Monday, January 29, 2018

Mexico: Egg-Shaped UFO Over Mexico City Airport



Source: Alfonso Salazar
Date: January 26, 2018


A UFO Over Mexico City Airport

Alfonso Salazar writes: "This afternoon, Friday the 26th of January of 2018, the time being 4:50 in the afternoon, several aeronautical engineers working on a teardown of a Boeing 767 in the northern sector of the airport reported seing a black, egg-shaped object that remained in view for 20 mintues before heading off toward the volcano area. According to the report, the object was opaque, was neither a balloon nor a helicopter, according to witnesses."

Our thanks to Mr. Salazar for his diligent reports!

Argentina: Specialist Analyzes UFO Photograph; Forecasts Nationwide Wave



Source: Info Blanco Sobre Negro (infoblancosobrenegro.com)
Date: 01/26/2018
An article by Martin Mazzoleni


Argentina: Specialist Analyzes UFO Photograph; Forecasts Nationwide Wave

Some days ago, broadcaster Fernando Figoni published a photo of last Tuesday's storm on his Facebook account, showing a luminous flying object. The post had great media impact and the alleged UFO sighting was reproduced by several local and national media. Info BLANCO SOBRE NEGRO interviewed Luis Burgos, one of the foremost exponents of national ufology, who dismissed the likelihood of the case being a hoax and who forecasted that there would be a nationwide UFO "flap" throughout 2018.

As always, news items of this sort create a mixture of curiosity and mistrust. The more open-minded among us listen closely to the cases and tend to believe; the more skeptical respond with a sneer. The fact is that nearly half of the Argentinean population claims having seen a UFO at some point in time. In this case, it was broadcaster Fernando Figoni who photographed a luminous object in the sky as he tried to capture the storm on the corner of 1st and 60th streets.

Info BLANCO SOBRE NEGRO decided to solicit the opinion of Luis Burgos, one of the best known ufologists (the name given to the discipline that studies UFOs) who is also a resident of La Plata.

"Figoni didn't see it. He noticed it in a photo, but many other witnesses saw something. There is a report from a woman in Romero who saw a white object during the first storm front," Burgos explains, adding: "There are many cases of UFOs in thunderstorms."

Despite being fully convinced about the existence of UFOs, Burgos has a critical posture when it comes to the commercial use of the subject and claims many cases are "hoaxes" with the aim of capturing the public's attention, such as the circles appearing early last year in a field near Carmen de Areco, which were created with herbicide, according to the specialist.

However, regarding the recent sighting in La Plata, he believes that the witness is "reliable" and that it could be a "mistake", in any event. He dismissed the possibility that the object could be an airplane or balloon.

The foremost exponent of national ufology assured us that "UFO sightings will be on the increase" as part of what he believes to be a "nationwide wave". This prediction is based on a hypothesis that suggests "an increase in sighting reports" every 10 years.

"We base our decimal hypothesis on a record of 5500 cases in Argentina since the year 1947. The year with the highest number of reports was 1968, the second being 1978. There have been 29 reports so far this year - we are receiving over a case a day," said the founder of the Fundación Argentina de Ovnilogia (FAO).



The first UFO case in the country was also reported in La Plata. "A couple witnessed a fleet of luminous objects, aligned in a row, but were unable to photograph it due to its fleeting nature," says Burgos.

[Translation (c) 2017 S. Corrales, Institute of Hispanic Ufology, with thanks to Luis Burgos and Martin Mazzoleni]

Thursday, January 25, 2018

Thoughts on Bell-Shaped UFOs



Some Thoughts on Bell-Shaped UFOs
By Scott Corrales

The year 2018 has kicked off with a flurry of UFO sightings (CE-1s, in the Hynek classification) in Argentina and Mexico, fanning hopes for a year of intense anomalous activity in both hemispheres. The efforts made by Luis Burgos and his team with the Fundación Argentina de Ovnilogía (FAO) are nothing short of heroic; the same can be said of Alfonso Salazar’s devotion to documenting the presence of anomalous objects that appear persistently over a specific part of his country: Mexico City’s International Airport (MCIA), whose case histories have become known to readers of INEXPLICATA over the past decade or so.

