Very Strange Maracaibo Incident

The following case has been adopted by ufology and considered as an early UFO report. There are a couple of in-thread mentions but it's intriguing and unexplainable enough for a shot at thread status. It could be UFO territory and yet I think it’s possibly more exotic. It describes a South American peasant family being ‘awakened by a loud humming noise and a vivid, dazzling light, which brilliantly illuminated the interior of the house.’ This event led to vomiting, skin lesions, hair loss….and ultimately hospital. Whether this became fatal is a mystery untold.

Hands up if you’re thinking of radiation sickness and potentially secret technology gone awry? The described symptoms call to my mind the results of Chernobyl, Hiroshima or early experiments with exposure to high levels of radiation. We’ve seen the images, read the reports and felt the depressing emotions that stir in our shared humanity.

The kicker, and ‘out there’ mystery of this incident, is that it all happened before powered flight.

Warner Cowgill was the US Consulate in Venezuela way back in 1886 and recounted the bizarre experience in a letter to Scientific American:




That’s a heck of an account and evades explanation despite over a century of scientific advances. Even in ufology, where we’re used to reading weird stuff, it stands out as a highly strange encounter with something unknown.

It’s very similar, in certain aspects, to the Cash-Landrum incident from 1980. In this well-known case, two ladies and a young boy encountered a bright object on the highway. One of them immediately thought it was the second coming of Christ and all three went on to experience vomiting and skin burns. One was hospitalised and went on to lose patches of hair.



One explanation that’s been proposed is that it was a ball lightning (BL) incident (source).. Well maybe it was. Unfortunately, we have no way of knowing and the anecdotal evidence in favour of BL has no modern example of these symptoms being caused. In terms of lightning strikes, google search shows that these result in very distinct injuries and don’t conform to the account.



If it was ionizing radiation , the levels required to cause vomiting and sickness within minutes would usually be fatal. To start vomiting in less than 10 minutes requires exposure to over 8 Gray units and death follows (100%) within two weeks. In the account, they were alive after 9 days when Cowgill describes the trees dying.

There are exceptions for medical ionizing radiation e.g. chemotherapy can run to way over 8 grey units.

Nevertheless the problem remains in identifying the source of whatever caused these injuries. If it was our folk from elsewhere the incident is almost unique and the same goes for the BL explanation. We can rule out secret technology and Sci-Am archives show the letter to be genuinely from the 19th Century.

It'd make a great scene in a science fiction movie as the heroes struggle to control their craft as it pops in and out of different time-lines and locations. Then again, there's a plausible/ probable explanation out there somewhere...if we put our minds to it.

Very interesting encounter.

I don't remember when was the last time i read something good as this.

Amazing!
S&F

Great thread!
I liked the way you linked the two cases together as well as the radiation sickness symptoms. S&F!

SnF for yet another topnotch thread

one little question..

they had to been exposed to over 8 gray units, 100 percent death rate within 2 weeks. correct?

then this

There are exceptions for medical ionizing radiation e.g. chemotherapy can run to way over 8 grey units.

is there a difference between the two?

EX-CELL-ENT thread.

Would be worth to go to the location (if know precisely) and do some radiation tests.

I guess we otherwise will never know anything more.

Originally posted by Kandinsky
The following case has been adopted by ufology and considered as an early UFO report. There are a couple of in-thread mentions but it's intriguing and unexplainable enough for a shot at thread status. It could be UFO territory and yet I think it’s possibly more exotic. It describes a South American peasant family being ‘awakened by a loud humming noise and a vivid, dazzling light, which brilliantly illuminated the interior of the house.’ This event led to vomiting, skin lesions, hair loss….and ultimately hospital. Whether this became fatal is a mystery untold.

Hands up if you’re thinking of radiation sickness and potentially secret technology gone awry? The described symptoms call to my mind the results of Chernobyl, Hiroshima or early experiments with exposure to high levels of radiation. We’ve seen the images, read the reports and felt the depressing emotions that stir in our shared humanity.

The kicker, and ‘out there’ mystery of this incident, is that it all happened before powered flight.

That was indeed a very strange happening Kandinsky thanks for bringing it again under my attention. S&F
Perhaps too far-fetched but it reminds me a bit of some of the things which happened by many people in Colares, Brazil in August 1977 in this thread of you.

Hostile UFO Encounters: Colares, 1977

Originally posted by Kandinsky
Should we assume ETs are benign?

In August 1977 an area of Brazil allegedly became the victims of widespread UFO wave that occurred sporadically for three months. At the movie theaters, Close Encounters of the Third Kind was highlighting how encounters with aliens could be an innocent and magical event. Down in Colares, they were having a completely different experience. In Colares, they were at the mercy of marauding UFOs whose behavior looked more like a raiding party than any ‘peace and love’ exercise. By the end of the Colares flap, over 35 people had been hospitalized, two men had died and many inhabitants had simply left…

A barber Carlos Cardoso de Paula (aged 49), recalls a close encounter with the 'lights' and how they didn't mind entering your home...

Everybody else was asleep. I was just still having my last smoke when suddenly a ball of fire entered our house up near the ridgepole of the gable. It started shooting round and round the room and then finally came right close to my hammock. It ran up my right leg as far as the knee (without touching my skin). I watched with much curiosity as it then moved across to the other leg. Then I started to feel feeble and sleepy. My cigarette fell from my hand and I came to and let out a yell.

