creature slowly disappeared from sight. The once-translucent object became completely transparent and vanished. I remember trembling as a result of both adrenaline and disbelief at what I had just seen.

To this day, I can only describe—but cannot fully explain—what I observed in the sky above Mexico City.

View other UFO videos.

Illustration based off of witness testimony by Michael Schratt.

August 28, 1954 – Oklahoma City: Hundreds of people witnessed a fleet of saucers which first flew in a V-formation, then changed smoothly into a semi-circle, and doubled their speed. The formation was also seen and tracked by ground based radar at Tinker AFB. Source – NICAP

Las Cruces, New Mexico, 1949

Illustration based off of witness testimony by Michael Schratt.

Professor Clyde Tombaugh

August 20, 1949 – Las Cruces NM: Professor Clyde Tombaugh (famous astronomer and discoverer of the planet Pluto) reported six to eight “rectangular” or “window-like” objects flying over his home. The objects appeared yellow/green in color. In an official statement, Professor Tombaugh declared: “I doubt that the phenomenon was any terrestrial reflection, because… nothing of the kind has ever appeared before or since… I was so unprepared for such a strange sight that I was really petrified with astonishment.” The sighting was never explained in official USAF/ATIC files. Source: NICAP

Corsica, Pennsylvania, 1959

Illustration based off of witness testimony by Michael Schratt.

March 26, 1959 – Corsica PA. The owners of a farm were startled to see a dark red colored 20 foot long “flying barrel” descend and land beyond nearby trees without a sound. Source: NICAP

The fireball UFO photographed by Tudor (credit: Brandon Tudor / Beacon-News)

Tudor took to the Internet to see if anyone else had seen the UFO. He also made several phone calls. He even looked for answers on the website AboveTopSecret.com, but he is still on the quest to discover the identity of the UFO.

While other witnesses have yet to come forward, the object was also witnessed by Tudor’s daughter, who pointed to the sky and said, “I told you aliens existed.”

I wrote a complete report on my trip, which I titled “Costa Rica UFO Dossier,” for the popular Japanese newsstand magazine Borderland, where I was writing a monthly column back in the mid-90s. The original text—obviously written in English and then translated to Japanese—has never been published in English, so I am presenting it here as a two-part series with additional images and some minor adjustments. The cases are not new but they are highly interesting and little known (with the exception of the Cote Lake photo which was even used for the cover of the French COMETA Report) outside of Costa Rica. Here then is the first part of my 1996 Borderland Costa Rica UFO Dossier.

Cote Lake UFO

Cote Lake UFO Photo enlargement. Click the image to see the entire frame of the negative. (image credit: National Geographic Institute of Coast Rica)

On the morning of September 4, 1971, an aircraft of the Costa Rican Geographic Institute was photographing the Arenal region for making maps. The crew of four didn’t recall anything unusual, but then the camera was set to take pictures automatically every 20 seconds or so. It was a special R-M-K 15/23 camera with b/w film ASA 80, with an 8×8 negative printed on Kodak Safety aerial film, type 3665.

One shot taken at 10,000 feet altitude, frame 300, showed mountains around Cote Lake in Guanacaste Province, 25 miles south of Nicaragua. A disc-like object appeared clearly on the lower half of the lake. The photo is considered unique and of great scientific value. Drs. Richard Haines and Jacques Vallee listed a number of reasons why in their first study of Cote, published in the Journal of Scientific Exploration in 1989:

“(1) it was taken by a high-quality professional camera;

(2) the camera was looking down, which implies a maximum distance, hence a maximum size for the object;

(3) the disc was seen against a reasonably uniform dark background of a body of water; and

(4) the image was large, in focus and provided significant detail.”

Cote Lake (image credit: Antonio Huneeus)

Map showing the larger, Arenal Lake and the smaller Cote Lake above. (image credit: Eco-Lodge)

Dr. Richard Haines (left) and Antonio Huneeus at Cote Lake. (image credit: Antonio Huneeus)

Antonio Huneeus and Dr. Richard Haines exploring Cote Lake by boat. (image credit: Antonio Huneeus)

Apparently, the disc was not noticed until 1979, when the Geographic Institute contacted professional photographer and ufologist Ricardo Vilchez, who sent copies of the photo to various international experts. The case is still being analyzed over three decades later. I had the opportunity of visiting Cote Lake last April with the Vilchez brothers, Edgar Picado, and retired NASA scientist Dr. Haines, who published with Vallee two papers on the photo. Knowing the lake’s dimensions and the aircraft altitude, Haines and Vallee calculated the “maximum dimension of the disc” if it was on the surface: “The 4.2 mm length of the image is equivalent to an object 210 m [meters] in length or 683 feet,” they wrote.

A senior Lockheed analyst raised the objection that the disc may be “a pressure mark” on the film, which was disproven when the Geographic Institute loaned the original negative for further analysis. “The image was smooth as glass so it set to rest that argument,” said Dr. Haines. As we visited Costa Rica to attend a UFO Conference in San José, we learned that recent sightings had occurred around the Cote and Arenal lakes. We first stopped at the Eco-Lodge Hotel, located on a hill from where you can see both lakes from different sides.

Don Jose Flaqué, one of the owners and hotel manager, told us he had at least two UFO sightings in the past 5 years. Three weeks before our arrival, Flaqué and several employees and hotel guests had seen around 8 or 9 p.m. a bright light right over a nearby mountain. “It was an intense light like a spotlight which illuminated the mountain underneath,” said Flaqué, “the night was clear and the sighting lasted some 10 minutes, after which the object flew to one cloud and disappeared.”