It is one of Mr. Salazar’s photographs – the most recent, taken only days ago – that prompted me to write this. Bell-shaped unidentified aerial objects are reminiscent of the early days of the UFO phenomenon and the first photographs that made their way to the magazines of the 1950s and 1960s. There appears to be a mystique surrounding these objects that goes back centuries – one that gives them the most winsome explanation one could imagine. "Their lofty position high in the air, amidst the clouds of heaven, and far from the din and turmoil of the earth beneath, gave them a strange charm in the eyes of the credulous, and as the state of the atmosphere and a thousand then unknown influences affected the sound of their vast masses of metal, the excited minds of listeners was prone to believe that they spoke in sympathy with men..." ("A chat on bells” Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, Volume 40, December 1869 to May 1870)

When Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire, the use of bells as religious instruments came into vogue, despite the fact that they had been employed for religious purposes for thousands of years as far away as China and India, where some truly impressive specimens existed. In the year 604, Pope Sabinian, appointed by the Byzantine court in Constantinople, recognized the importance of bells in the liturgy, and even the most distant communities in Europe began to adopt them. They are mentioned in the works Saint Caesarius of Arles (AD 513) as well as in the Benedictine Rule (AD 540). However, when restrictions on the use of these magnificent instruments appeared in the 8th century, forbidding the ringing of bells during the three days prior to resurrection, a curious belief circulated among Medieval peasantry to account for their silence - the that bells would leave their belfries and fly to Rome be closer to the Pope.



A charming thought, for sure. But was there something else at work? Bells were the source of a number of superstitions (most commonly that the sound of bells will bless the marriage and insure the happiness of newlyweds), but we also have stories of bells flying through the air at high speed, faster than the swiftest birds known to the Medieval mind. Even more suggestive folktales described bells flying low over the countryside, emitting a reddish glow and rumbling sound. The sudden manifestation of one of these "flying bells" was considered a bad omen.
In France, this belief survives in the old Easter tale of Floribert and Marguerite, the children of the local bell ringer, whose story took place one Easter week long ago. "As you well know," reads the fairy tale, "bells fly off to Rome to bring children eggs made of sugar and chocolate." Floribert asks his church bell to take him to see the Eternal City, and the bell agrees. In flight, "they saw other bells from unknown towns, also on their way to Rome. Floribert's own bell would move its clapper to engage its metallic kin in conversation. Upon reaching their destination, the bell deposited the boy outside the city walls, saying that it had to go 'to be blessed' and fetch Easter eggs."

The tale is accompanied by the following illustration, which bears the caption: "Here we see Floribert riding the Bell chasing the belfry’s rooster, heading off to Rome. Rome cannot be seen as it is still too far away. The Bell has no wings because Bells travel in the manner of balloons." (Source: Suplemento Ilustrado, La Nacion, Volume 2, 71-104. Buenos Aires: 7 January 1904)
As recently as May 1, 2014, a bell shaped UFO was photographed over Boise, Idaho - an image that can be found circulating on the Internet. A similar one visited Turkey in 1998, and still another was videotaped over Brisbane, Australia in 2015.



Were similar objects responsible for swaying medieval thought toward a belief in flying bells? Extraterrestrial visitors conducting a survey of a rather primitive world racked by barbarian invasions and famine, deploring humanity’s lot? Ultraterrestrials playing their timeless games with humanity, or perhaps even sinister, time traveling artifacts like the Nazi device known as The Bell?

We can speculate endlessly while we wait for our Easter candy.

Monday, January 22, 2018

Mexico: Dark Object Photographed Over Mexico City Airport



Our friend and colleague Alfonso Salazar reports: "Today, Sunday, January 21, 2018, the time being 7 o'clock in the evening, a black flying object was sighted as it made up-and-down movements. The UFO remained over the Mexico City Airport area at an estimated altitude of 1000 meters."

(Photo credit: Alfonso Salazar. All rights reserved)

Tuesday, January 16, 2018

Mexico: Enigmatic Object Recorded Over Popocatepetl's Crater



Source: PLANETA UFO (Argentina) and Diario CAMBIO (Mexico)
Date: January 15, 2018


Mexico: Enigmatic Object Recorded Over Popocatepetl's Crater
Staff/Diario Cambio

A new video of an alleged unidentified flying obejct flying over the Popocatepetl Volcano's crater has been shared over the Internet.


VIDEO AT: https://www.facebook.com/diario.cambio1/videos/918076715018976/

Friday, January 05, 2018

Backtracking: Early 20th Century UFO Mysteries




Backtracking: Early 20th Century UFO Mysteries
By Scott Corrales


There is one thing that UFO believer and skeptic, nuts-and-bolts advocate and psycho-social theorist, contactee and abductee can agree on (mostly): the modern age of UFOs kicked off in 1947 with Kenneth Arnold’s historic sighting over Mount Rainier.

