LEGENDARY UFO CASES FROM LATIN AMERICA – PART II

The all-time Chilean classic case is the hair-raising (and beard growing) experience suffered by army corporal Armando Valdés Garrido. In the bitterly cold early morning hours of April 25, 1977, a military patrol of the Rancagua regiment led by Corporal Valdés and composed of soldiers Julio Rosas, Ivan Rojas, Pedro Rosales, Humberto Rojas, Germán Valle and Raúl Salinas, had decided to camp in a rocky, desolate area in the Andean foothills. a few miles east of the city of Putre.
 
One of the soldiers, who had been assigned sentry duty, rushed back to the corporal to inform him that a red light was hovering above a nearby peak. Suspecting that contrabandists may be at work, Valdés ordered his platoon to ready weapons and extinguish the campfire–their only source of warmth in the near-zero weather. The soldiers moved out toward the source of the purplish-red light, realizing in a matter of seconds that they weren’t dealing with illegal activity or lost mountaineers. The light was moving down the hillside, but not on its surface. 
 
If you missed Part I of this article: https://www.ufodigest.com/article/legendary-ufo-case-1204
 
Having complained earlier about the frigid temperature, the soldiers were stunned to discover that it was actually getting warmer as the light grew closer, turning into giant oval-shaped object which bathing them in its purplish-red glow.
 
The object landed some fifty feet away, swathed in a violet fog that stood out in stark contrast to the surrounding darkness. This was enough to cause panic among the young conscripts, but they found themselves unable to move. Weapon in hand, the corporal ventured forward alone into the unearthly fog, adding later that he felt attracted by something within the luminosity, and was standing no farther than nine feet away from his men when the purplish light engulfed him. The corporal stated for the record that his only recollection of the event was a dreamlike vision of falling down a deep well or chasm. He was also left with a feeling that he would meet again with the strange presence.
 
The truly amazing part of the story follows: the leaderless platoon witnessed the corporal’s unexplained reappearance some fifteen minutes later, when they heard him calling for help. Valdés gave the appearance of having been drugged; his normally clean-shaven face showed dense beard, and his calendar wristwatch indicated that the time was 6:30 a.m. on the 30th of April, when it was still in fact 4:25 a.m. on the 25th. By all indications, the hapless military man had undergone a five-day sojourn in some unknown region of time and space. Hypnotic regression, which would ordinarily have been the procedure of choice in unlocking the “missing time”, was expressly forbidden by the Chilean military. Medical specialists agreed that Valdés’s panic at the ordeal, as well as the unknown radiation he had been subjected to, could have accelerated the growth of his facial hair, but no explanation was forthcoming about what had happened to his wristwatch.
 
Argentinean parapsychologist Antonio Las Heras conducted further research into the Valdés Case, as it came to be known, following a television appearance on Santiago’s Channel 13, where he formed part of a panel with an aeronautical engineer and an astrophysicist who supported the corporal’s claim. A few days prior to Las Heras’ arrival in Chile, the Chilean Army had issued a communiqué confirming that Corporal Valdés and his platoon had come face to face with an unidentified phenomenon. The communiqué also added that the protagonists of the case had been forbidden to comment on the incident until military authorities had issued a final verdict. After conducting his own research, Las Heras felt that a solution to the mystery was in hand.
 
According to the parapsychologist, both the media and amateur investigators alike mistakenly suggested that the corporal had spent five days within a UFO, while only fifteen minutes had elapsed for the terrified onlookers. Las Heras posits that the corporal’s digital timepiece “went crazy” upon entering the purple haze, probably as a result of electromagnetic fields emanating from the object. The digital watch was affected for a given period of time, finally stopping at a random time. In short, Valdés disappeared for only fifteen minutes, since his wristwatch had stopped shortly before his disappearance.
 
Las Heras challenged the theory that a space-time alteration took place, since exactly the opposite to what would be expected of any travel at relativistic speed is what happened: Valdés, the subject of the ordeal, was the one who aged, whereas the onlookers remained the same. According to the theory of relativity, the soldiers should have aged at least fifteen minutes, while the corporal should not have aged at all. On the other hand, Las Heras entirely agreed with the somatic explanation for the sudden growth of the corporal’s beard.
 
A flood of sensationalistic information followed the Valdés Case: it was alleged that the corporal had shouted at the UFO: “Go! In the name of God, leave this place!” as if he were a country bumpkin facing a ghost; the local UFO press claimed that the corporal had been given a “message” by the vehicle’s occupants. These, and other details, also proved untrue. Perhaps a 2010 release by Patricio Abuselme Hoffman – “Los centinelas de la noche” (The Night Sentries), covering the entire Valdés Case, will provide some long awaited answers.
 
After crisscrossing Chilean skies for decades, UFO activity dwindled in later decades down to a few unimportant sightings. According to an article from the EFE news agency, more than 400 confirmed sightings took place in the years before 1990. However, the period running from 1990 through 1994 has remained quiet. Not even the truck drivers who cross the Atacama Desert–the driest in the world, with a unique topography that resembles that of the moon on a starry night–have witnessed any sightings worthy of public attention.
 
In November 1990, a woman from a small community some 450 kilometers to the north of Santiago was violently awakened by a loud noise while an intense light, as bright as the Sun’s, poured into her bedroom. The woman stated that she was filled with dread when she noticed a figure no more than 115 cm. tall standing at the door. It had very large eyes and ears and its skin was illuminated by a strong violet light (perhaps the same “purple haze” that engulfed Armando Valdés Garrido in 1977?).
 
One of the most spectacular of the cases befell a Chilean who revealed in August 1990 that 12 years earlier, in the middle of the antipodal winter and while traveling in his old car some 1000 km south of Santiago, he had had sexual relations with an extraterrestrial female.
 
Gaspar H.H., who was 66 years old at the time of his revelation, attained global notoriety when he told a major newspaper in the Chilean capital that he had been inside a spaceship for four hours and managed to establish telepathic communication with its occupants. Later on, he was placed on a bed that adapted to the contour of his body while skin samples were drawn. The ufonauts threw water on him to “decontaminate” him, after which sex with an extraterrestrial woman took place. 
 
On October 8, 1994 a forest ranger in the Torres del Paine National Park, located in the Magallanes region, was allegedly chased by a gigantic UFO that hovered in the sky. The forest ranger, who has spent eighteen years in this particular park, was conducting a routine inspection when an enigmatic, spherical artifact that gave off a powerful beam of light surprised him.
 
Visibly upset, the ranger began a frantic race back to the Paso de la Muerte Shelter, some 17 kilometers away. He was pursued the entire distance by the object, which emitted “flashes of light”. After gaining the shelter’s safety, he was able to alert some comrades, who observed the UFO moving away at a high rate of speed. A driver identified as Arturo Cofre corroborated the forest ranger’s testimony, stating that he had also witnessed the giant sphere over the so-called Cuernos del Paine. Carmen Salvat, an employee of the Hotel Explora, claimed to have seen a large luminous sphere moving in a northerly direction as it gave out potent red and violet flashes. As a final note, a tourist who wishes to remain anonymous (along with the forest ranger) said that the device managed to land, turning off all its lights before taking to the skies once more. 
 
Visit Scott’s website: THE JOURNAL OF THE INSTITUTE OF HISPANIC UFOLOGY (IHU)
 

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