Dr. Haines with Don Jose Flaqué. (image credit: Antonio Huneeus)

We also interviewed two other witnesses from the Eco-Lodge staff: chef Leonardo Cabezas and receptionist Alan Venegas, who confirmed the late March 1996 incident. Cabezas mentioned another sighting by a guard and a maid a few days later: “Something emerged from the mountain, flew to Arenal and hovered over a waste dump; it later moved to Arenal Lake and, according to a local farmer, entered the lake.” Cabezas heard the story from the guard, but he didn’t see a UFO that night. We then located a boatman in Cote (also an Eco-Lodge employee) who had seen a very high, isolated and unusual wave in the middle of the lake. Dr. Haines found this detail very interesting, noting that a geological fault crosses it. The fact that UFOs are still been reported in this area 40 years after the Geographical Institute photograph confirms that this indeed is a Central American UFO hot spot.

Eco-Lodge employees point at the spot where they saw the UFO, along with a sketch of what they saw. (image credit: Antonio Huneeus)

Profile of Vilchez Brothers

Twin brothers Carlos and Ricardo Vilchez Navamuel are Costa Rica’s first and foremost ufologists. Beginning in 1976 as a hobby, the Vilchez brothers soon formed the Costa Rican Institute of Scientific and Exobiological Investigations. They have documented 140 UFO cases in 20 years (that was when I met them back in 1996, surely much more by now).

Carlos (left) and Ricardo Vilchez at their office in San Jose. (image credit: Antonio Huneeus)

Vilchez UFO book cover

In 1976, they began their investigation of contactee Enrique Castillo Rincón, which continues to this day; in 1979, they located the famous Cote Lake UFO photo; in 1980, they documented the wave involving many police cars. “It was a crucial year for me,” said Ricardo Vilchez, “since we had the opportunity of investigating 32 cases with 70 witnesses in four months!” In 1985, they sponsored an International Congress which gathered in San Jose not only top ufologists like Jacques Vallee, John Keel and the Spanish J.J. Benítez, but also consciousness researchers like Dr. John Lilly and Dr. Andrija Puharich. In 1993, they began to study a multiple-abduction case with so-called gray humanoids involving four generations of women in a humble family. In 1995, it was one of the best Central American radar-visual pilot cases.

Throughout it all, the Vilchez have kept ufology as a parallel activity to their own professional and business careers. “This allows us more objectivity when doing the analysis of a case,” said Carlos Vilchez, who sells real estate and is interested in educational projects with children. Carlos published a book about investment in Costa Rica, as well as a small UFO book. Ricardo is a professional photographer who owns a successful studio and has published several touristic photo books, and a political philosophy study titled Conscious Democracy.

Stone Spheres

Costa Rica stone spheres. (image credit: Antonio Huneeus)

Costa Rica’s most enduring archaeological mystery are the stone spheres found in the southern Pacific area of the Diquis Delta, near Panama. Perfectly round and smooth, they range in size from tennis balls to spheres with a 2.4-meter diameter and 16-ton weight. Most are made of granite and some of limestone.

The stones were discovered in the 1930s as the thick jungles of the Diquis Delta were cleared for banana plantations. No written record from the Spanish conquest mentions them. Unfortunately, hundreds of stones were taken from their original sites for display in the gardens of public buildings and residential houses in San José, where they can be seen today. Thus, a complete study of the stones’ original alignments (many were found in clusters of up to 45 forming circles or triangles) is no longer possible.

Many theories have been proposed linking the spheres to ETs, Atlantis, etc. Archaeologist Ifigenia Quintanilla of the Costa Rican National Museum, whom we met during our visit, discounts such theories. She said the stones were made by the local indians with known tools and materials. Their purpose is still mysterious, but it was probably linked to religious/astronomical rituals and as status symbols.

Antonio with the stone spheres. (image credit: Antonio Huneeus)

The complete analysis of the Cote Lake UFO photo by Drs. Haines and Vallee published in the Journal of Scientific Exploration can be downloaded here and here. Edgar Picado’s UFO blog in Spanish can be located here.

More information on recent UFO sightings can be found in this recent article from Inside Costa Rica, you can find it here.

Read part II of Costa Rica UFO Dossier

Illustration of UFO described by witness by Michael Schratt

Virginia Beach VA. November 6, 1976 – Mrs. Barbara Nielsen spotted a bell shaped UFO which hovered approximately two feet off the ground in her backyard. The craft had a light on top that blinked on and off slowly from red to white. It had rectangular windows near the bottom which emitted a phosphorescent light. The object rotated in a counter-clockwise direction, while it tipped up along its vertical axis. The UFO measured five feet high, and five feet wide. The primary eyewitness noticed a faint humming sound emanating from the craft. The bottom of the object was comprised of multiple yellow colored lights. There were black symbols running across the center section (similar to the “newsflash” text seen in Times Square).     Source – Wendelle Stevens collection

Illustration of UFO described by witness by Michael Schratt

Gulf Breeze, Florida, 1987

Illustration of UFO described by witness by Michael Schratt

November 11, 1987 Gulf Breeze Florida – At dusk, Ed Walters (successful businessman) observed a glow in the southwest sky from inside his home. Going outside to investigate further, he saw a very unusual object which prompted him to quickly return inside to pick up his Polaroid camera. Mr. Walters snapped four photos of the object, and then ran out of film. As he took each photo, he dropped them on the driveway. Returning inside to obtain more film, he was able to get an additional photograph of the UFO as it approached his position.  Then, Ed went into the street and was about to take another shot, when he was shocked to find himself frozen in a blue beam of light. He was immobilized for approximately ten seconds, and reported the following effects: his eyebrows would not move, he could not expand his chest, felt like he was going to die, he could barely breathe. Next, he felt himself being lifted off the road within the blue beam of light, and was dropped from an altitude of approximately three feet. Eventually Ed’s wife drove up in her van, and helped him pick up the photos off the driveway. She immediately noted that he smelled like “cinnamon and ammonia”. Investigated by MUFON, and documented by NICAP.

