hundreads of people see ufo's in portugal in the 50's

I was speaking with a friend of mine last night and we got onto the subject of Ufo's.

My friend is a 60 year old Portuguese man that works as the night porter in a local hotel that me and friends frequent.

Somehow we got onto the subject of Ufo's and i was telling him of the 2 that i had seen over the algarve.

he went onto give me detailed descriptions of unexplained flying objects he had seen over his life living in portugal.

His first experience as a young man fishing with his brother on the beach of a place called ponta de piadad, its a quiet and awkward place to get to down steep cliffs.
Him and his brother were fishing at 4 in the morning when he told me they saw two lights 'playing' like fire flys out at see, after dissapearing and re appearing several times one suddenley accelerated towards them and stopped about 500 ft away directley in front of them.

Franchisco; my friend said that it was a hovering chrome colored cigar shape that tilted slowly left to right and appeared to be spinning. He told me that he was totally amazed and that neither he or is brother spoke a word until after several seconds the object sped back out to sea whilst gaining altitude very quickly, it then vanished, he also said that the air smelled like 'electricity' or a thunderstorm and both him and his brother felt unsteady and dizzy on their feet.

The most amazing thing he told me; backed up by a younger member of the hotel staff that had also heard the story, was that in the early 60's a formation of 'cigar' shaped ufo's had appeared in broad daylight over meia praia bay in lagos. these craft were witnessed by over 200 people and were later to be written about by a local writer/revoultinary, he also has photos.

Now what you have to remeber about portugal at this time is that it was under the brutal dictatorship of Salazar, secret police were highly active and it was very common for people seen as enemys of the state to dissapear in the night, never to be seen again.

apparentley the writer/photographer went undeground very quickly in fear of the evidance he had in his possesion and the rest of the lagos community was told they had seen nothing and to forget.

The gentleman who wrote this book about what he had seen apparentley still lives in lagos and Franchisco is going to try and arrange a meet for me. If he his willing and still in possesion of the photographs i will of course publish them, either way i will document this interview.

I am presentley building a website for the algarve region and want to add this story for some interesting info on the site, however i will first post this info here.

ive never conducted an interview and was wondering what questions memebers of ATS (a little more versed with ufo's than myself) would like me to ask? the gentleman in question is in his 70's now but apparentley speaks perfect english.

I have looked all over the web and found nothing relating to this sighting, back when this happened lagos was a small fishing town and not the sprawling tourism hive it is today.

The view from meia praia is straight out over the atlantic and you can see pics of it on google.

I for one believe this is going to make for an interesting story and have been told that the photographs are of an excellent quality considering the old camera they were taken with. Franchisco couldnt remember the name of the book or the gentlemans name who wrote it other than his sir name being 'silva'

just reporting the info as it was told to me.

updates as soon as possible

Regards.




[edit on 2-7-2006 by optimus fett]

OOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Kewl opti,
Im wondering what questions are u planning on askin him at present?
nice thread

Omega

initially i was going to establish the following (which should be easy with the pics)

size, shape and color of the ufo's

speed and progression of movements

weather conditions

viewed time scale

noise

press releases or published articles (cant see that that will have happened given the political restrictions at the time)

Originally posted by optimus fett
initially i was going to establish the following (which should be easy with the pics)

size, shape and color of the ufo's

speed and progression of movements

weather conditions

viewed time scale

noise

Very cool
Maybie u could also ask what time of the day it was,
were there any environmental effects?
were there any climatic effects?
were there any strange happenings at the time the UFO was present? ie . watch stopping or something like that?

Thisis very cool opti.

Omega

thanks omega, im suprised that no one else in the community finds any of this interesting?

Sounds a good one, so these pics have not been seen publicly before??

I cant wait to see the pics.

Cool find, and good luck with the interview.

An extremely interesting topic, should the coming information prove to be valid.

I want to know more, jusct cigar shapped UFOs? did any small craft fly out from them? Squeez your souce for more details.....

An extremely interesting topic, should the coming information prove to be valid.

i can asure you that the information i have been told has now been backed up by other friends that remember hearing this tale from their parents. I have yet to get the meeting i want but im on the case.

Cigar shaped UFOs were the most "common" type of UFO in Portugal, as far as I know.

My grandmother once saw from her bed what looked like a cigar-shaped "thing" blocking the starts in a cloudless night.

At the time (1977 or 1978, the year my grandmother died) we were already living in the building where I live today, and in the direction from the window of my grandmother's room we could see a navy base, so that UFO must have been somewhere between our building and the "Base Naval do Alfeite".

I have a 5 volume collection about UFOs where the first 4 volumes are a translation of a work by Yves Naud but the last volume is about Portuguese cases.

In that book they speak mostly of the 1976/77 mini-wave of UFO sightings, but they also speak of UFOs in other centuries, but they do not speak of any case in the Algarve.

As for things to ask, maybe if they noticed any noises or any strange reaction from any animals, and if they catch any fish.