Excerpt:
"Reports of unidentified flying objects (UFOs) in Venezuela have long stirred controversy within the South American history of ufology. From the declassified files on the Children of Falcón in 1910—who displayed strange precognitive behavior after a Close Encounter—to the UFO that crashed in Petare in 1954, whose official explanation failed to convince the press; and to the recurrent sightings over major cities; all the way to the alleged aerial confrontation between the Armed Forces and an unknown craft drifting over the desolate mountains of Maracay during Operation Red Light. The study of anomalous aerial phenomena—and the question of whether we are alone in the universe—continues to provoke uneasy debate among the nation’s academic circles.
Since the land’s founding as territory of the Spanish Crown—christened Tierra de Gracia by Columbus during his passage along the Orinoco, and later renamed Venezziola (“Little Venice”) by Amerigo Vespucci—the Captaincy General of Venezuela was established as a province of the Empire. Its later proclamation as an independent republic, the ensuing federal wars that bled the nation dry, the discovery of the world’s largest oil reserve, and the political sabotage that eventually turned the country into a failed state… all have made this Caribbean land a persistent hotspot of unusual activity. Especially the Catatumbo region, whose unique geography creates the planet’s largest permanent storm zone; and the Maracay highlands, whose wasteland was the epicenter of native legends about floating lights and expeditions lost in search of the White King. These documents, written by royal scribes three centuries ago, survived the upheavals of the Bolivarian Campaign, and scholars of ufological chronicles have long debated whether Venezuelan territory may be a meeting point—or landing site—for starships and beings beyond human comprehension.
In 1798, the monarchical system governed by Captain General Pablo Morrillo, sent from Spain to rule, received correspondence from peninsular and creole leaders in the western provinces warning of fiery spheres flying over the Lanterns of San Antonio—an ancient name for the Catatumbo Lightning: “Each night, white orbs buzz across the heavens like immense fire-flies… The lightning throbs like an Indigenous god, angered by the arrogance of our ships, punishing the lake with an eternal storm.” Witnesses described formations of lights descending into Lake Maracaibo at dawn, and regional authorities conducted inquiries in the province of Montenegro, investigating tales of marriage rituals with these otherworldly apparitions.
During the convulsions of the stubborn republic and the dissolution of Gran Colombia, the military strongmen who seized conservative power received countless reports across fifty years: sudden fires consuming plantation fields attributed to the supposed “descent of luminaires”—wrongly blamed on escaped slaves—and the seizure of nighttime travelers along the roads of the East by the so-called “Apparitions of the Black Plains.” Close Encounters in the Catatumbo region became the most thoroughly documented of that era—nearly a century’s worth of peculiar engravings survive. Newspapers warned of corsairs and phantom ships roaming Lake Maracaibo and vanishing within storms of lightning, often crewed by luminous beings whose presence alone blinded onlookers, as though emitting a harmful, searing radiation.
A second UFO wave struck the country with the political consolidation of Juan Vicente Gómez: unifying a fractured nation of empowered warlords; and with President Cipriano Castro’s 1905 Mining Law, which opened the land to foreign exploitation and led to the discovery of the world’s largest oil reserve—marked by the 1922 blowout of the Barroso II well at La Rosa field. Popular lore claims it rained black for hours after the drill struck the reservoir. Ufologists believe that hypothetical extraterrestrial visitors understand our planet’s condition more intimately than we imagine.
One of the most significant events in Venezuelan ufological history occurred in 1910, with alleged contact from an intergalactic civilization in a desert hamlet of Falcón known as Santa Teresa de la Espina—founded atop an abandoned Indigenous monument long before the conquest. On Christmas Eve, a blinding light shook the artisan village near the Coro Isthmus and its shifting sand banks… waking the villagers from their holiday feast only to discover that all the children had vanished from their beds. Panic spread among the parents—especially since, on previous nights, the children had claimed that beings of light revealed to them the secrets of the universe in their dreams. According to a later El Nacional chronicle, the comet-like lights crossed the village toward the megalithic structure where the children played: a series of triangular blocks aligned around a truncated six-meter pyramid. No formal archaeological study exists—only local legends of cannibal rites to appease a centipede-headed god.