Illustration of UFO described by witness by Michael Schratt

Anderson, South Carolina, 1980

Illustration of UFO described by witness by Michael Schratt

In the early morning hours of September 11, 1980 Mr. Jerry McAllister (resident of Anderson,  South Carolina) was awakened by a brilliant light. He quickly jumped out of bed, and witnessed a large luminous object hovering in a horizontal position. Mr. McAllister also alerted his wife, and urged her to view the object as well. The craft was no more than 150 feet away, and approximately forty feet above the tree-tops. The object was completely surrounded with multiple halogen-like headlights which lit up the surrounding area like day, and it emitted an ear-shattering noise. Above the lights were a row of rectangular shaped windows which emanated a deep purple colored light, and measured 6’ X 8’. There was a smooth raised “seam” located immediately above the windows, which ran along the entire circumference of the object.  The bottom surface of the craft was flat and dark in color. A small red light was connected to a curved pipe-like structure that was located on the bottom of the craft. Mr. Carter contacted the Anderson County Sheriff’s Office, and Deputy Mike Burton arrived at the scene in time to witness the UFO’s departure. Residual effects on the witnesses from the craft included: eye irritation, ringing in the ears, and headaches. Evidence of dangerous radiation was found in the nearby soil where the craft had hovered, and also on pine needles. A recommendation was made that the area under the ship’s hovering position be roped off. Source – Wendelle Stevens collection (confirmed by NICAP).

Illustration of UFO described by witness by Michael Schratt

This first image was taken nearly 10 years ago by Seo himself and as you can see in the second picture, it was feature in a Korean magazine.

UFO photograph (image credit: Jong han Seo)

Korean magazine UFO photos. (image credit: Jong han Seo)

The second picture has a more interesting story. Along with some friends, Seo says he tried to telepathically call in UFOs and believes it worked. With over 10 witnesses present, they saw a cigar shaped object and a shining gold colored one. They were able to catch the smaller one on video for 40 seconds.

A still image from UFO video taken in 2008. (image credit: Jong han Seo)

Seo says he will keep us in the loop on his findings in Korea, so look forward to more reports on OpenMinds.tv.

Guayama, Puerto Rico, November, 1995

Close-up of UFO

This is another image dug out of Wendelle Stevens’ UFO Photo Archives. We don’t have much information on it other than it was taken in Puerto Rico on either November 24th, or the 11th, 1995 (there are two possible dates on the back of the pictures). It was taken with a Polaroid camera by Jose Maria Fernandez in Guayama, Puerto Rico. The picture was provided to Wendelle by UFO researcher, Giorgio Piacenza. Apparently he had commissioned imaging consultant, Donald Selwyn to analyze the photo. Although the picture is a bit fantastic, it appears that Selwyn believed it to be real. Here is his analysis…

Laurance Rockefeller

Throughout the 1990s, billionaire philanthropist Laurance S. Rockefeller (1910-2004) sponsored and funded a number of UFO-related projects. This has come to be known as the Rockefeller UFO initiative since in some cases they went beyond funding and included an actual lobbying effort to the Clinton White House, undertaken by Rockefeller himself and his lawyer Henry Diamond, in the early and mid-90s. This writer became actively involved in one of these Rockefeller projects, which resulted in a book-length report titled, Unidentified Flying Objects Briefing Document – The Best Available Evidence, finished in December 1995.

The project was coordinated by Marie Galbraith, wife of investment banker Evan Galbraith, who served as U.S. ambassador to France during the Reagan administration. The author of the original draft was aviation journalist and long-time ufologist Don Berliner, whose involvement in the field goes back to NICAP (National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena) in the sixties and later with the Fund for UFO Research (FUFOR), which he currently heads. I was brought in the summer of 1995 by Marie Galbraith and Sandy S. Wright of the BSW Foundation, who was involved in the early stages of the project, to help edit the document. I recommended that the international section of the report should be expanded, so in the end I wrote additional “case histories” on important UFO incidents in Russia, Spain and Canada and rewrote the sections dealing with Brazil, Belgium and France, consulting the source documents in the original foreign languages.

The Original Cover (image credit: Antonio Huneeus) Click the image to go to the document.

Many other people and institutions also helped in the elaboration of the report, including the SOBEPS (the Belgian Society for the Study of Space Phenomena) and the official UFO bureau within the French space agency CNES (then called SEPRA, now GEIPAN). The copyright of the Briefing Document was given to the UFO Research Coalition, formed by the three main UFO organizations in the U.S., CUFOS (Center for UFO Studies), FUFOR and MUFON (Mutual UFO Network). The document had a letter of endorsement, dated December 15, 1995, signed by the heads of the three groups in the Coalition: Dr. Mark Rodeghier for CUFOS, Richard Hall for FUFOR, and Walter Andrus for MUFON. The original edition of the UFO Briefing Document was one thousand copies and its main purpose was to send it to selected VIPs in the U.S. and abroad.

The Rockefeller Gibbons Letter. Click to enlarge.

A copy of the Briefing Document was sent by Laurance Rockefeller to the White House Science and Technology advisor, Dr. John Gibbons, on February 29, 1996. In his cover letter, released under the Freedom of Information Act together with many other documents related to the Rockefeller UFO initiative, the late philanthropist wrote: “I sponsored this report because it seemed useful to bring together the most credible evidence about UFO sightings in the form of eyewitness reports, official statements, and scientific views. While I do not necessarily agree with every finding and conclusion, I do believe that the evidence presented indicates that this subject merits serious scientific study. Toward that end, I hope that our government, other governments, and the United Nations will cooperate in making any information they may have available.”

Unfortunately, the success and impact of the UFO Briefing Document was limited in real political terms. Most people and the press seemed far more interested with the fact that Rockefeller had sponsored it and was interested in UFOs than with the contents of the report and its political, military and scientific implications. One significant exception was France. Because of Marie Galbraith’s extensive social and political connections in Paris from the time she had lived in Paris as the American ambassador’s wife, many copies were distributed there, including then President Jacques Chirac and the CNES. The Briefing Document eventually became the model for a similar report prepared by a number of former high-ranking French military and intelligence officers and scientists, who formed a study group called COMETA (Committee for In-Depth Studies) that led to the release in 1999 of their own famous report, UFOs and Defense: What Should We Prepare For? The authors of the COMETA Report were full of praise for the Briefing Document and particularly Mrs. Galbraith. They wrote:

“In recent years, the three main ufological associations have been brought together by a leading U.S. personality, Marie Galbraith, to conduct a joint study. She is the wife of Evan Griffith Galbraith, who was U.S. ambassador to France from 1981 to 1985. Thus she is well-acquainted with our country and our language, since she lived on Avenue Gabriel. Supported both morally and financially by Laurance Rockefeller, brother of the famous David Rockefeller, she traveled the world to meet the principal scientists interested in UFOs and to collect the best cases.’

