Two large glowing UFOs drifted
slowly over a Puerto Rican city, settled down in the Atlantic Ocean about
a mile off shore and appeared to go into and out of the ocean a number of
times as about two thousand people watched.
Two fishermen in a boat nearby
were so frightened they could hardly get their motor started, and some people
on shore thought the world had come to an end.
The incident occurred in Mayagüez,
Puerto Rico’s third largest city, located on the western end of the island.
The objects were first seen
around nine to nine thirty in the evening on September 13, 1977. The first
object vanished after half an hour or so but the second was seen moving about
Mayagüez Bay for hours, finally disappearing 
around
three in the morning.
around
three in the morning.
“A lot of people were afraid,”
said Mayagüez Police Sergeant Ramon Ramirez.
He watched the objects for
a while but then devoted the rest of the night to keeping an eye on the crowds
and the traffic. “It was a strange object to them andthey didn't know what
it was.”
One of the witnesses was Juan
Perez Rodriguez, then twenty six, who operated a hamburger stand on the beach
where the biggest crowd gathered.
“Some people were frightened,
especially old people,” he said. “They were afraid. They didn't know what
it was. Some people thought these were things of God and thought it was the
end of the world.”
Rafael Lopez and his half
brother, Arturo Rivera, were in a boat out in the bay fishing when one of
the objects came down near them. Both were frightened and they went into shore.
“Once
I got to the beach I wasn't even able to stand up at first because I was trembling,”
said Lopez, then twenty nine. “My whole body was trembling. I was pretty shook
up."
He and Rivera, then thirty
six, had been fishing since four in the afternoon about half a mile from shore.
They were due west of Columbus Landing, a housing development along the bay.
Lopez said they saw only one of the objects. That was at about nine thirty
in the evening.
‘CRICKET’ SOUND IS FRIGHTENING
“It just appeared close to
us. We didn't see where it came from. We just all of a sudden noticed it close
to us in the water, and when we first saw it, it looked small, and then it
seemed to grow very large.
“In the beginning we weren't
afraid. We were glad because we thought there was another boat coming close
to us. Then we realized it wasn't a boat and we started to get frightened.
“We were hearing a sound like
a cricket screeching. I had the impression it was a cricket inside the boat.
I've had crickets in the boat before and all you have to do is pound on the
sides of the boat and they usually shut up. But as much as we pounded, it
didn't quiet. It kept on making sounds.
“As long as we didn't move,
the object stayed steady in the water and seemed to get smaller and then larger.
And when it got larger, it got much brighter and then it would change colors.
When it would grow brighter, it would get from like yellow to an orange color.
“Than we got frightened and
decided to leave. But the boat had run out of gasoline. We had a little bit
of gas in a bottle but we were really nervous by that time. We were trying
to get the cap off the motor to put the gasoline in and we couldn’t because
we were real nervous.
“And all this time the object
kept getting closer and closer to us and we were getting more and more nervous.
We finally got the cap off, and it finally started and we were able to start
toward the beach.”
After they got to shore and
recovered from their fright, the two went to their respective homes.
“When I got back to my house,
which is very close to the beach, I started to watch the object again,” said
Lopez. “This time it was moving around real fast. It would seem to disappear
and reappear again at a great distance from where it had disappeared from,
darting back and forth.
“I've been a fisherman for
a long time and I've been out on that water for a long time and I've never
seen anything like what I saw that night.”
Asked
what he thought the object was, Lopez said: “In my opinion, it was a UFO,
a flying saucer."
POLICE LIEUTENANT WATCHES
Mayagüez
Police Lieutenant Cesar Grácia watched the objects most of the night. Other
fishermen were on the shore that night, he said, but the police wouldn’t let
them go out in boats to investigate because of possible danger. “But the fishermen
said very clearly they had no intention of going out there for any reason."
Grácia,
who was in charge of the police shift that night, said he watched the objects
off and on from about nine o'clock until one in the morning. He was in a patrol car by himself when he first noticed
one of the lights.
“I
saw something in the sky that I didn't know what it was,” Grácia said. “It
was over Highway Two about fifteen hundred feet, a large, lighted ball about
six feet in diameter. It was going toward the beach very slowly.”
He
was headed for the Mayagüez Hilton Hotel in the hills on the north side
of the city at the time and he continued on to the hotel.
“I was in the parking lot
of the Hilton when they called me from the police department,” Grácia said.
