Teleportation is not exclusive to flyers. According to a case researched by Drs. Nelson Berlanda, Luis Reynoso and Juan Acevedo, a family bearing the apparently unlucky surname of Vidal vanished from the road that connects the towns of Cipolletti and Viedma on February 10, 1995 only to find themselves in the vicinity of General Conesa, 15 km of their original destination.

Juan and María Angélica Vidal, accompanied by their teenage son Julio and an unnamed nephew remember having stopped at a service station on Highway 3 to fill up their “Traffic” passenger van before resuming their drive. Shortly after, they pulled over on the side of the road to see the lights of the nearby port of San Antonio Oeste. But something unexpected happened: all of the vehicles occupants fell asleep at once – uncharacteristic behavior for them, according to Juan Vidal, as one of them would always stay awake. Maria Angelica added that she wasn’t given to taken naps during trips, either.

Yet sleep they did, for an hour and a half. Upon waking, Maria Angelica prepared her husband a hot cup of “mate” (Argentina’s national beverage) and told him about the strange dream she’d just had: odd people dressed in white, who she described as “small children with Asian features and long fingers” were touching her and laughing, but at no point did she feel afraid.

But when Juan looked out the window, he realized that they were no longer on the side of the road, parked under tall trees: they were in the middle of an unknown, empty field. “Where are we?” he asked his wife nervously. The nephew was just waking from sleep and reportedly said: “Uncle, this isn’t where we stopped.”

Mr. Vidal set the van in motion amid the consternation of his passengers. Only minutes later they saw a sign that read: “General Conesa – 15 km.” Bemusedly, the Vidals realized they had somehow, in their sleep, gone from Highway 3 to Route 251, backtracking some 90 kilometers that they could not account for.

Attesting to the family’s physical condition, Dr. Berlanda, a clinician, and Acevedo, a psychiatrist, performed a variety of tests and hypnosis to obtain more details on Maria Angélica’s “dream”, in which family members had been removed one by one from the van. The new Vidal case was of great interest and importance to these researchers, given that nearly a dozen UFO cases had taken in that area between 1994 and 1995. Only thirteen days prior to the Vidal family’s teleportation, UFOs had been photographed in Las Grutas, only a few kilometers away from the port of San Antonio Oeste.

Vanishing Children

Chile, Argentina’s neighbor on the other side of the mighty Andes, has also been the scene of perplexing disappearances that while not immediately associated with UFOs or the paranormal, certainly result in invitable associations due to that country’s extensive chronicles involving unexplained lights, monsters and high strangeness situations. On July 10, 2003, the city of Calama’s La Estrella del Loa newspaper ran a story on the deserted mining camp of Pampa Unión in the country’s unearthly northern deserts.

“One of the most chilling and still-unsolved ones,” reads the article, “was experienced by Nora Suarez when she spent a day in this settlement in the company of her sister Mireya and their relatives. In the blink of an eye, Mireya walked away from the family group, causing concern among them and prompting them to search for her. Despite their best efforts, Mireya was never seen again among the ruined walls of Pampa Unión. Her mysterious disapperance is an unsolved mystery that has many incredible details. The case reached the law courts, before which any and all who might have something to say about the matter were summoned to appear. However, all those called by the court to testify in the girl's disappearance died under unexplained circumstances without ever telling their stories. The family has made heroic efforts to unravel the bizarre situation that has remained unsolved for so many years. Nora Suarez has even appealed to Carabineros (state police) and television broadcasters in the search for her missing sister.

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