‘She then oversaw the drafting of a clear and documented book entitled Unidentified Flying Objects, Briefing Document, the best available evidence, which was endorsed in 1995 by the chairmen of the three associations CUFOS [Center for UFO Research], FUFOR [Fund for UFO Research], and MUFON [Mutual UFO Network]. She had this work sent to more than a thousand prominent figures throughout the world and, namely, to a large number of U.S. congressmen. Her goal is to get the U.S. government and possibly other governments to end the secrecy surrounding UFOs.’

‘For the editors of the book, this secrecy is essentially military in origin: the nation that is first to reproduce the exceptional characteristics of UFOs will dominate the world. The secrecy was justified during the cold war, but it is no longer justified now given the scientific and technical breakthroughs useful to humanity that one can expect [to obtain] from the study of UFOs.”

Perhaps not surprisingly, a French translation of the UFO Briefing Document was published in 2005 by Editions du Rocher as, OVNI: Document de synthèse. The back cover description called it, “the American counterpart of the COMETA Report in France.”

Bill Clinton shaking hands with Laurance Rockefeller May, 1995. (image credit: Clinton Library)

Another place where the Briefing Document seemed to have some impact was in Chile, where I personally gave a copy in the late ‘90s to the former head of the Chilean Air Force, Gen. (Ret.) Ramón Vega, who was then a senator. Gen. Vega was amassing evidence to convince the Chilean government to open its own official UFO investigation, thus the timing was very good. Eventually, in late 1998, the government did launch its own official group known as CEFAA (Committee for the Study of Aerial Anomalous Phenomena), which is attached to Chile’s Civil Aviation agency DGAC and led by Chilean Air Force Gen. (Ret.) Ricardo Bermúdez. (Gen. Bermúdez was one of the contributors in Leslie Kean’s recent book UFOs – Generals, Pilots, and Government Officials Go On the Record.)

In 2000, the UFO Briefing Document finally became available commercially as a paperback published by Dell as part of a series of paranormal books called “Whitley Strieber’s Hidden Agendas.” The document was essentially the same, except for an Introduction written by Strieber. Around that time, the contents of the book were also posted on the web by Joe Firmage, a computer businessman who had taken an active role in ufology through a group called the International Space Sciences Organization. Firmage’s ventures collapsed in the cyber-crash of the late ‘90s, but the Briefing Document was preserved through TheWayBackMachine and posted by a Spanish site called biobliotecapleyades.net, which has a huge number of obscure books and reports. The format, however, is divided by sections, so you have to consult each Case History or other segments individually. It is for this reason that Open Minds, with the permission of the UFO Research Coalition members, decided to post the UFO Briefing Document as a single pdf file easy to download and consult. We are thus proud to bring this important document back to the forefront.

You can download the UFO Briefing Document here.

Satellite photo of Reunion Island. (image credit: Wikimedia Commons)

Let’s look at an interesting sub-genre of alien occupant, the so-called “Michelin man,” after the logo of the large French tire company Michelin. It’s a cute little man made out of tires of different sizes, which also looks like a spacesuit. (This type of spacesuit was depicted in the late 50s in the hugely popular comic series Tintin, when the hero and his companions go to the Moon.) Yet despite these cultural considerations, the two Close Encounters of the Third Kind (CE-III) with “Michelin men” were real enough, with both physical evidence and physiological effects, which make them Close Encounters of the Second Kind (CE-II) at the same time. Both cases were investigated and documented officially by the French Gendarmerie, a state police which operates throughout France and its overseas territories, and is charged by law to receive UFO reports from the public. They conduct all the interviews with witnesses and any necessary follow-up and then pass on the files to GEIPAN, the French space agency UFO bureau, for statistical analysis or further investigation. These cases, however, occurred before the establishment of GEIPAN (then known as GEPAN) in 1977.

The location of the two incidents was Réunion Island, a remote French outpost in the Indian Ocean. This volcanic island east of Madagascar in Africa is 969 square miles and has 827,000 inhabitants, according to 2009 figures. Annexed by France in the 17^th century, it’s now an overseas department. The first case of farmer Luce Fontaine occurred in the morning of July 31, 1968, while the second incident involving 21-year driver Antoine Séverin took place on February 14, 1975. The remoteness of Réunion Island is an important factor in ruling out sociological contagion, particularly in a period long before the global culture of the internet and satellite cable. Séverin, for instance, had not even heard of Fontaine’s case, which was reported in the press at the time.

A view of the Plaine des Palmistes in Reunion Island. (image credit: Jo Kerozen)

THE FIRST CE-III ON REUNION ISLAND

Cover of the French 1976 edition of Jean-Claude Bourret’s The New UFO Challenge, where the Gendarmerie documents on the 1975 CE-II were published. (image credit: Editions France-Empire)

Although we don’t have the actual police dossier of the first CE-III, we do have a good summary of the case in the massive book by Michel Figuet and J.-L. Ruchon, OVNI: Le premier dossier complet des rencontres rapprochées en France (UFO: The first complete dossier of close encounters in France), published in 1979. We also have the Nov. 1968 article published in the French journal Lumières dans la Nuit (Night Lights, usually referenced as LDLN) translated in England’s Flying Saucer Review ; as well as the beautiful color reproduction of the aliens made long ago by the defunct French UFO group GEOS (see illustration).