But cracks can be found in that monolithic supposition as researchers unearth cases from earlier in that decade and previous ones, not including the airship mystery of the late 19th century. Some of these have been correctly solved as hoaxes, misidentifications or even wishful thinking brought about by the pulp novels of the time. Nonetheless, we come up with interesting events that deserve a place in the sun.

In the mid-1980s, Spanish journalist Juan José Benítez drove across his country in search for older mysteries than the ones occurring at the time of his research. Some of these cases were paranormal in nature, involving enigmatic lights and apparitions. Others fit more clearly within the framework of unidentified flying objects as we have come to understand them.

His travels led him the rural home of Mr. Mariano Melgar, who claimed to have witnessed a strange object on the ground during the years of the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939). Melgar told the journalist that he was only six years old at the time, but was certain that the event took place only a few months before the fratricidal conflict came to an end.

Responsibility had been thrust upon the boy at an early age, and he was looking after some cows at his family’s property near the village of Muñico, not far from the city of Avila. While the cows munched away contentedly at the grass, young Mariano sheltered under the trees lining a small brook. His attention was soon distracted by a buzzing sound, so typical of UFO events.

“I soon realized,” he told Benítez, “that it came from a circular object, firing silvery flashes. It came down near the edge of the tree line and landed. I sheltered behind a tree and spied on it. The object was about 15 to 20 meters in diameter (50-65 ft.) and had a small dome on top of it. I was about thirty paces away from it and I noticed that it had three or four legs. The thing was encircled with colored lights, turning on and off. It was wonderful to see! I saw round windows around its fuselage, which shone like aluminum in the sunlight.”

As if this possible CE-2 experience wasn’t interesting enough, the witness added details that would bump his experience into the CE-3 category.

“Suddenly a door opened,” Melgar continued. “It opened like an airplane door, like the ones that slide into a pocket with a photocell. We didn’t have doors like that in Spain at the time, but I later associated it with ones I saw in airports and some banks and stores. A wedge-shaped ramp appeared and the silence was complete. I could see that the interior was full of machinery, but I couldn’t tell you what kind. A “man” emerged, followed by a second and a third. The last one, shorter than the others, remained on the doorstep.”

Cautioning the journalist that his memories were those of a six-year old country boy, Melgar explained the entities seemed rather tall to him, and that they proceeded to scoop up soil or plants, but that he couldn’t be certain. Overcome by curiosity, the boy emerged from his hiding spot and walked toward the object, an undisputed novelty in his otherwise humdrum existence. His thirst for adventure was suddenly quenched by the “man” standing in the object’s doorway. “He fired a flash at me that very nearly knocked me backwards. It frightened me and I ran back to my shelter.”

Undaunted, young Melgar made a second sortie, repelled by the “sentry” with another flash, this time right in his eyes. Ironically, once his fellows had completed their activities, the unknown entity waved at the boy. “It was the typical arm motion of someone who is going away,” he added.

The object eventually went up into the air, sailing away toward the village of Barco de Avila. In young Melgar’s mind, the strange object and its pilots “had something to do with Generalissimo Franco’s air force.”

When writing up the incident for his book La Punta del Iceberg – Los Humanoides (Vol 1), J.J. Benítez took great care to catalogue the military aircraft available in war-torn Spain at the time – a hodgepodge of Dorniers, Stukas, and Junkers on the Nationalist side and Soviet-built Polykarpovs on the Republican side. Not a single one of them remotely similar to the shining, circular object seen by a youthful Mariano Melgar in the summer of 1939.

So we’re left with another anecdotal experience, but from a country lad who had never been taken to the movies to see Flash Gordon or Buster Crabbe serials, or fortunate enough to pore through the pages of the Spanish pulps or “boys’ papers” of the time. Melgar rounded out his experience with details gleaned from technology later in his life. The footwear of the strange men was compared with “the heavy shoes worn by deep sea divers”.

The presence of unknown objects during the Spanish Civil War is not restricted to this case, either. Javier Garcia Blanco penned a very informative article on these events for INEXPLICATA a number of years ago which may of be of interest to readers [“Saucers of the Spanish Civil War” - available at https://inexplicata.blogspot.com/2010/11/spain-saucers-of-spanish-civil-war.htm]



Strange Happenings in Argentina


Luis Burgos, director of his country’s FAO and ICOU research organizations, had a fascinating conversation with Vicente Pedone, a resident of the coastal town of Orense, who remembered being part of a strange experience in the early 1940s, when he held the rank of sergeant with the Buenos Aires Provincial Police.