“They told me to go to the beach because a great many people were watching
this object.
“When I got there, the object
was already hovering over the water about two or three miles off the beach.
There were about five hundred people watching. There are about four public
housing areas right there and all the people from the housing areas were there.
“I saw one light coming down but when I got to the beach
I noticed there were two objects in the water, not together but about a mile
away from each other. They were hovering over the water, right about at the water
level.
“Because of the distance I
couldn’t tell if it was a few feet over the water or if they were actually
touching the water. The first object stayed about an hour but the second one
lasted at least four hours.
“I wasn’t able to stay because I had other obligations,
but I was there for quite some time. Later I returned again and it was still
going on. And I left once more.
COAST GUARD NOT
INTERESTED
“When the first one disappeared,
I saw it go. When the second one disappeared, I was no longer there. I stopped
more than one time that evening for maybe five minutes at a time to watch.
I couldn't say exactly that it hadn’t moved but it was more or less in the
same area.”
The first time he saw the
first object, he said, “it was reddish-orange. When I spotted it in the sky
it was a reddish color. It was bright but it wasn’t overpowering.
“There were maybe five hundred
people in the area where I was watching and all along the whole coast there
were other people watching. A group of officers on duty that night also saw
it, between five and ten.
“We called the Coast Guard
but the Coast Guard didn't come. The answer they gave us was that the police
had to verify it first, that if there was a real emergency then the Coast
Guard would be dispatched."
The U.S. Coast Guard had a small contingent of men with several helicopters
stationed at what used to be Ramey Air Force Base near the city of Aguadilla
about thirty-five miles north of Mayagüez.
“I know of no other helicopters in this area,” Lieutenant Grácia said.
“The Coast Guard is the only military unit here.
“There were many, many phone calls to the police station that night. The
next day another object was seen but it seemed smaller, and there have been
other sightings since but we haven't made any reports on them."
Police Sergeant Ramirez, then
an eleven-year veteran of the police force, was close to the area where the
object was first seen.
“I saw people gathering along
the beach so I stopped my car. I was very curious, not only because there
were people there but also because they were looking up. So I stopped and
saw the light, which was very bright.
“When
I got out of the car I saw the object fall into the water, very bright and
it like divided. First one sank into the water. About twenty seconds after, the other one went into the water also. It zigzagged a little
before it went down and turned off. That was about nine thirty.
“I stayed around to keep traffic moving and see what the people were doing
in case there was an accident or anything. Word got around and there were
over a thousand people watching these things.
POLICE GET ‘MANY CALLS’
"People came out of their
houses to see the view and people came in cars, parked on the side of the
street and went to the beach to see what was happening. I stayed until midnight,
mostly keeping an eye on the group so there wouldn’t be any problems.”
Ramirez said he stayed until
about midnight directing traffic. In describing the object as he first saw
it, he said: "It was pretty high, like an orange-yellow light. I don't
know exactly the size. As it came down it got larger. It was pretty good sized.
“The police got many, many
phone calls, all night. We called the Coast Guard but they didn’t come. They
said it wasn't an emergency.”
Asked what he thought the
objects were, Ramirez said, “I think they were mystery objects. I was impressed
by what I saw."
Mayagüez Police Lieutenant
Luis Comacho didn't see the objects but said: "There were many other
officers who saw this."
Juan Perez, who owns the hamburger
stand on the beach, said: “A friend got worried and called me at home because
there were too many cars in our parking lot. I came over about ten o'clock
and I saw one of the objects.
“It was about the size of
a basketball, very bright, yellowish-orange. It was about two hundred feet
high and then it went down and stayed close to the water and disappeared into
the water. It hit the water and the light just faded away.
“The second one came up and
went down again, sometimes like it turned on and off. It just came up and
down again and it was steady. It went in and out of the water about ten times.
It took about four or five minutes each way. It would go about twenty feet
above the water and come back down.”
He said a hundred to a hundred
fifty cars were parked in the lot next to his hamburger stand “and about seven
or eight hundred people. I sold plenty that night. I sold four hundred dollars
more than what I usually make!
