Abductions: The Crucible of Nightmares

While instances of alleged abduction by UFO aliens are rife in North America, they are considerably less prevalent in the Spanish/Portuguese-speaking regions of the world. This is all the more curious considering that one of the earliest cases, and the one most readily memorable, is without question the Antonio Villas-Boas abduction (Brazil, 1952). Its graphic retelling of the victim’s overpowering by helmeted aliens, the oft-mentioned sexual interlude with a space “siren” and the severe physiological aftereffects suffered by Villas-Boas rocked the nascent discipline of ufology to the core. But that was in days long gone by, when UFO abductions involved the physical interference with a single or many humans in a deserted location, usually a rural highway, a desert, or a forest-way before the ubiquitous “Greys” were transporting helpless experiencers through their bedroom walls, inducing pregnancies, and involving them in apparent genetic studies.

Comparative analysts such as T. E. Bullard have pointed out that the abduction phenomenon is largely an American one, with one of every two cases coming out of the U.S. and Canada-half of all abduction experiences are “made in the U.S.A.” This gives us another half distributed around the rest of the planet, and the Spanish-speaking regions of the world certainly have their fair share.

Unfortunately, the importance of abduction research overshadowed conventional encounters with nonhuman entities: the so-called traditional cases, which usually involved a nocturnal encounter by a roadside, the accidental encounter with a landed saucer and its occupants, and other forms of human/nonhuman contact that did not fit into the clearly defined parameters of the abduction phenomenon.

It is perhaps of interest to investigators that this traditional type of case continues to occur, often far beyond our borders. What is the modus operandi of the abductors in these locations? Are there any Greys, Nordics, or other nonhumans involved? Is hypnosis a tool of choice, as it is in North America? We shall examine a number of these cases.

An Abduction Through Meditation?

Puerto Rico, notorious for its intense UFO activity and the depredations of the now-legendary chupacabras, boasts a considerable number of UFO abduction cases. One of these cases stands out among the others due to the possibility that the experiencer’s efforts at meditation “opened up” a path for abducting Greys to enter her life.

Delia V, a housewife with two children, had no idea that her interest in yoga would turn her into an abductee when she and a friend visited a yoga temple in October 1991 to practice meditative techniques. At 7:30 p.m., Delia decided to withdraw from the meditation circle and go to bed early. Once in bed, she felt a hand covering her face. She was unable to see her assailant due to the darkness in the bedroom. It was then that she became aware of the fact that she was flying in mid-air toward a given point in space: buildings, streets, and automobiles remained far below Delia as she drifted upward. Far from feeling elated at the sight, she was paralyzed by fear.

The next thing she remembers is being back in bed at the yoga temple at five o’clock in the morning, feeling sick to her stomach and racked by excruciating pain. Stumbling out of her room, she told the meditation instructor what had happened, and he advised her to simply return to sleep, which she did. Reawakening at noon, not only did she feel physically better, her entire outlook on life had been changed, by her own admission.

During the following months, some physical changes had also come about as a consequence of that unusual night: Her menstrual cycle now ran every 50 days or so, and her stomach became slightly enlarged.

A subsequent event revealed the UFO connection to her experiences: Shortly after seeing a brilliant craft in the sky, she found herself standing in a metallic chamber occupied by a dozen or so very small, nonhuman beings clad in gray. Delia remembers lying on a bed, screaming and crying, telling one of the bizarre figures that she could not give normal birth to the child she was carrying because her other children had been born by Caesarean section. “When I woke up,” Delia says, “I saw one of the extraterrestrials with a child in his arms. When I saw this child something deep inside me told me he was my child, but I also remember being afraid. I remember telling one of the extraterrestrials that I considered this child strange, because he was half-human and half-extraterrestrial.” Delia was then given the child to hold, and was told by the creatures that it could not live among humans because it could not eat human food.

Delia’s case echoes the hundreds of abduction experiences collected by U.S. investigators. It has been observed that Puerto Rican abduction cases have a stronger environmental content to them than those on the mainland. Experiencers are imparted messages of ecological importance and cases involving hybridization are few. The modus operandi of the abductors remains slightly behind the times-the controversial Amaury Rivera case (1988) involved interference with the experiencer’s vehicle. Other cases in which humans in lonely areas or alone at a late hour have been victims of abductions are also on file.