During the course of their nightly rounds, Pedone and another officer saw a boy running toward them, saying he had just seen a plane crash to the ground, enveloped in fire. Not wasting a second, the two officers hustled the youngster into their patrol car and sped off toward the accident site. But far from the fiery wreckage they expected to see, the policemen were amazed to see “a very strange-disk shaped luminous disk.” Even more perplexing were the figures milling around in the darkness: tall entities wearing self-luminous uniforms that seemed metallic to the onlookers.
Discretion being the better part of valor, Pedone and his comrade decided that a strategic retreat was in order. Their police car, on the other hand, was uncooperative. The engine would not turn over, despite repeated attempts, leaving them at the mercy of the situation.
The object eventually departed, flying low over the surface, and the provincial police officers were able to restart their cruiser, leaving the area post-haste.

“This brought an end to [Mr. Pedone’s] reminiscence,” wrote Burgos, “and it’s a shame that they didn’t stay long enough to witness the final phase of the phenomenon. The next morning, Don Vicente obtained confirmation from NN [the young witness who first reported the incident] that the landing site in Oriente betrayed signs of burned grass. Unfortunately, the police did not verify this on-site. Therefore, only the story told by NN remains the proof of such physical evidence.”

The Caribbean Experience



Dominican UFO researcher Miguel Fiallo had the good fortune to interview the putative witness of UFO event that took place at some point during the years of the First World War but no later than 1920. Mrs. Matos, a resident of Santo Domingo, was convinced that she had seen a UFO “shaped like a portable clay stove - an anafre” moving silently across the star-lit night skies of the Antilles from east to west. The object, described as grayish and noiseless, was also seen by her uncles and cousins. Having nothing to compare it to, the family took the object at face value, but certain that they hadn’t seen one of those “newfangled airplanes”, which had been known in the Dominican Republic since 1911, when Zoilo García built his country’s first airplane, the Poliplano (polyplane).

Another early and compelling case was recorded by Puerto Rican ufologist Sebastián Robiou.

Researchers became aware of the case in 1976, when the news director of the La Gran Cadena radio network based in San Juan (WQBS) received a letter from a woman asking that her name be withheld from publication. The full text of the letter appears in Robiou’s Manifiesto Ovni and we reproduce it here:

Dear Sir: A few weeks ago I read the article Hugo and the Extraterrestrials, appearing in the 13 August edition of the El Nuevo Dia newspaper. I have had several contact experiences with these beings, and your article has prompted me to disclose them. The first of these was a journey aboard one of these vehicles around 1926 or 1927, followed by the presence of these craft in Barrio San Antonio, Caguas, where I lived at the time. On this occasion I heard how a machine employed to send messages was used, and I could not understand them nor made any effort to do so, since I didn’t feel that I was able to do so. The message was then given to me directly while I was lying down. One being, then three others, gave me a message to give to the youth. I never did so due to a lack of confidence on my part, but now, having read Brad Steiger’s Mysteries of Time and Space, I have come to realize that the beings I have seen are exactly the ones he has described. This has prompted me to write to you. I do not wish to disclose my experiences or the message at this time, as I do not seek notoriety or to become known in any way. I therefore ask you to withhold my name. I would be willing to be interviewed by you, should this be of any interest. I believe the message to be pressing and very important. I think it is urgent. It is in the hands of a professor at the University of Puerto Rico.”

Robiou was startled by the formality and elegant handwriting of the eighty-one year old author of the letter, describing her as “one of so many people who claim to have received messages from extraterrestrial sources”.

While there is no further information as to the message or its author, she can lay claim to be among the first – possibly the first – contactee in the Spanish-speaking Americas.

No further unusual activity was reported in the Caribbean skies until four days before the Kenneth Arnold sighting. On June 20, 1947, Mrs. María Ayuso saw a “bright object flying over San Juan, Puerto Rico” at five thirty in the afternoon from the city’s Puerta de Tierra district while in the company of her husband, Dr. Romulo Ayuso. The newspaper item appearing in the July 10, 1947 issue of the El Mundo newspaper reports that “[Mrs. Ayuso] asked her husband to stop their car to have a better look at the strange flying disk. The light it reflected – said the woman – was similar to the reflection of an aluminum pie plate exposed to the sun’s rays.”

Thursday, January 04, 2018

Initial Reports: Argentina's 2018 UFO Flap

Argentina's 2018 UFO Flap appears to be off to a running start.