“I don’t believe it was an
airplane or helicopter or the Coast Guard or some boat. I think they were
strange objects. I'm used to seeing boats and planes and all these big ships
coming in, and this was way different. People were very shocked. People were
asking me, ‘What do you think it could be?’ ”
BINOCULARS
REVEAL ‘BALL OF FIRE’
Victor Mantilla, a business student, had just returned
to his home at the Columbus Landing housing development about eight forty
five and was talking with several friends, all about his age. Speaking for himself, Alberto Sojo, Angel Bellester, Orlando
Neves and others at the interview, Mantilla said:
“I had just come home from
school. I sat down with the guys and all of a sudden we saw a light crossing
overhead toward the beach. I saw two objects, two lights, yellowish-orange.
We ran over to the beach, about two blocks away. They were about a hundred
feet apart. People just started coming.
“All of a sudden, one light
just went into the water and turned off and all of a sudden it came out of
the water. The first one turned off. The next one crossed to the right (north)
and stayed about two or three feet above the water until one in the morning.
I left about one o'clock but people stayed because it was still there."
Mantilla had a pair of binoculars
and said the object looked “like a ball of fire maybe two and a half to three
feet tall. I didn’t hear any noise.
“There were thousands of people
over there that night. They were all over the beach. The group around here
was about eight hundred and there had to be hundreds more elsewhere, so there
could easily have been two thousand.
“Everybody that went by in
a car parked their cars and looked. You could see it very clearly. A lot of
people were afraid.
“It was a pretty strong light.
It lit up the water. You could see the reflection of the light and it was
so strong you could see the waves. When it passed over, all this area at the
housing project got very bright.”
One object appeared to be
having problems as it passed overhead, Mantilla said, “It stopped all of a
sudden and then it kept on going. It made a jerking motion. It dipped, would
go again a little to the right and then it stopped again.”
When the objects got out over
the water, “the one to the left went dead, turned right off like it fell in
the water. The other one crossed to the right and went around a buoy."
TIPS
SIDEWAYS AND GOES INTO BAY
Luis Baez, who also lived
at Columbus Landing, said: “I was playing pool and someone said, 'Look!' I
came outside with my pool stick and I see this thing. It was something nice
to see. It was round looking, like an apple. Nice, round, beautiful. It went
toward the beach.
"I put my pool stick
away and went down to the beach and looked. A friend said, ‘That thing that's
waiting over there is not a fishing boat.’ I said, ‘Sure it's a boat’ and
he said, ‘It’s not!’ So then the one that came by overhead was coming down
near the other one. They stayed like that for three or four minutes maybe
a thousand yards apart.
“The bigger one, the one that
was waiting, tipped on its side and BLOOM! Into the water! The small one stayed
for a while. After half an hour or so I went up to the roof of this garage
and laid down and watched. I wanted to make sure if it moved or not.
“And I could see this thing
goes up… down… this way to the right, back again and a few times it went this
way into the water. You could see the water flashing. It never went all the
way down in the water.
“It did that a few times,
it goes up, comes down, moved toward the beach but not too close and it goes
back. At one o'clock in the morning I went home to sleep. I have to be up
early in the morning.
“So I slept, went to work and when I come back I asked
a few friends of mine what happened to the one that was up there. Well at
three o'clock in the morning it disappeared. There were about a thousand
people at the beach where he was.”
Asked if he thought what he
had seen was a boat, plane or helicopter, Baez said: “We might have no schools
but we are not dumb."
NOT
‘SOMETHING FROM THIS WORLD’
Another witness was Mrs. Auria
Andujar, who lived on the beach less than a mile south of the hamburger stand.
She knew nothing about the objects until her husband came home from work about
ten thirty that night and told her about the crowds of people he had seen.
"I went out to the beach
to see what I could see,” Mrs. Andujar said. “As soon as I realized this was
something out of the ordinary, I stayed to see what it would do. And it started
to move down into the water and then it would rise up again above the water
and go back down into the water again. By then, I realized it wasn't something
from this world.
“It was a large, very brilliant
light between yellow and tangerine color, like the color of flames. It seemed
to have a greenish light on the top of it. My daughter, Ida Luz, who lives
close by, came to watch also.
“On two occasions it rose
up off the water and came close to the house. When it was halfway from where
it began, it seemed to be shining a light toward the house as though it were
a beacon. Then it would go back down in the water and when it was under the
water it would go back out to where it had been and then rise up again.
“I watched it until about
two o'clock in the morning. It was still there when I went to bed. I was afraid
to go to bed but I was afraid to stay there on the beach by myself.
“I was frightened because
I was convinced it wasn’t anything from this earth."
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