At 9 a.m. on July 31, 1968, 22-year-old farmer Luce Fontaine was in a plain called La Plaine des Cafres, specifically at the 21 KM signpost, picking some grass for his rabbits. “I suddenly saw a sort of oval-shaped cabin in the clearing,” Fontaine explained later. “It was 25 meters from me [about 75 feet], and as though suspended at a height of four or five meters [12 to 15 feet] from the ground. The extremities of it were dark blue, the center part lighter, more transparent rather like the windscreen of a [Peugeot] 404. Above and below it had what looked like two glass feet of shining metal.”

The GEOS painting puts the Michelin man outside the saucer, probably to highlight its funny shape since it was part of a set of slides of different types of aliens. But in the real incident at Cafres no such thing occurred. Basically, Fontaine described two humanoids about 90 cm. tall (less than 3 feet) inside the transparent cabin, dressed in the so-called Michelin gear and wearing a shiny metallic helmet covering their face. One of them was standing facing his back to him, but the one on the left turned and faced him. Fontaine’s statement continued:

“Then both turned their backs to me, and there was a flash, as strong as the electric arc of a welding machine. Everything went white around me. A powerful heat was given off and then as it were a sort of blast of wind, and a few seconds later there was nothing there any more.” Fontaine rushed to the site but couldn’t find any noticeable landing traces. He first told his wife, a local teacher, and then reported the encounter to the Gendarmerie. The inquiry was conducted by Captain Maljean of St.-Pierre, and Captain Legros of the Civil Protection Service. Luce Fontaine’s reputation was excellent and so everyone, including the police, believed the story without any doubt. But there was more.

Original reconstruction of the 1968 CE-III done by the French periodical LDNL. (image credit: LDLN)

The GEOS painting showing the 1968 CE-III with “Michelin” aliens in the Plaine des Caffres, Reunion Island. (Image credit: GEOS)

Capt. Legros checked for radioactivity in the landing area ten days later, and found eight radioactive spots on grass and pebbles of up to sixty thousandths of a Roentgen. This count is rather low but it was surmised that it might have been far higher right after the incident, since the checks were done ten days later and there had been heavy rains on the days before. Radioactivity was also found on Fontaine’s clothes, precisely on the side which faced the UFO.

All this led in the following months to a series of bizarre rumors, according to which Fontaine had been flown in secrecy to the Curie Foundation in Paris and was being treated for radiation sickness. All these stories were false, as it often occurs in even good UFO cases. According to Figuet and Ruchon, Fontaine experienced abundant nosebleeds and had to recover at home on the immediate days after the incident, but shortly afterwards he recovered fully. Antoine Séverin, the witness of the second CE-III on Réunion Island wasn’t so lucky. His physiological effects were quite traumatic.

BLINDED & MUTED BY A UFO!

Some of the Gendarmerie UFO dossiers from Bourret’s book. (image credit: J.-C. Bourret)

We do have the complete police dossier on the second CE-III with “Michelin” men in Réunion Island. It runs into dozens of pages of interviews with the witness, his family, neighbors, the doctors who treated him, his boss, etc. The inquiry was conducted by Lt. Col. Lobet of the National Gendarmerie and published by the French journalist J. C. Bourret, together with many other official documents, in his 1976 book, Le nouveau défi des o.v.ni. (The new challenge of UFOs). We also have an excellent summary of the whole case written by Capt. Guillaume Kervendal, the Gendarmerie’s top UFO expert, for the official military journal Armées d’aujourd’hui (Armies of Today) in September 1975, just a few months after the incident itself.

While little known, this case should be a classic of that very uncomfortable but at the same time convincing category of UFO incident: the physiological injury cases, which have been documented by John Schuessler, Bob Pratt and others. It also has some unusual aspects like a dream with a sound which preceded the encounter. Let’s quote from Capt. Kervendal’s summary:

“It all started with a dream during the night of February 11 to 12. But was it a dream? Antoine S., a young 21-year-old delivery chauffeur heard or believed to have heard a persistent ‘bip-bip,’ at times near, at times farther. That noise which broke his ears continued until the 14^th, at 12 hours 5 [min.]. After buying some candy, he was walking home. Without a reason, he started running; he stopped, as if impeded by a supernatural force. His eardrums were really bothering him. He left the road and advanced into a corn field. He then felt a strange heat accompanied by a burning sensation. Paralyzed by this force that he couldn’t conquer, he saw an object with aluminum color, stabilized about 1.5 meters [4.5 feet] above the ground, emitting always the lacerating ‘bip-bip.’ A ladder with three steps appeared in the object at a 45 degree inclination. A small occupant with brilliant clothing emerged from the object. He had on his hand some sort of stick. A second character had a satchel plus a third one joined the first as they scraped the soil. They had antennas on both sides of the head. A fourth occupant stayed inside the contraption and it could be seen through the saucer’s translucent dome. The third man suddenly became aware of the presence of young Antoine. A powerful flash came from the object and projected the young man to the ground. He could nevertheless see the beings returning quickly to the craft. The ladder retracted and the UFO rose with a very strong whistling noise. How long did Antoine remain on the ground? He couldn’t say.”

Exact location of the field of the 1975 Séverin case from the Gendarmerie files. (image credit: J.-C. Bourret)

During the next few days, until Feb. 19^th, the witness was in such a state of shock that he was both blinded and mute. He tried to explain what had happened to the gendarmes, gesturing wildly but unable to talk. Everyone in his family, neighbors and his employer vouched that he was a reliable and responsible individual. No solid landing traces or radioactivity were found on the site, but there was still one more troubling detail duly noted in the police reports and in Capt. Kervendal’s summary of the case:

“During the following days, he wanted to return to the site and take the gendarmes. But each time that he penetrated into the corn field, a strange force projected him into the ground and put him again unconscious. In the same manner that when he talked to the gendarmes on Feb. 19 [when he was able to talk again], he didn’t have any recollection of having been in a semi-coma for five days.”

