by J. Antonio Huneeus    Consulting Editor, FATE Magazine    Reprinted by permission A French tourist couple was camping on the crater of Easter Island's now-dead Ranoraku Volcano. It was here where the moais -- the island's famous stone statues -- were once carved. The husband woke up in the middle of the night surprised by a total silence. It seemed the buzzing night sounds of crickets and other insects had completely disappeared. Even the Pacific Ocean was silent. According to Gustavo Rodriguez Navarro, who was in charge of the airport on Easter Island between 1975 and 1979, the man "opened his tent and looked at the small lagoon on the volcano's interior. To his great surprise, suspended over the lagoon was a huge, disc -- shaped object emitting light from its center that touched the surface of the lagoon and surrounding vegetation." The wife also saw the UFO, which then retrieved the light "like it was a solid thing," said Rodriguez. "When the light reached the base, the object swung for a second and then disappeared into the firmament at great speed." The couple packed their bags the next morning and flew back to France, but Rodriguez was informed of the event by a friend who had talked with them. Gustavo Rodriguez is a retired air traffic controller who teaches at the Technical School of Aeronautics and is Secretary of the recently formed Committee for the Study of Anomalous Aerial Phenomena (CEFAA) under the Chilean Air Force. In a lengthy interview in Santiago last year, Rodriguez recounted many UFO incidents -- most involving pilots and airport personnel -- during his 27year career as a radar controller. These occurred in many regions of Chile, including Easter Island, a Chilean possession. The Polynesian natives call it "Rapa Nui" (the world's navel), while the Chileans call it "Pascua" (Easter) from its European discovery on that holiday in 1722. "The islanders also told stories about lights, but since at that time they had never heard of UFOs, they linked them to their own folklore and spoke of catanes, or devils," said Rodriguez. Scores of UFO incidents have been reported in Chile in the 1990s. One of the oddest was the so-called "flying houses." A UFO was blamed for turning a house sideways in the outskirts of the southern Chilean city of Los Angeles on April 16,1990. Two years later, the newspaper La Tercera published an account of a similar case, also in Los Angeles, with the headline "They swear a UFO took the roof off a house." Were these cases real or concocted tabloid tales? I interviewed Raul Gajardo, a retired police Major from Angol, Chile, who investigated the first incident. Gajardo's interest in the field began during his first year on the force. Chile's most famous UFO landing case occurred in the small southern village of Pelluco on July 29, 1965. A landed UFO vacuumed a strip of land 250 feet long, 50 feet wide, and 3 feet deep. There were multiple witnesses and photos of the big hole left by the object. Gajardo volunteered an additional fact never before published: "During a night shift two weeks earlier, at about 1:00 a.m., I went to the sector of Pelluco to investigate a complaint that three UFOs had been sighted. The people were really frightened. They described three spotlights that moved, changed position, and became larger and smaller... I later found another family who was also very scared. In other words, the Pelluco case was preceded by an incident two weeks earlier." Twenty-five years later, Gajardo had retired from the police, but was still investigating UFOs. When he heard on the radio news of the "flying house" in Los Angeles, he drove from Angol the next morning to investigate. "I interrogated all five witnesses and took photos of the place," said Gajardo. "A red, semi-circular UFO with white flashing lights flew in a straight line over the first house at a very low altitude of about 60 feet." The house was poorly constructed of wooden planks, and the vibration of the UFO shook it, causing the nails to pop out. The family ran away in panic thinking it was an earthquake (a common occurrence in Chile). Instead, they saw the UFO "crossing a small plantation of calabash and other vegetables and passing over the other house." It was later learned that not only were the plants uprooted, but they were burnt as well. Around 1:30 a.m., the Balboa family was sleeping when all hell broke loose. According to Gajardo, "The house measured about 50 feet. It had very little foundation -- it was like a match box. The UFO passed over the bedroom on the left side of the house, lifting it." The house tipped over so that the front door faced the ground. The Balboas had to break some planks to escape and "watch the UFO continue its trajectory, climb to 70 or 100 feet, hit a power line, and create a bright flash. The witnesses finally saw the UFO climb vertically in the sky, disappearing in seconds." Scientists from the University of Concepcion declared the incident was caused by tromba -- a whirlwind. According to both Major Gajardo and La Tercera journalist Cristia Riffo, who also interviewed the witnesses and inspected the damage, whirlwinds are uncommon in southern Chile. Moreover, what about the eyewitness accounts? Mrs. Balboa said "It was like an approaching ball of fire. While I looked at it the house crashed." Riffo remarked that the plants in the field next to the house were dehydrated and some totally burnt. Then, on April 8, 1992, the Mendez family cases, in another peripheral area of Los Angeles reported a similar incident of a UFO lifting the roof of their house. Although there is no doubt that the incidents of the "flying houses" were real, a natural explanation cannot be ruled out. The damages to the Los Angeles houses reminded me of a 1992 lecture by Hungarian scientist George Egely at a meeting of the Society for Scientific Exploration at Princeton University. Egely showed videos and photos of destruction in "several recent cases where major damage has occurred as a consequence of ball lightning. The typical mechanical damages were the following: lifting of heavy roofs, walls, heavy vehicles; and boring holes through different construction materials such as adobe, brick, concrete. The typical electrical damages were burning, melting, or exploding of electrical conductors." Egely reached these conclusions from a six-year study of 1,000 observations of ball lightning that were collected in Hungary. Although we've devoted two columns to Chile, we've barely begun to uncover its UFO secrets. Gajardo mentioned other sightings including many he personally witnessed. Floating lights are so common in the Angol region that the peasants have labeled them "lunitas chicas" (little moons). Gajardo later sent us a photo of an apparent UFO next to a chopper and a plane during a forest fire in January 1997. I also interviewed sociologist Rodrigo Fuenzalida, who runs the local UFO group AION. Fuenzalida has investigated numerous cases, in including the landing of a small object in Cerro San Cristobal (a hill right in Santiago) in October 1995; a daytime video of an air show with the Chilean Air Force's Falcons in Pucon in February 1997, in which a bright white bar and a ring appear along with saucer-shaped lens flares; and several abductions, sightings, and videos in Punta Arenas in Chile's southern tip. Probably the most potentially significant case is that of three small metal fragments recovered on a mountain on the interior of Ovalle in northern Chile by a man named Juan Tabe. He claims to have seen a UFO graze a mountaintop, producing a flash. Tabe later found the strange metal pieces on that spot. Through the intercession of Akira Naito, a Japanese businessman in Santiago, samples from one fragment were eventually analyzed by two laboratories in Japan (Hitachi Metals and Matsutani), as well as two Chilean labs. The fragment was mostly copper (61.5%) with zinc (18.5%), aluminum (15.2%), and oxygen (4.2%). Copper, of course, is the main mining resource in northern Chile, but Tabe's fragments looked somewhat artificial (I've seen an AION video of them), and scientists who have looked at the Japanese results supposedly found a non-terrestrial isotopic ratio in the copper. This story, however, is complex and still under investigation. If it checks out positively, I shall have more to say about it in the future. UFOs Over Chile, Part 1 J. Antonio Huneeus has reported on UFOlogy for print and broadcast media around the world. His FATE column, "UFO Chronicle," appears on alternate months. FATE Magazine is published monthly by Llewellyn Worldwide, Ltd. 1 year subscriptions are $21.50. E-mail FATE at fate@llewellyn.com, or visit their website at http://www.fatemag.com. Nebula: UFOs & Extraterrestrials UFO message board: Share your views The ParaStore: Books on UFOs & Aliens