Assaulted by Aliens

Books and magazine articles dealing with the very real perils, both mental and physical, suffered by experiencers of the UFO phenomenon are commonplace today. Distinguished ufologists such as David Jacobs openly state that the involvement of nonhuman intelligences in human events may not be so sanguine as many had firmly believed in earlier decades-that UFO occupants were here to help us take the next evolutionary step or eventually render assistance in solving humanity’s most pressing problems. The eerie experience of a hapless Mexican ceramics technician should have given researchers early warning when it occurred more than twenty years ago.

In 1972, researchers Jorge Reichert and Salvador Freixedo looked into the experiences of Heriberto Garza, who allegedly had repeated encounters with otherworldly entities. Garza, a tall slender man who lived in the city of Puebla with his only son, had been unwilling to go public with his paranormal experiences for fear of being ostracized by the conservative residents of his community.

His experience began as he was getting ready to go to bed one night. After turning off the light and getting between the sheets, he heard an unusual noise in the living room. Fearing that a break-in was in progress, he promptly went to investigate and was surprised to find a tall man with distinguished, almost feminine facial features. Taken aback, Garza demanded to know how this figure had entered his apartment. The entity told him in perfect Spanish that it could obviate physical obstacles and go where it pleased-but the reason for its visit was to grant Heriberto Garza “an experience that many would wish to have.” His involvement with creatures from an improbable world known as Auko was about to begin.

Garza claimed to have subsequently been taken aboard a spacecraft, where he met other beings similar in appearance to his original contact. One alien took his left hand and drew blood from his ring finger before returning him to his apartment, a return trip which he did not remember. He suddenly found himself sitting on an easy chair back home, with the door to the outside hallway open.

Strange phenomena began to occur soon after this experience. One morning, while shaving in front of the bathroom mirror, Garza saw his reflection vanish, only to reappear as he heard alien voices ringing in his ears, bearing a message that he was unable to understand. He would soon be subjected to intense telepathic communication with his nonhuman “friends,” the consequences of which led him to seek psychiatric advice.

During a follow-up visit with researcher Ian Norris, Reichert was perplexed by the change in Heriberto Garza’s demeanor. The once-articulate man spoke sluggishly and did not appear to be himself. At one point, Garza said: “I want to show you what is happening to me” and proceeded to unbutton his shirt. The researchers were astounded to see a number of nipples growing randomly across Garza’s abdomen, some of them small, others larger and with abundant hair. Reichert and Freixedo concluded that something had been injected into Garza that tampered with his DNA. Detailed study of the case became impossible when the experiencer “disappeared.” Visitors to the humble apartment building in Puebla were angrily turned away by Garza’s son, whose father appears to have become an early casualty of tampering by uncaring nonhuman forces.

The Insanity Rap

Luis Ramírez Reyes may not be one of Mexico’s most visible UFO researchers, but he is certainly one of the more thoughtful ones to have emerged from that country’s rich ufological tradition. A journalist and radio announcer, Ramírez’s nondoctrinaire position has made him accessible to individuals who would have otherwise chosen to remain silent.

This was precisely the case with a young man known only as “Pedro,” who made an appointment to meet with the distinguished author one day to tell him his story.

During a weekend in December 1988, Pedro and a friend had gone to play an early morning game of tennis at the clay courts facing a large auto assembly plant on the outskirts of Mexico City. While waiting for other colleagues to join them, the two men suddenly felt that “the sun was rising behind them.” Turning around, they were astonished by the sight of a descending circular vehicle that radiated formidable amounts of white light, illuminating the entire area. The saucer-shaped craft touched down on a nearby field.

Suppressing a strong urge to flee, Pedro and his companion forced themselves to remain and see what further incredible developments would occur. Their courage and patience were rewarded with a glimpse of two creatures, clad in tight-fitting gray outfits and standing about four feet tall. Pedro added that “the creatures didn’t look like you ufologists describe them,” indicating that their heads had normal proportions, with small mouths and noses and slanted eyes.

Pedro estimated that the riveting experience lasted some twenty minutes, after which the diminutive aliens returned to their craft, which rose into the air and disappeared “like they do in the cartoons.”

The friends decided not to speak further about the matter. The following day, Pedro returned to his job at the car assembly factory feeling confused and dejected. He told investigator Ramírez that he feared that his coworkers would take him for “a lunatic or a drug user” if he related his story.

While carrying out his duties, the UFO witness was suddenly gripped by unexplained seizures, convulsing on the assembly line. He was whisked off to a medical facility, where the doctor on duty decided to send him to a psychiatrist, given that Pedro “ranted about aliens during his seizures.”

