Geographic Location: Punta Indio is a prospect of Buenos Aires located some 100 km. south of the city of La Plata, the provincial capital, on the eastern bank of the Río de la Plata (River Plate). It has small but peaceful bathing resorts. Fishing is one of the great attractions of the area, which also includes the famous Navy Air Base.
The Mysterious Coastal Area: It was precisely there, in 1965, when its headquarters were under the command of Hugo Frontoth that a series of UFO sightings kept the naval authorities on tenterhooks. The events occurred during the first three months of July, with mysterious echoes located by beans of the GCA approach radar, without any visibility, caused a latent sense of disquiet. Possibly the best-remembered event is the one involving Lt. Federico Machain, who pursued a UFO up to Magdalena in his aircraft. As a result of these events, a special commission and some U.S. experts reported to the facilities in order to supervise the electronic equipment, without detecting any failures or anomalies. The Argentinean Navy, therefore, formalized a UFO INFORMATION OFFICE, official in nature, which would collect everything concerning this subject through forms submitted to witnesses of the sightings. The same was done with radar operators and aviators. Lt. Cmdr. Carlos A. Molteni and his counterpart Hugo Morales, as chief and deputy chief of public relations, respectively, were in charge of the base’s “social aspects”.
While the area is not one of the most visited by UFOs, from a statistical perspective, we have recorded unique episodes over the past five decades throughout the regions, such as in Atalaya, Veronica, Magdalena, Pipinas and Punta Piedras. It was precisely from this last resort that the first reports of UFO landings would be received. In early November 1968, Miguel Angel Fountrier and Hugo Bustamante discovered a strange circle of nine mushrooms, one of them measuring an astounding 70 centimeters (27 in.) in diameter and 30 centimeters (11 in.) tall. But stories involving “evil lights” in those parts go back to midnight on April 3, 1961, according to our files, when a soldier at the base witnessed a luminous object flying past.
The following year, a renowned doctor from La Plata was the protagonist of a striking UFO incident as he was ready to enter his weekend house near Atalaya, only a few meters distant from Route 11. The brilliant light illuminated him from above for several minutes before going off inland. Cases occurred on and off, and we eventually arrive at the year 1983, when a spectacular encounter with a mini-UFO took place (known to researchers as probes or telecaptors or orbs). In the morning of April 5, businessman Jorge Semacendi and his companion Daniel Vera were chased by a small luminous sphere only a few meters away from their car during the drive from Villa Gesell-La Plata.
The bizarre object accompanied them for a few hours over 200 kilometers, finally causing the driver to drive off the road at high speed, jeopardizing their lives. But the most disconcerting event was yet to come. Minutes later they were overtaken by a pickup truck, covered by a cab but without any rear doors, allowing them to look into its interior: they saw a small device, shaped like a flying saucer, briefly illuminated by the headlights of Semacendi’s car. What strange forces were in motion in that area, with such impunity and in the vicinity of the Punta Indio Navy Air Base, the Magdalena C-8 Tank Regiment and the Atalaya Prefecture Detachment? We had collected reports of UFO sightings and landings, and even close encounters of the third kind, such as the one witnessed by a group of La Plata residents, who were returning from a hunting trip in the early 1970s and were able to see from their car a luminous structure some 200 meters from Route 11 in Punta Indio. Short entities beside the object moved around by “hopping like birds”. The witnesses pulled their vehicle to a halt, approached the phenomenon, and one of them, hoping to fire at it with his weapon, found that “something invisible in the environment made them sluggish.” Even so, the small beings were unaware of their presence and remained involved in their tasks, until the hunters finally withdrew from the area.
In the mid-1980s, and based on the reports we were getting, we started investigating the entire coastal area mentioned above. Typical stories emerging from regional folklore were in full bloom: a strange meteorite had fallen in the early years of the century and buried outside Atalaya, around the time when Comet Halley was visible (1910); an incandescent bolide had fallen on the beach in Punta Blanca, igniting a conflagration, but firefighters found nothing when they arrived; luminous formations emerged from the river waters and approached the coastline every so often; frightening manifestations of dwarfish, large-headed and mocking entities; a bicycle rider came across a “white coffin, floating a meter over the ground” one night, scaring to the extent that he dropped his cellphone and ran through barbed wire fences; a soldier from the Atalaya prefect witnessed a “luminous sphere” placing itself near the Detachment radio antenna, and when he approached it and touched it with his rifle, the sphere shattered like a light bulb; a truck driver heading toward the loading docks at Vieytes on Route 36 during early morning hours was approached by three strange, tall individuals, dressed in black and with blond hair, who asked him incoherent questions; a luminous orange portal appeared before a driver on an unimproved road in Magdalena; evil lights of all sizes and forms prowling the fields on the region…
Legends of the Deep
It is well-known to researchers of marine mysteries that the infamous Bermuda Triangle has eleven younger brothers, scattered all over the globe. One of these areas, where magnetic aberrations occur, accompanied by the disappearance of airplanes and surface ships, is located in the Atlantic region near Cape Polonio in the so-called Barra San Juan, facing the Uruguayan coast. Unusual events have taken place there over the years, involving smaller and larger ships as well. Perhaps the most famous of these cases involves the Tacuari, a vessel of Brazilian registry, which vanished during its maiden voyage in the 1970s. Other ships included the Don Guillermo, Juan Traverso, Ciudad de Salto, Australia, El Harino, Estrella de Dia, La Juanita, Yomour, etc. As the old salts might say, the entire area was suddenly accursed.
Article continues tomorrow: Sunday, October 20, 2013