Skeptics will inevitably – perhaps even correctly – argue that hapless Nora Suarez fell through a poorly covered mining pit or a crack in the ground, not into another dimension or whisked away by unfriendly non-humans covetous of young females. But during northern Chile’s Chupacabras epidemic in the summer of 2000, researchers discovered that there had been an unusual increase in reports of missing young women from the mining communities that found themselves besieged by the paranormal predator. The official explanation involved “white slavery”, but it nonetheless prompted author Ramon Navia Osorio of Spain’s I.I.E.E. organization to write: “All of these disappearances took place in Iquique, in the northern reaches of the Atacama Desert, where the [Chupacabras] attacks commenced. Assuming that a band of human traffickers was involved, it would be more logical for them to behave more discreetly and not operate in the same area constantly. We must bear in mind that the entity has always expressed a preference for females, and if they are pregnant, so much the better...whenever this subject is brought up for discussion, I am reminded of the case of the young woman from Gavá (Barcelona, Spain) who vanished in broad daylight not far from the town’s only police station, and as she walked behind two young men. A year after her disappearance, her parents asked why we associated their daughter’s disappearance with the UFO phenomenon. Upon explaining the elements that come into play under such circumstances, including some of a meteorological nature, the parents were reminded of a particular incident. They had kept the circumstance to themselves,as it was incomprehensible and illogical. The forces that we are at war with are always present, and appear to have an intelligence that employs camouflage as a quotidian device (my italics). Time has shown that this has served them well and they continue to make use of it, due to human intransigence, which avoids facing reality, because it feels afraid....” (Navia, Ramon. La Verdad Oculta, IIEE, 2005).

As this disturbing passage from La Verdad Oculta has unwittingly taken us from South America to Spain, let us examine a case involving the disappearance of a young celebrity – a gifted youth named David Guerrero, remembered to this day as el niño pintor (the artist child).

Had David Guerrero not entered the chronicles of high strangeness, he would have certainly gone on to become one of Europe’s talented young visual artists. Thirteen years old, an introverted loner with a spectacular gift for drawings and paintings, David lived in the Spanish city of Malaga with his parents and older brother, who also shared his love of the paintbrush. On April 6, 1987, David Guerrero left his home to visit the La Maison art gallery where one of his works was going to be exhibited (an image of Christ). At 6 p.m. on that fateful day, the young artist left his building to walk the hundred or so meters that separated him from the bus stop from which he would travel to the downtown atelier.

But David never reached the exhibit that evening, and he never returned home.

As could well be expected, a massive police search ensued. Relatives and classmates were grilled for answers, all of the spots where a putative criminal could have disposed of a body were searched to no avail. Some theories suggested that the young genius had deceived his parents and gone off to a rendezvous elsewhere; even more bold theories posited the likelihood that he had been abducted by an international ring of art forgers, interested in putting his talents at their service. The only possible suspect in the case, an elderly Swiss gentleman who had been lodged in a hotel in Malaga at the time, died two years later. Twenty years have elapsed since el niño pintor vanished without a trace, and no satisfactory explanation has ever been put forth. However, Salvador Freixedo suggests the intriguing and otherworldly possibility that the non-human djinn – creatures of Islamic tradition occupying a level between humans and angels – may have spirited the boy away. “Faced with such strange and terrifying circumstances, as they are to the human race, we must be filled with wonder at the fact that centuries ago, other cultures and civilizations had already become aware of this and set it down in writing. It matters not at all how they passed judgment on it, or what names they gave the culprits. What is important is that they were aware of it, while our technological civilization has not yet become aware of this alarming situation,” writes Freixedo. “The explanation they gave it then is the same one we seek to give it now: that non-human entities endeavor to kidnap human beings, especially children, to places unknown and for reasons equally unknown.”