The children were found seated in a circle atop the pyramid, beneath a suspended star-like light. Parents later told authorities they had seen “whitest beings—like kerosene ghosts, Holy Mary, several of us fainted at the sight”—and those who approached suffered burns and violent convulsions. The beings, nearly three meters tall according to official records, drifted toward the pale hovering star and shot skyward at impossible speed. What followed has no more credibility than oral legends of headless tribes deep in the Guyanese jungle, for all involved are now dead: some claimed the pyramid’s surface was searing hot, others that its steps had melted as if exposed to unbearable heat. No photographs prove the alleged scars on the children’s faces, nor whether they slept for forty-eight hours after the encounter. These questions remain forever unanswered, because what happened next could have changed—perhaps did change—the course of human history.
Authorities from the city of Coro arrived to document the event and send reports to the national press. When interrogated, the children stunned officials with their intellect and innate abilities. News reached the capital, and the Central University of Venezuela sent a team of doctors to investigate. In the reports by Dr. Eusebio Fuentes (1884–1939), the Children of Falcón claimed to receive telepathic messages from a civilization on the far end of the spiral galaxy… and exhibited psychic powers, from reading thoughts to diagnosing illness with a glance, along with lightning-fast calculation, unprecedented memory, and intelligence far beyond local averages. Plans were made to move them to the capital to form a seminar, but due to political instability and the precarious state of scientific research, they fell into tragic obscurity. No declassified records or rumors survive regarding their fate.
Not until 1954—after a supposed crash of an unidentified airborne object in the Petare district of Nueva Bolívar—did the simmering ufological fervor erupt again. On February 14th, witnesses saw a spherical craft over Mount Ávila, ending in an explosion at dusk that sent patrols racing up the mountain. The official explanation claimed it was a fallen U.S. spy satellite. Yet in the following days, strange events suggested something far more profound. The fall of the UFO marked the beginning of an alien hysteria: travelers along metropolitan highways were chased by unknown creatures; residents of the Sierra de Nueva Andalucía reported terrifying encounters. The case of Jesús Moreno—a truck driver pursued by horse-trotting pale creatures taller than his vehicle—became the most infamous. His recorded testimony survived the official inquiry (and remains genuinely chilling).
Other reports were added: nighttime encounters on rural roads, confrontations in the Sierra, the sighting of the Humita Craft on the Simón Bolívar Highway (2000), dozens of radar-tracked flyovers above major cities, and the original photographs of the Maracaibo Craft. The case was closed in 1980, yet sightings and alleged captures of humanoid beings in the Black Plains and the Amazon continued. When the case dominated national media, scholars revived ancient Indigenous gods such as Amalivaca—the Tamanaco creator figure—revitalizing the Ancient Astronaut theory: the hypothesis that humanity was shaped by a superior civilization that visited Earth in prehistory.
Anomalous activity in Venezuelan skies reached a critical apex with the Red Light Incident over the Valley of Maracay—a sunken wasteland surrounded by forested mountains and crossed by arterial highways. On November 1st, 2013, a pulsating red glow flickered across the night sky every thirty seconds, inciting mass panic in a population steeped in legends of giant creatures sleeping beneath the plains. At 20:00 hours, the red luminance intensified alongside violent electrical storms, triggering blackouts and bizarre low-frequency vibrations that affected the psyche of the populace. Amid the chaos, numerous objects were spotted streaking above the city at incredible speed. The Venezuelan government, believing it was under foreign attack—tensions with Colombia were high—ordered an aerial strike.
Given the limited fleet, Fighter Squadron No. 33 was deployed—five Sukhoi Su-30s and a single F-16 Fighting Falcon for reconnaissance—while ground forces prepared their 9K37 “Buk” surface-to-air defense system.
Major General Santiago Infante Itriago commanded Operation Red Light from Nueva Bolívar Air Command, coordinating with the Maracay Air Base. The fighters tore through the storm, breaking the sound barrier and leaving violet trails—Venezuela’s spearhead against the unknown threat rising from the swirling cloud of blood-tinged dust. Pilots reported that the unidentified objects—“silver spheres six meters wide”—vanished into the scarlet lightning and changed direction with impossible physics, defying gravity itself. Four brilliant mercury-lit spheres converged, and the Major General ordered an immediate strike...
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