The psychiatrist decided that, while he could find nothing wrong with Pedro, his disclosures of the sighting and the aliens might indicate schizophrenia. The hapless experiencer was sent to a mental health facility, where he claims he was injected with a substance that made him “look like a nut,” thereby making it easier for everyone around him to dismiss him as hopelessly insane. Despite the drug’s influence, Pedro tried telling his parents that he wasn’t crazy, but he was not believed.

The UFO witness was cast into an insane asylum, where he witnessed the most atrocious abuse of the inmates by their keepers. One of the asylum’s orderlies suspected that Pedro was clearly not insane, and told him to “behave like a paranoid” to avoid further problems during his stay at the institution.

Fortunately for Pedro, his companion at the tennis court had chosen to disclose the UFO experience in its entirety, despite having promised to conceal it. This ultimately proved to be the key that secured Pedro’s release from the mental health facility.

“But upon my release,” he told Ramírez, who included the harrowing experience in his book Contacto: México (1997). “I was still not free from criticism by my fellows. People clearly did not believe me or my friend, to the extent that I was refused employment in [the car assembly plant] or in other area factories.”

The Importance of Ancestry

Rolando Quiroga Valero, age 51, of the town of Allende, not far from Monterrey, told his story of repeated alien abduction to a spellbound audience on a segment of a Miami-based talk show. “There are daily sightings over my hometown,” Quiroga observed laconically, “but no one cares.”

Quiroga’s first contact took place in 1950. He was with a group of friends in Monterrey when he saw a discoidal craft hovering over his head at about 50 meters distance (some 160 feet). He was partially paralyzed by the vehicle, which emitted a soft, orange light and produced a quiet whistling sound. He perceived beings watching him from the disk. His friends ran away.

The following year he had another contact experience, seeing a UFO cross the skies over Allende. Twenty-four years later, he began to have strange, unbidden thoughts, which led him to fear for his state of mental health. He was soon able to hear a powerful male voice instructing him to “love all human beings.” (It is curious to observe that the standard 1950s contactee message of peace and love continues to play a prominent role in these Latin American cases).

Quiroga believes that he was chosen because of his Mayan heritage; his alien contacts have hinted that the key to the UFO mystery lies in man’s deciphering of the Mayan hieroglyphs. His first physical encounter came about in 1972, when he was “sanitized” by a ray of light and allowed into the presence of his hosts, who were “paranoid” about terrestrial viruses. These putative aliens died of heart complications, and had a 130-year life span, although they did not physically age beyond some 40 human years. The message entrusted to this Mexican contactee is a simple one, and it has been the cornerstone of all the messages given to contactees in the Spanish-speaking world: Earth is changing, whether we like it or not. There will be a natural, not a man-made, disaster in the future which will change the tilt of the planet’s axis. Humans must evolve in order to survive. Ominously, Quiroga was also told that out of the many “alien races” that are visiting our world, only six are friendly toward the human race.

Perhaps more amazing than their monotonous message is the fact that Quiroga claims having been taken aboard a vehicle, where he underwent prostate and heart surgery. The contactee’s physician was amazed at the improvement in his patient’s condition, and was turned from skeptic into believer by what his eyes and instruments told him. Communications with the ufonauts have not ceased: Quiroga was warned of the earthquake that rocked Mexico City in 1985 two years ahead of time. “Their predictions,” he says, “are usually of a negative nature.”

The Darker Side

Not all experiencers find their hosts as sanguine as Mr. Valero’s. The casebooks of Latin American researchers are filled with incidents in which malice and hostility played a significant role in the abduction. Dr. Rafael A. Lara, director of Mexico’s Centro de Estudios de Fenémenos Paranormales (CEFP), includes in his organization’s newsletter the experiences of Adriana Martínez, a woman who has experienced meddling in her life by forces purportedly linked with the UFO phenomenon.

Ms. Martínez’s experiences began when she was only a teenager. A large ball of glowing red light materialized in her bedroom at night. Due to her strict Catholic upbringing, she knew that such displays were associated with unwholesome forces. The “fireballs,” as she termed them, seemed to herald the awakening of her own psychic abilities, and the distressing phenomenon disappeared as she became older.

Years later, when she was living in McAllen, Texas, a friend told her to run outside to see a UFO, although she wasn’t the least bit curious about such things. Complying with the request, she saw the strange, glowing light, and soon afterward began to experience auditive communication with an alleged entity that claimed to be “her father.” A luminous being appearing in a dream told her that she would get to see this paternal figure if she went to a location in a small Mexican town-Tepoztlán, now a center of “New Age” interest-where a UFO display would be staged for her benefit.

