by J. Antonio Huneeus FATE Magazine When I visited Guatemala and Costa Rica in 1996 and 1997, I discovered some interesting UFO cases. The witnesses in one sighting were members of my own family! Tikal's Balls of Light Guatemala is at the center of the old Maya civilization which stretched from Mexico's Yucatan in the north to El Salvador and Honduras in the south. There is a vast and rich Indian culture in Guatemala to this day, with more than 20 different languages and ethnic groups. Tikal is the largest and most splendid of all ancient Mayan cities, built between 600 and 900 A.D. during the Classical period. This vast complex of temples, pyramids, plazas, and steles is located in a thick rain forest in the Tikal National Park. My guide was Eduardo Mendoza, a well-known journalist and ufologist I had met a year earlier at a UFO Conference in Costa Rica. He is the director of the Sonora radio station, a newspaper columnist, and the author of several books. Though not meant as a UFO field trip, my visit to Tikal soon became one. After a long trek through the monuments in hot weather, we had lunch at a restaurant and tourist shop near the entrance to the ruins. Two men sitting at the next table recognized Mendoza. One of them said, "We were thinking of you last night because we saw UFOs." His name was Oscar Maldonado, and we interviewed him right there. Maldonado, it turned out, is an anthropologist who knows the folklore of the area. "I've always marveled at the stories that I've been told" he said. "In some local legends, balls of light are always mentioned. The most astounding case was seen by 250 people in a public school. [The balls] descended from Cagui hill and plunged into the water of Peten-Itza Lake. People from the tourist lodges have seen them. They say the lights are intelligent." Maldonado had heard many stories about the balls, including one from four park guards camping by the Tiger Lagoon near the Mexican border. The guards were having dinner when two balls approached the camp and caused quite a stir. One guard pointed a flashlight, while another hid inside the tent. The night before we met him, on April 22,1997, Maldonado had been out searching for a lost tourist when he saw the legendary light for himself. "I saw it for a couple of seconds," he said. "It was a round ball of light to the north... The ball was blue, the center white, and the tail red. It was about quarter to 10 [p.m.] and I didn't understand what it was. First I thought it was a shooting star, but it was too big." It's likely that at least some of these "balls of light" are not alien craft but a natural, though still-unidentified phenomenon known as "earth lights." Linked to geomagnetic and tectonic phenomena, they sometimes precede earthquakes, according to research by John Derr of the U.S. Geological Survey. Such lights were noted three days before an earthquake hit Guatemala on February 3, 1976, killing 25,000 people. Mendoza reported them in his article, "The Strange Balls of Fire of the Earthquake." More than 15 witnesses saw a fire-like circle in Miraflores the night before the earthquake. Mendoza provides more accounts in his article, noting that they are probably caused by electromagnetic discharges associated with tectonic activity. "While they are not really portents," he concludes, "they do seem to precede earthquakes." The MINUGUA Case This next case has not been published before in any language. You could say that I discovered it for a simple reason. The source was my own sister, Paz Huneeus, who works with the United Nations. She was stationed for more than two years as an administrative assistant to MINUGUA, the United Nations Mission for the Verification of Human Rights in Guatemala. She was initially stationed in a field office in the provincial city of Huehuetenango, at the foot of the Cuchimatanes mountains. MINUGUA workers used radios to communicate between field offices. After three UN engineers installed a radio antenna at the Cuchimatanes' highest point, a group of UFOs visited the site, my sister said. "They say that several UFOs -- at least two or three -- hovered over the antenna. There was a strong storm and radio communication was cut. The next day I heard one of the guards, Francisco, saying something on the radio like, 'Everything is fine, by the grace of God. After surviving last night it's like the sky opened to welcome our brothers."' Paz didn't understand exactly what Francisco meant, but when the engineers arrived at the Huehuetenango office they confirmed that weird things had happened. My sister's son Juan Jose was in the MINUGUA office when they arrived. "The radio engineers were saying that the car lights would turn on and then turn off," he told me. "The radio and the engine suddenly stopped and then started again like nothing had happened." After some inquiries at the MINUGUA headquarters in Guatemala City, where Paz was transferred a few months after the Cuchimatanes incident, she located one of the engineers, Rodolfo Gradiz. Gradiz said the incident happened sometime between July 18 and 20, 1995, at the peak of the Cuchimatanes in a place called Chemal. That evening there was a thick fog, he said, "but in front of us [in the car] it was very clear. A light, a circle with the color of fire, approached us. One of my companions was scared. The light flashed twice. I told the driver to cut the emergency lights, that behind us there was a light that simulated the emergency lights. Then we lost communications. Some VHF links were coming in from different radios, and we heard a "ta-ta-ta." Gradiz also shared other accounts from the area. "The pilot who was flying me to San Marcos told me that near the Cuchimatanes he had seen three lights, or luminous points, making geometric maneuvers, making a circle," he said. "I also heard in the town that some people would gather in the Cuchimatanes and had contact -- they call them 'antennas.' Fifteen days ago I saw the pilot and he told me they had seen the lights again." My nephews, Federico and Juan Jose (both in their 20s), witnessed strange lights in the Cuchimatanes in February 1995. They were watching television when there was a blackout, something that is common in parts of Latin America. Juan Jose went outside where, he said, "I saw some balls of fire coming in our direction, like a diffuse image of several fire spots in a straight line. I called Federico, and when he came out the lights changed their direction." Federico described them as being "like big flames that were advancing and started to become consumed slowly, but they were moving at great speed, and then they turned and slowly extinguished over the horizon." The lights originally flew in a northsouth direction. The whole sighting lasted about a minute, they said. Guatemalan Abductions I collected several other cases from Eduardo Mendoza, who sketched the country's ufological history in a long interview in Guatemala City. He also gave me copies of several interesting, mostly daytime, UFO videos. Perhaps the strangest case he investigated was that of a chemical engineer, Marco Antonio Rodriguez, who experienced a series of abductions during a three-night period in February 1996. "On the first night," Mendoza said, "he saw on the head of his bed some kind of bluish light projecting a beam onto the cabinet. He then saw a kind of screen and he could see some grays, who then approached and circled him." His wife, sleeping next to him, didn't see anything. A similar episode occurred the following night, but this time the beings came even closer and inspected his body. "He wanted to yell but couldn't. He could only move his eyes. He was paralyzed," Mendoza said. In other words, it was a typical abduction experience, although Rodriguez was not acquainted with the subject and UFO abductions have received far less publicity in Guatemala than in the United States. Rodriguez's own conclusion is fitting. "The worst part" he says, "is that I don't know what they want." J. Antonio Huneeus reports on ufology and Fortean subjects for publications, radio, and television programs around the world. His 1998 UFO wall calendar is available in bookstores. © FATE Magazine 1998. Reposted with permission of the publisher. Nebula: UFOs & Extraterrestrials UFO message board: Share your views