Those are the basic facts of the second and troubling CE-III with “Michelin” men on Réunion Island. The police reports go naturally into much more detail, but at no point there is a suspicion of hoax or mental aberration from the part of the witness. Who were the beings that caused Antoine Séverin such disagreeable symptoms? Although the shape of the “Michelin” aliens may look funny or cute, their behavior and the effects they had on both Luce Fontaine and Antoine Séverin were anything but funny. Another question is why we don’t seem to have any more of this type of report nowadays.

I am afraid I don’t have a good response to any of these questions, but neither did the French Gendarmerie. As put by Capt. Kervendal in his article for the French army review, “the goal of our purpose is not to give here a response to the [UFO] problem. To our knowledge, nobody can, for now, pretend to know it.”

Illustration from a case in Jerez, Spain, where two “Michelin humanoids” were seen by a biker. (image credit: STENDEK)

*          *          *

To find more about these cases on Reunion Island, you can check the excellent French website www.ufologie.net, which has plenty of material in English as well. The 1968 case of Luce Fontaine in the Plaine des Caffres can be found be found here. The 1975 physiological injury case of Antoine Séverin can be found here. This last report includes the translation of the actual Gendarmerie reports written by Lt. Col. Lobet.

If you want to get a feel of what Reunion Island looks like, we recommend you rent the 1969 film Mississippi Mermaid by François Truffaut (the famous French director who played the character of Lacombe in Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind), in which a young and beautiful Catherine Deneuve plays a mail bride that arrives in Reunion Island to marry a tobacco farmer played by Jean-Paul Belmondo. It has nothing to do with UFOs but it’s a great movie filmed on location on this exotic island.

Movie poster of Mississippi Mermaid.

1960’s: PATAGONIAN USOS

When UFOs are reported entering and leaving bodies of water, whether the oceans, seas, large rivers or lakes, they are designated USOs for Unidentified Sea (or Submarine) Objects. In the 1960’s, the Argentinean Navy seemed to have its hands full with mysterious USO activity around the southern Patagonian coast. Official USO reports were rarely released by the Navy, but some cases were nevertheless tracked by two pioneer civilian ufologists. Both had excellent qualifications: Dr. Oscar A. Galindez was a judge and Oscar A. Uriondo worked in the Library of Congress in Buenos Aires. The two “Oscars” were the first to conduct a systematic scientific field investigation in the open, publishing their reports in books and articles. We can outline the following USO cases in Patagonia:

• Feb. 1960: The Navy detected two USOs in Golfo [Gulf] Nuevo and tried to catch them for two weeks. US Navy experts came to help with special sub-hunting equipment, but to no avail. Tons of explosives were used but the USOs got away, still unidentified. The late Ivan Sanderson, a British author specialized in USOs, wrote that the Golfo Nuevo subs “were able to stay submerged for several days and could outrun the surface ships… All nations owning submarines denied emphatically that the subs were theirs.”

• Nov. 12, 1963: Oscar Uriondo in his classic 1968 book, The Scientific Problem of UFOs, summarized another intriguing case from Golfo Nuevo: “The Navy transport ship ‘Punta Medanos’ was navigating on the South Atlantic facing Golfo Nuevo. Suddenly, a large UFO crossed rapidly at 2 km from the ship; although the passage was very quick, the needles on the compasses onboard jumped off course abruptly and continued to do so for 55 minutes.” The Navy Commission was unable to explain the case, and recruited the assistance of the Hydrographic Service to check the electromagnetic effect (EME) on the compasses. In the end, they could find no conventional explanation for the EME other than “the presence of the UFO.”

• July 28, 1964: Several USO cases are mentioned by Dr. Galindez in a 1974 article entitled, “Marine Implications of the UFO Phenomenon.” The judge revealed another USO case in the Patagonian Golfo San Jorge, involving two Argentinean oil tankers and the Norwegian vessel ‘Sumber.’ All these ships observed after 9 PM the apparent fall of an object, perhaps “an aerolite or small comet.” However, it was flying “horizontally” and “emitted a luminosity that, at times, became intense,” according to the official report submitted by the ‘Sumber’ skipper to Argentinean naval authorities. The ships looked for possible survivors, but nothing was found. This case has certain similarities to the famous Canadian 1967 UFO crash in Shag Harbour, Nova Scotia.

• March 18, 1966: The crash of a cigar-shaped object on the ocean was reported and sketched by farmer Carlos Corosan from a deserted beach near Deseado, south of Golfo San Jorge. Corosan had a good view of the object at 4 PM, estimating it was 65 to 70 feet long, with a metallic appearance and no wings, windows or markings. The UFO seemed to be in trouble, emitting “a short, muffled blast of smoke,” and then began to hum and “vibrate all over as though it were coming apart,” said Corosan. The farmer added the object finally hit the sea, but “it did not float at all, it just hit the water with a huge splash and went down quickly.” As far as we know, Corosan was the only witness, although Navy ships were reportedly seen in the area later on. The military neither confirmed nor denied his account.

1965: ANTARCTICA WAVE

Navy Captain Daniel Perissé (image credit: MUFON Proceedings)

One of the best documented Navy cases occurred at Deception Island, which belongs to the South Shetland Islands west of the Antarctic Peninsula in the Argentinean sector. Three nations (Argentina, Chile and Britain) maintained research stations in 1965 in this island of volcanic origin, formed by the remains of a crater flooded by the sea [see Map]. A detailed report of these sightings was prepared by Captain Daniel A. Perissé, who was in 1965 commanding officer of the Argentinean Navy garrison in Deception Island with the rank of Lieutenant. A total of seven UFO sightings occurred there between June 7 and July 3, 1965. An eighth incident followed in August at the Argentinean post at the South Orkney Islands.

On July 7, the Argentinean Navy Bulletin #172 stated that, “Lt. Perissé confirmed… that all the garrison personnel observed an extremely brilliant object, moving toward the north with variable speed, sometimes hovering, displaying sudden accelerations and changes of direction. The characteristics of the object and its motion, added Lt. Perisse, were such that the possibility of a weather balloon, a plane or a star were ruled out. The object was observed by a total of 17 persons, including three visiting Non-commissioned officers from the Chilean base ‘Pedro Aguirre Cerda’.”