On September 7, 1983, at ten o’clock at night, a light started to appear. In Ms. Martínez’s own words: “I leaped to the hotel window: above the hill there was a hamburger-shaped UFO, perfectly motionless, and it remained so for two hours. The power was going on and off all over the town. I later thought to make a triangle shape with my hands to communicate with the UFO, and they responded, since three red lights on the UFO assumed a triangular shape momentarily while green, yellow, and red navigation lights flew around the craft. Sounds like dull explosions could be heard coming from within the UFO while its lights became brighter. I went to the bathroom and told my friend that they were going to send her a light, and that she should not be frightened. A bright beam issued from the UFO aimed directly at the hotel window, right next to my friend. It was so powerful that all the lights went out in Tepoztlán.”

The entity with whom she had engaged in mental communication began to make demands upon her, such as that she must divorce her husband or become a widow, informing her that he had no qualms about eliminating anyone that stood in his path. While Ms. Martínez considered what to do, her husband had a terrible accident on the highway. Allegedly, the entity asked her if that demonstration of his power sufficed or if further proof were necessary.

Bitterly, she now believes that “contact is mere manipulation toward an end known only to them. They have given me no help whatsoever, and what they have done for me, according to them, has been very unpleasant.” She adds: “I see that many contactees allow themselves to be manipulated without ever knowing where they’re going or allow themselves to be dazzled by small manifestations…of course, once the contactee is hooked, there is no escape, and you accept your fate by hook or crook. I have rebelled terribly, but there is no escape but to fulfill their plans.”

It is neither sensationalistic nor exploitive to dwell on these aspects when the aim is to provide the reader with all the facts rather than capriciously worded summaries of events. Not even the most hardened contactee or channeler can dispute the unwholesomeness of Heriberto Garza’s metamorphosis. Eminent authors of the field, such as Keel, Steiger, Vallée, Freixedo, Creighton and many others have cautioned us about this darker side for decades.

Saucers in Spain

Spain’s first recorded UFO abduction was that of Próspera Muñoz in 1947 on the outskirts of Jumilla, a town in the southern province of Murcia, well known as a wine-producing region. While on a farm belonging to one of her uncles, Muñoz and her sister witnessed the presence of a “circular automobile” from which descended two diminutive, large-headed beings who cautioned the girls that very same night “they would return for one of them.”

The little aliens made good on their threat and took Próspera to an enormous disk-shaped craft, where she was examined by the occupants and allegedly had a “micro device inserted into her neck.” The Muñoz experience, which was not made known until 30 years later, would simply be the introduction to a number of cases involving contact between humans and supposedly nonhuman entities in the Iberian Peninsula.

Fernando Martínez (an alias given him by researcher Manuel Carballal), an electrician from the city of La Coruña in northwestern Spain, never believed that a weekend of motocrossing on his freshly overhauled dirt bike would have ended in an abduction experience.

Sometime in late October 1986, Fernando drove his bike out to an abandoned stone quarry near Culleredo. Around 9:00 p.m., he suddenly became aware of a “star moving in the sky.” The light became larger and larger until it became the size of a full moon. The astonished electrician noticed that the sphere disgorged a number of smaller, orange-colored triangular craft-one of which initiated a rapid descent toward the abandoned quarry.

Realizing his predicament in a flash, Fernando tried to kick-start his dirt bike in vain, even though it had been running perfectly earlier. The UFO was now a large object, some 30 feet wide, hovering over the surface. In the face of the phenomenon, the electrician got off the dirt bike and sat on the ground, waiting to see what would happen next.

Fernando remembers a powerful beam of light emanating from the orange triangle, and two beings descending along the trail of light. The creatures were small and large-headed. They approached Fernando silently, guiding him toward the base of the hovering triangle. Fernando claims to have not felt any fear at the time. No effort at communication was made by his captors.

The next thing he realized was that he stood in a large chamber in which a third being, identical to the other two, came out to meet him, projecting reassuring telepathic messages. He remembers being placed in a horizontal position and feeling pain in one of his arms.

His next conscious memory was that of lying on the gravel of the quarry in Culleredo. The dirt bike now worked perfectly, and the confused electrician made his way home. Two hours of his life were inexplicably unaccounted for.