Wednesday, January 03, 2018

2018: Argentina's Potential UFO Flap



2018: Argentina's Potential UFO Flap

By Luis Burgos

1. The provinces having the highest likelihood of sightings would be: Buenos Aires, Cordoba, La Pampa and Patagonia.
2. The 9 pm to 2 am rule would remain in effect.
3. The highest number of reports would occur during the second half of each month.
4. Evaluations will be conducted according to the Strangeness Index: Low-Average-Good-Very Good - Excellent.
5. While a UFO flap includes high altitude sightings, landings, humanoids, UFO crashes, USOs, photos, videos, etc. the LITS (Lights in the Sky) and "phantom UFO" photographs will not be taken into account so as to avoid engrossing the lists to excess.
6. Finally, we utterly reject the old Psycho-Social Hypotheses which hold that "announcements of forecasts generate false expectations and condition people to see UFOs, as well as the population's willingness to believe and/or see all manner of phenomena during periods of crisis..."

Note: Mr. Burgos alerted us on New Year’s Day that "a veritable fleet of ten objects" had been reported, witnessed by a professional photographer and two friends, who saw the event from the city's downtown area. He also cites a report from Antonio Pérez in the town of Ramos, stating that two unidentified objects had been seen over that community. One of them - a noiseless green and white light - flew at an altitude of 2000 to 2500 feet. "It paused briefly over Hurlingham and then returned whence it came. Seconds later, another white and blue light came in from the west, stopping over Ituzaigo (estimated location) before heading back at some 800-1000 km per hour."

Monday, January 01, 2018

Argentina: Luis Burgos Forecasts a UFO-Active 2018




Argentina: Luis Burgos Forecasts a UFO-Active 2018


“A year of greater UFO activity is forecast throughout the country.”
Article by Sebastián Aranguren for Mas Allá del Misterio (Diario Popular)


A renowned ufologist has stated that 2018 will be a year with greater UFO activity, having its epicenter in the environs of Buenos Aires, Cordoba and the Patagonian region, especially in the summer, where the most striking phenomena will involve "lights" and black flying triangles, among others.

Luis Burgos, who heads the Fundacion Argentina de Ovnilogia (FAO) and Investigadores de Campo OVNI Unidos (ICOU), told Mas Alla del Misterio that the year starting tomorrow will have have many more cases than those recorded in 2016 and 2017.

Burgos's opinion is backed by the Decimal Hypothesis, a working tool developed by the researcher in 1985, upon discovering that a significant portion of mass UFO presences tended to repeat with gaps over time.

Using this consideration as a basis, the expert noted that "the biggest UFO flaps" recorded in the country took place in 1968 and 1978, suggesting that years ending in 8 are prone to phenomena of this sort.

While the years 1988 and 1998 had fewer cases than the two previously mentioned years, UFO activity was "also intense." He admits, however, that in recent years the frequency and quantity of UFO episodes "has been on the decline" as has been the trend of the past two years.

"We are bringing 2017 to a close with only a hundred reports, of which the better known were the hoaxed cases," Burgos declared, reminding us that the UFO phenomenon is "both cyclical and fluctuating" since "the last worldwide flap in 1968."


Stressing his database, which contains over 5500 cases recorded from 1947 to the present, the expert noted that even when he lacked all that information, repetition of UFO manifestations "was clearly visible", which encouraged him to work out the Decimal Hypothesis.

"It's as though the recorded phenomena return, at a given point and time, to the same place," Burgos notes, in the light of a situation that lacks any logical explanation, for the moment, that allows us to solve the equation that may aid us in better understanding the phenomenon.

Expanding on the concept, Burgos detailed that repetition of the phenomena "occurs most assiduously every ten years," giving rise to large flaps. If the one he predicts for 2018 comes about, it would be the eleventh to take place in Argentina since 1947.

While larger waves include the various aspects of the UFO phenomenon, the ICOU member stated that the "luminous and undecipherable points of light are being reported nearly every night and therefore, their presence will continue to stand out."

He assigns a similar likelihood to the black flying triangles. "We have been seeing them regularly in recent years," he maintains, while considering that the setting for such displays during the 2018 UFO wave would be "areas of the province of Buenos Aires, Cordoba and Patagonia."

With the aim of clarifying his explanation, Luis Burgos specified that a UFO flap is understood to be the "entirety of manifestations of all types which take place during a given span of time, whether weeks or months." The ufologist explained that these case histories include the finding of ground traces, sightings in the skies, bolides, mysterious explosions in the atmosphere, automobile or airplane chases and the presence of humanoids. "This does not include fraud and confusions," he added ironically.

[Translation (c) 2017 by Scott Corrales, Institute of Hispanic Ufology]