The Chilean Air Force, in charge of the Antarctic bases ‘Aguirre Cerda’ and ‘Arturo Prat,’ confirmed their own UFO sightings in Deception Island with an official communiqué released the same day. “According to a message sent by Commander Mario Jahn Barrera from the Antarctic Chilean base ‘Arturo Prat,’ a luminous object was sighted for about 20 minutes by nine members of the garrison who were performing routine meteorological observations. It changed colors, speeds and direction, moving with an oscillatory motion at high speed.”

Capt. Perissé published later a thorough analysis of the sightings and particularly the more spectacular one on July 3. First seen by nine witnesses at the Chilean base beginning at 7:20 PM, the object moved to the Argentinean base by 7:42, where it was seen by 17 witnesses for 62 minutes, until 8:44 PM. Perissé wrote that “the shape of the object was similar to a rugby ball… with a red center and ill defined edges of changing colors (yellow, green, orange, blue and white)… The actual size of the UFO was somewhere between 75 and 90 meters.” There is still one more mystery concerning the July 3 event. The Navy Bulletin #172 quoted above added that, “from the Navy post at the South Orkney Islands comes a message of extreme importance: during the passage of the strange object over the base [earlier the same day], two magnetometers in perfect working condition registered sudden and strong disturbances of the magnetic field (at 17:03 Hrs.), which were recorded on their tapes.”

The public interest generated by these cases led the Navy to rescue the “problem from semi-clandestiness,” as put by the Director of the Navy UFO project, Capt. Pagani. In a famous 1965 press conference quoted in Part I, Pagani declared that “UFOs exist” and “their presence and intelligent displacement in Argentinean airspace has been proven.” There were no known photos taken during the July and August 1965 UFO flap in Deception Island, but in late 1967 the well known Argentinean weekly magazine Siete Días (Seven Days) published a very interesting UFO photo reportedly taken by a navy officer in the island during an underwater volcanic eruption on December 11, 1967 (see photo). Its authenticity, however, remains in question because the photographer’s name was never disclosed or identified.

Flying disc next to an underwater volcanic eruption reportedly taken on Dec. 11, 1967 by a Navy officer at the Antarctic Station in Deception Is., leaked to the weekly magazine Siete Días. The disc on the top is the real size of the object; the second an enlargement. (image credit: ICUFON Archives)

The Deception Island UFO flap was also covered in some detail by the U.S. military attachés stationed in Buenos Aires and Santiago, Chile, who digested and translated the local press coverage and the reports published in the Argentinean Navy Bulletin. These documents, released by the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) years ago under the Freedom of Information Act, can be downloaded here.

Interestingly, the Deception Island incidents launched Capt. Perissé’s ufological career: first under the Navy Commission and, after his retirement from the service in 1984, as a civilian ufologist with the groups CEFAI and CIU, and in the 1990s with a semi-official study group within the Institute of Scientific and Technological Research of the Armed Forces (CITEFA in Spanish). Perissé presented a scientific paper full of charts and mathematical formulas entitled, “Correlation Between the UFO Phenomenon and Its Associated Entities,” at the MUFON International UFO Symposium at the American University in Washington, DC in July 1987, where I had the opportunity of meeting him.

View of Deception Island (image credit: Jerzy Strzelecki)

Location map of Deception Island in the South Shetland Islands (image credit: Giovanni Fattori over a GMT free license map)

THE AAF TAKES OVER

As the Navy UFO project was winding down and finally closed in 1974, the Argentinean Air Force (AAF) investigation was taking shape. The first public hint was provided by Brigadier Adolfo Alvarez, Commander in Chief of the AAF, in a radio interview in July 1968. The transcript was published in the influential Buenos Aires newspaper La Razón. When asked about flying saucers, Gen. Alvarez responded that “the Air Force has a specialized agency that has conducted investigations about this field for some time.” He cautioned, however, that he was not yet able to give a definitive opinion about the subject since “there are no sufficiently concrete facts.” Also in 1968, the military president of Argentina, General Juan Carlos Onganía, declared that, “I believe that flying saucers exist.”

AAF Captain Augusto Lima, head of the last UFO desk at the Air Force’s National Commission on Space Research. (image credit: Alejandro Agostinelli)

With the exception of the early reports published by the National Review of Aeronautics, the AAF UFO policy was never as open as that of the Navy. It eventually transpired that the man in charge of UFO investigations was Captain Augusto Lima, who worked at the AAF’s National Commission for Space Research (Spanish acronym of CNIE), Argentina’s main space agency. Unfortunately, the CNIE investigations were kept confidential and no reports were leaked to the press or to civilian ufologists. Moreover, according to journalist Alejandro Agostinelli, “Capt. Lima attempts to project a dispassionate image, but in private conversations he confesses that the totality of UFO sightings can be reduced to conventional explanations. Lima keeps busy receiving and particularly filing UFO data from the different military services. He conducts eventually an official investigation of cases which, in his view, have received too much publicity. He then proceeds to explain them away… Most investigators agree that Capt. Lima continues to hold a ‘chair’ in that Department for purely bureaucratic reasons.”

Nevertheless, a few interesting cases did leak to the press. During a flap in 1971, for instance, AAF pilot Francisco Sartorio filmed an unidentified object with a 16 mm movie camera while flying in Mar de Plata [see picture]. As far as we know, neither the full film nor the official report and analysis have been released. There are also reports that the CNIE obtained some metallic debris which reportedly came down from space. In early January 1979, news about small metallic pieces recovered in the rural area of General Ocampo in  Entre Rios province, surfaced briefly. The discovery was tied to a multi-colored UFO observed by hundreds of witnesses in the region on the night of December 21, 1978. On the following days, peasant Miguel Angel Romero went to work in the rice fields as he usually did, when he came across a piece of semi-hollowed bluish metal with a diameter of about 15 cm and a thickness of 2 mm. Another similar piece made its way during the same period to the newspaper El Heraldo in Concordia. Both were eventually requested by the CNIE for laboratory analysis.