Seldom does a UFO investigator get to see an unexplained celestial phenomenon that he or she can classify as a UFO with any degree of certainty. Even rarer are the occasions when an investigator manages to get a terrifying glimpse of alien intruders.

In 1991, researcher Josep Guijarro traveled from his home in Barcelona to the island of Gran Canaria (largest of the Canary archipelago) as part of a continuing investigation into the experiences of Judith, a nurse at one of Gran Canaria’s hospitals, who had undergone a number of abduction episodes. Her first experience had occurred the previous summer, when she drove into a dense fog bank in her Renault and was found unconscious at the wheel the following morning by another motorist. Subsequent experiences included a number of disturbing “bedroom visitations” by supposedly alien entities.

Guijarro and Judith worked out a plan by which they would try to catch one of these unknown quantities at work: the ufologist would sleep in a bedroom next to that of the experiencer and would try to document “the source of her phobias.”

“That night,” Guijarro writes in his book Infiltrados (Sangrila, 1992), “Judith and I spoke until well into the night, when suddenly her pet dog stood to attention and the TV set’s volume control began increasing and decreasing of its own accord. We exchanged a knowing look. When everything appeared to have calmed down, we began hearing the sound of chanting. I cannot deny that I began to feel scared. With a look of fear still etched on my face, I suggested that we go to straightaway. If the Visitors existed, if they were not a figment of our imaginations, this night had all the makings for catching one.”

Ufologist and experiencer vanished into their separate chambers. The former readied his camera and tape recorder, lying down in bed with his eyes firmly glued to the open doorway, expecting something to happen. In the darkness, Guijarro claims having heard all manner of creaking and squealing sounds, which he attributed to the structure of the house. At around 3:00 a.m., the dog began to howl and steps could be heard on the staircase.

“It was then that I saw it with stunning tranquility,” Guijarro writes. “The outline of a short creature with a large head had just gone past my bedroom’s doorway. My reaction to it was equally surprising-I made no movements whatsoever beyond taking a deep breath and falling asleep.”

The following day, the ufologist told Judith about his experiences, realizing that while he may have worked himself into a highly suggestible state, that night he had lived the anguishing experience that affected not only his present subject, but tens of thousands of others worldwide.

Aside from the obvious fact of having “witnessed” what could have been one of the large-headed Greys, Josep Guijarro’s account is significant due to the occurrence of high strangeness phenomena bordering on the paranormal: the fluctuations in the television set’s volume control, the defensive attitude of the household pet and its subsequent howling, and the unnerving sound of “chanting” which prompted both individuals to retire to their rooms-incidents that should give boosters of the ETH (extraterrestrial hypothesis) food for thought.

Skepticism and Reluctance Still Rule

While the abductions of humans by superhuman forces of varying descriptions appear to obey the same mechanisms worldwide, there has been little support for abductees in Latin America or Spain. A growing number of medical and scientific figures have emerged as champions for the cause, but abduction experiences, as opposed to UFO cases, are met with a greater skepticism that borders on harshness in the Spanish-speaking countries. During a convention of mental-health-care professionals held in Spain in 1990, a psychiatrist was asked to give his expert opinion on perfectly normal individuals who insisted on having experienced contact with alien creatures. “They’re psychotic,” the man declared cuttingly. “Anyone who sees things that don’t exist is psychotic.”

In a report prepared on the case for alien abductions in Spain, analyzing a dozen cases from 1947 to 1979 in which abduction by aliens was an issue, veteran researcher Vicente Juan Ballester Olmos points out: “This systematic review of abduction reports has disclosed that all cases can be reasonably explained in terms which do not defy present-day knowledge…it should be emphasized that the resolution of these cases in terms of hoax, delusion, or psychosis has been proposed by dedicated UFO researchers, not by debunkers or dogmatic skeptics; consequently, it is unrealistic to suggest that the interpretations are biased.”

In spite of the appearance of very important books on the subject of abductions written in Spanish, namely Manuel Carballal’s Secuestrados por los Ovnis (Abducted by UFOs) and Josep Guijarro’s Infiltrados (The Infiltrators), neither one has had the success of Budd Hopkins’ Missing Time or any one of Whitley Strieber’s works. Few Latin American and Spanish psychiatrists have expressed a willingness to handle patients who claim to have been victims of alien abductions (there are notable exceptions, such as Puerto Rico’s Manuel Méndez del Toro and the late Francsico Rovatti in Spain), and there is a reticence on the percipients’ part to come forward with their experiences.