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/c03106883fc4.jpg[/atsimg]

Ana Célia Oliveira (above) was only a young girl of six at the time so her recollections might not be so accurate. Nevertheless, she relates an account that illustrates the growing discomfort in the area. Many people had been struck by a hot white beam of light and reports of a wide variety of different shaped UFOs were common. Oliveira recalls…

Doctor Wellaide Cecim Carvalho was the local physician and it fell to her to treat the victims of these encounters. She took blood samples, and concluded that the victims suffered from generalized hyperthermia, superficial chronic headache, burnings, intense heat, nausea, tremors in the body, giddiness, asthenia and presented very small punctures in the skin where they were hit by the beams. These symptoms are regularly seen in patients undergoing chemotherapy when their blood becomes weakened by the radiation. Dr Carvalho wrote…

All of them had suffered lesions to the face or the thoracic area. The lesions… began with intense reddening of the skin in the affected area. Later the hair would fall out and the skin would turn black. There was no pain, only a slight warmth. One also noticed small puncture marks in the skin. The victims were men and women of varying ages, without any pattern…

www.abovetopsecret.com...

Originally posted by Kandinsky

Nevertheless the problem remains in identifying the source of whatever caused these injuries. If it was our folk from elsewhere the incident is almost unique and the same goes for the BL explanation. We can rule out secret technology and Sci-Am archives show the letter to be genuinely from the 19th Century.

I do not claim that it was our folk from elsewhere, but looking to what happened in Colares, Brazil in August 1977 which were no doubt to me our folk from elsewhere I also do not rule it out.

reply to post by spacevisitor
Good memory Space!

Colares didn't cross my mind with this case but the reported symptoms are very similar. South American location too.

I just love stories like this

Thank you. I always consider it a good day when I find one post that is worthwhile on this topic.

Sounds like this could be some natural phenomena so rare it could be a long time before it's explained. Hard to tell.

Great find S & F.

When you hear the skeptics screaming "why don't they just land at the White House...", well, it's because if they land they are harmful to us.

Who knows what kind of elements good or bad can come along with a UFO. Sounds like high doses of radiation to me.

I thought it was interesting that the side of their bodies that was facing downwards at the time of the sound, was worse affected when the sores began appearing nine days later.

It occurred to me that this could be a spontaneous natural nuclear reaction underground and that the "light" they saw may have been similar to the effect noted by astronauts where cosmic rays cause disturbances in vision (& even on photographic film), only instead of a few ionized particles, they were immersed in a flash release of them.

The sound too could have been caused by the internal pressure the ground was under due to the heat of reaction.

Here is an article in Wikipedia about an area in Gabon, Africa where such a reaction occurred.

reply to post by Kandinsky


I must say kardinsky, you sure know how to bring them stories out nicely...

Very interesting indeed...S & F

Originally posted by chr0naut
I thought it was interesting that the side of their bodies that was facing downwards at the time of the sound, was worse affected when the sores began appearing nine days later.

It occurred to me that this could be a spontaneous natural nuclear reaction underground and that the "light" they saw may have been similar to the effect noted by astronauts where cosmic rays cause disturbances in vision (& even on photographic film), only instead of a few ionized particles, they were immersed in a flash release of them.

The sound too could have been caused by the internal pressure the ground was under due to the heat of reaction.

Here is an article in Wikipedia about an area in Gabon, Africa where such a reaction occurred.

edit on 26/9/2011 by chr0naut because: (no reason given)

This is what I was thinking too as I was reading the story.

Great thread Kandinsky. I've never heard about this before, though I have read about the Colares case in one place or another. This one is so intriguing to me because of the date. We can rule out man-made experimentation or devices which only leaves very rare natural occurrences or something more... exotic. Either way it's extremely interesting.

Thanks for the great info!

reply to post by Julie Washington

There are accounts of UFO fly-bys over Wash. DC, then there are the rumors that DD Eisenhower met with ET's at White Sands or Nellis AFB forget which.

I'm thinking the evil aliens did not appreciate being mistaken
for Christ!

reply to post by Kandinsky

Very interesting read, thank you.
The symptoms on people and environment sound an awful lot like Acute Radiation Syndrome.
I wonder if a sudden release of huge amounts of Radon gas could account for what has been described by the victims?

Very interesting story, with good points too, nice work you have here!

I had never heard of this story before, but I find it very interesting since something similar to some parts of this story happened to me back in early 2008.

I was awakened in the middle of the night with a strong urge to roll over and "look", as if there was something to be seen (when I awoke, I was facing my wall). When I rolled over, there was this beam of light (about 1.5 feet diameter). It entered through the corner of my ceiling, and angled down through the center of my floor. There was nothing in my room that I saw that could've been making that light, so it was either penetrating my ceiling through to the floor, or my floor through to my ceiling. It was a white/bluish light with a sort of hazy/smoke swirling through it and there was a very low, slight electrical humming sound in the room. After I looked at it (no more than 30 seconds, I'd say) I rolled back over and covered my head with the sheets, and don't remember a thing after that until morning. No memory of even laying there attempting to go back to sleep or questioning what I had seen, just nothing. The strange thing is, my roommate in the room below mine saw the same thing, as well as a flood of white light through her window, and it matched up with where I saw it. I didn't even explain it to her first. I just mentioned "I saw the weirdest thing last night" and she then said " Are you talking about that light?"

No radiation sickness signs or any adverse things happened to anyone in the house, though. But the humming light invading is all too familiar to myself and her. Makes me wonder if it was the same type of thing...

Anyways, thanks for sharing OP.

Greetings from Maracaibo,Venezuela.

I am officially intrigued and will look out for some info on this very old and obscure incident.

Fantastic thread and old report which I believe is more relevant toothed encounters, shame it didn't get anymore attention back in 2011, bumping this thread...