AAF pilot Francisco Sartorio filmed this object with a 16 mm movie camera while flying in Mar de Plata in 1971. (image credit: J. J. Benítez)

When contacted by the weekly magazine Siete Días, AAF officers indicated that the piece, popularly referred to as “a door handle,” was made out of a very strong alloy resistant to the friction produced by contact with the atmosphere. They added that the piece was not part of a plane or a weather balloon, although they did not say what it was. More sensational was the crash of another alleged UFO on the evening of October 3, 1980 in a remote Andean area in the province of Río Negro, close to the Chilean border. The UFO had been sighted in the provinces of Río Negro and Neuquén, as well as in Chile, and there were several accounts of a loud explosion which shook the earth.

Despite the efforts of a group of Buenos Aires ufologists to reach the site in the high Andes, it was the Border Police and Capt. Lima who eventually located the crash site from a helicopter. They retrieved ash-like samples from what appeared to be three charred circular marks on the ground, but no further information on the contents of the samples was published. To this day, no final report on these or other cases investigated by the CNIE were ever released. By the mid-1980’s, however, the CNIE UFO project had practically faded away. The military lost political power after their defeat in the Falklands War with Britain in 1983 and were now facing budgetary cuts and renewed scrutiny from the new civilian democratic government. UFOs were no longer a priority. The CNIE project was finally closed officially with Capt. Lima’s retirement in 1987.

This attitude became evident in the case of airline pilot Capt. Jorge Polanco, who reported a close observation of a UFO while his Aerolinas Argentinas flight 734 from Buenos Aires was approaching Bariloche airport around midnight on July 31, 1995. The sighting coincided with a power blackout in the city (not uncommon in South America). Although Capt. Polanco was very outspoken to the media afterwards, stating that he thought it was an “extraterrestrial spaceship,” both AAF and the Civil Aviation authorities declined to make any public statements, giving the impression that they were not at all interested in the incident.

UPDATE: THE CITEFA EFFORT

Captain Daniel Perissé (left) with journalist Alejandro Agostinelli (right) during a UFO Congress in San Lorenzo in 1991. (image credit: Rubén Morales)

This total lack of official interest, however, was not entirely true. In the 1990s, a group of retired military officers and some scientists associated with the Institute of Scientific and Technological Research of the Armed Forces (Spanish acronym of CITEFA) attempted to revive an official military UFO project, tentatively named Commission for the Study of Space Phenomena (Spanish acronym CEFE) or National Investigations Commission for Anomalous Phenomena (Spanish acronym CNIFA). Although the group avoided any publicity and media attention whatsoever, veteran Buenos Aires journalist and ufologist Alejandro Agostinelli was eventually able to track them down. The group’s leader was Commodore (Ret.) Juan Carlos Mascietti, who served as chief of planning for the General Staff during the democratic government of President Alfonsín in the 1980s and secretary general of CITEFA. Other key members were Capt. Perissé and speleologist Julio Goyén Aguado, president of the Argentinean Center of Speleology, who had close links with the military. After being dodged by Agostinelli for months, Commodore Mascietti finally agreed to do a very short interview for the science magazine Descubrir (Discover).

“We are acting prudently because we are not interested in getting involved in any noise,” said Mascietti. “Moreover, we need to protect the privacy of scientists who are not interested in seeing their names in the headlines. Also, due to the characteristics of this type of work, we don’t want to contaminate or being contaminated.” When asked by Agostinelli if the CITEFA group had official backing, Mascietti responded that, “not yet, the group is formed by military and scientific personnel linked to official circles, but the support it receives is informal. We are hoping that the Ministry of Defense will officialize our activities, that’s all.”

Agostinelli then asked him for his opinion on UFOs and Mascietti’s response was very cautious: “Our compromise is not to reveal personal opinions. One shared criteria is that we must be skeptical. Another is that there are certain phenomena that must be explained. We are not interested in games: more than ufologists, we are scientists who are searching for the truth.” Despite Mascietti’s cautious statements, the CITEFA members were seen in various parts of Argentina investigating UFO cases and collecting data. They compiled eventually a 300-page report that was officially given to the Ministry of Defense in 1997. This report has never been released, but according to Agostinelli, it concluded that there are “unidentified phenomena which leave physical effects that can be proved,” even though “this does not show evidence on the nature of this phenomena, which remains without explanation.” Despite the group’s efforts, however, the Ministry of Defense never gave the go ahead for the UFO project, which faded away by the end of the decade due to several circumstances—some tragic—with its key members. Commodore Mascietti left CITEFA and moved out of Buenos Aires, Capt. Perissé became seriously ill and passed away a few years later, and Goyén Aguado died in an accident in 2000.

We contacted Alejandro Agostinelli by email recently to ask him about the CEFORA motion to request President Cristina Fernández to release official UFO documents in Argentina. His response was not optimistic: “In our country, you have to fight in government offices with lower level personnel to obtain these types of documents, not request them politely with signatures to a president that has to deal with very serious problems every single day. At best, she will smile and pass the request to an official with the recommendation of giving an evasive answer. To show interest in cooperating with a UFO request represents for a government reasonably paranoid with the press like this one, a risk of negative publicity that they don’t want to face.”

Agostinelli added that he doesn’t want to discourage the efforts made by CEFORA, especially since “my own efforts to obtain any type of documents came empty handed. But I understand that the reasons why I didn’t succeed in obtaining official documents become harder with the passing of time. The middle level civilian or military official usually doesn’t stay too long in his post; if they don’t give much importance to these papers, they can be lost; and if they are interested, they take them to their homes.” In any event, time will tell if the CEFORA motion will succeed.

Those who read Spanish, can check the CEFORA website here.

Alejandro Agostinelli’s complete report in Spanish, “The UFO Dossiers of the Argentinean Armed Forces,” can be read here.