Lucia Gillot, 61, recalls her unforgettable encounter with a
mysterious figure on the LlŷnPeninsula- Lorne Campbell/Guzelian
For those who don't know:The Llŷn Peninsula is a peninsula in Gwynedd, Wales, with an area of about 400 km², and a population of at least 20,000. It extends 30 miles into the Irish Sea, and its southern coast is the northern boundary of the Tremadog Bay inlet of Cardigan Bay.
Lucia Gillot, 61, recalls her unforgettable encounter with a
mysterious figure on the LlŷnPeninsula - Lorne
Campbell/Guzelian
Do aliens exist? Few debates have proved as enduring – or as
divisive – as the question of whether there is life beyond Earth.
‘I felt like it wanted to approach us – we ran like hell’
Lucia Gillot was 17 when she came face to face with
something she still cannot explain. On a late-night walk in 1982 near her
family’s second home near Nefyn, on the LlŷnPeninsula
in North-West Wales, she saw a mysterious figure.
“My friend and I had driven out late at night to a remote
stretch of countryside for a walk,” she says. “We parked up and started down
this narrow lane, barely wider than a car.” The road ran straight ahead before
dipping gently out of sight. About 100 yards away, she saw something
approaching. “It looked like Darth Vader, but with really long arms that hung
below the knee. They looked like tubes with a soft, white fluorescent glow.
They didn’t bend. They just swayed.”
This strange sighting couldn’t be put down to alcohol, as
Gillot and her friend were “completely sober.”
The being, she recalls, was coming directly towards them.
And although they could hear heavy footsteps, it appeared to be floating. “My
friend tried to reassure me,” says Gillot. “He said, ‘Don’t worry, Lou, I’ve
got my Stanley
knife!’”
The pair remained frozen for two minutes until headlights appeared
from behind the figure. As the beams swept forward and caught the being in
their glare, it vanished.
The lane was bordered by high hedges on both sides. There
was nowhere for the figure to go, so Gillot believes it must have “disappeared”
into thin air.
“There was no sense that it was trying to catch us, but I
felt like it wanted to approach us,” she says. Still spooked after it vanished,
the two ran “like hell” back to the car and quickly drove away.
Now 61 and living in Derbyshire, Gillot has never forgotten
– or been able to explain – the encounter. “It’s something that always stuck
with me, but I never talked about it until now”, she says.
“I would define an alien as something that is not of this
earth. That being definitely wasn’t of this earth. A few years ago, I came
across a book [The Uninvited: The True Story of Ripperston Farm by Clive
Harold] about a family in the same area who kept getting alien visitations. I
felt it supported my experience.”
Despite her eerie encounter, Gillot isn’t disturbed by the
prospect of alien life. “I sense that the ETs are looking out for us”, she says.
Apparently if you belong to MUFON you cannot investigate nnything unless "mummy and daddy say so". I contacted SW MUFON UFO UAP Investigation and told them about the Eupora case. It would be aq cold case and this is what I got in response:
Well, MUFON are not interested and got nasty to get out of doing anything and so it seems the SW MuFON people are just not intertested as well. They are NOT allowed to inbvestigate any case unless their MUFON bosses say so.
We can only investigate officially submitted MUFON cases but we have many folks who would love to help you out if you submit the report - regardless of if you do or don't have evidence and we can only investigate cases submitted by the actual witnesses you can't submit someone else's sighting or contact if must be what you saw does this make sense?
Yes it makes sense. MUFON is a shambles of an organisation and its investigators appear to have been turned into mindless drones.
I have run out of options in the US/Mississippi so it lo0oks like the full details of what happened in 1973 are lost. I have contacted local news papers, radio and am not hopeful.
All because of initial racial prejudice
That written I was polite in my response:
Yes, I understand but this is potentially a major old UFO incident for which we know the names of some of the witnesses and those are the people that I have tried to trace. I was not there but the case is on the record from the time and was, admittedly, ignore because the witnesses were black. I just cannot understand the lack of willingness to look into an old case but willingness to ignore and lose the data. Thanks anyway.
The response was:
We take UFO reports from people who have seen UFOs. Without
an eye witness coming forward there's nobody to interview. We don't track
people down and ask them if they are willing to talk about their experiences.
there are many UFO podcasters who also investigate - such as
The Curious Realm, if the case is of interest they could do a show about it and
renew interest
If you want to reach out to witnesses and encourage them to
make a report, please do
a case that old would have no evidence, we couldn't go to a
location and gather evidence, and if the witnesses aren't coming forward to
tell their story and give eyewitness testimony, it's just a story.
Which means people have to run to MUFON or be ignored and that, even with names MUFON will NOT try to trace people involved in what could be amajor old incident. "it's just a story" seems like an excuse to not deal with a CE3K since MUFONs whole approach to the subject is Grey abductions and making even old non Grey cases Grey cases>
It's over 30 years since I asked Wal;t Andrus Jr, then head of MUFON what solid evidence they had gathered over the years. His response (letter still in a file) "No such thing". Let's see what a search asking what hard evidence MUFON has gathered since then finds:
"The Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) has collected thousands of witness reports, photos, and videos. However, they have not gathered any universally accepted, independent scientific evidence of alien spacecraft.
"While MUFON investigates potential physical clues, the mainstream scientific community views their methods and findings as pseudoscience rather than hard proof."
I know several people who left MUFON because of how it works. The criticisms can be found online so not a subject here. Ted Philips' Physical Trace Evidence is often cited and I tried many times before his death and after to get any papers revealing the evidence. The online catalogue you can find is basically a list of reports and traces -some well known even in the 1970s as hoaxes. The same applies to the much lauded Jacques Vallee Landing Cases Catalogue. Budd Hokins and David Jacobs have all had their work on abductions proven to be made up or based on personal theories.
MUFON accepts al;l of the above and even had these people as guests and presenting their work which was never questioned.
So plkease excuse me if I feel that MUFON is full of hobbyist trying to pretend they are on X File episodes and gathering solid evidence while ignoring cases even more recent than Eupora. It's online Report a UFO site is full of unstabstatiated reports from anopnymous people but they cite these (mainly uninvestigated) reports as "evidence" for UFO reality.
Where are the REAL UFO investigators?
I have tried local radio stations and news outlets as well as podcasters but so far not even a glimmer of interest.
Does anyone know of any UFO investigators in the Eupora, Webster county, Missouri or in the state itself and are independent of MUFON and can look into cases without having to wait for someone to approve it?
The Eup0ora multi witness sighting of 1973 was ignored by local investigators despite Hynek and Ted Bloecher requesting the case be looked into because the witnesses were black. It could be a potentially very imp-ortant Close Encounter of the Third Kind butthe witnesses are not getting any younger and we need to get their accounts before they are lost forever.
Boxing up the CE3K/AE archive folders into 6 archive boxes (likely to be burnt) so decided to post a few bits an pieces.
Source: APRO Bulletin, Vol. 32, No. 2 (May 1984)
"ENCOUNTER IN ALABAMA"
The following case is the result of a lead furnished to APRO by Bob Gribble of Phenomena Research Hot Line, and follow-up and investigation was completed by Field Investigator Ed O. Brown. The name of the witness and some identifying names of the exact location have been changed to protect the principal, as requested.
Mrs. Pat Norris, 28, lives with her husband, Carl, and three children in a suburb of Mobile, Alabama. On the evening of February 3, 1983, she had visited a friend in Mobile and when the friend's husband arrived from work, Mrs. Norris left and headed home on Highway 90. She had turned off the Highway and when about 90 minutes' ride from her home she heard an explosion. At this point, her car began to vibrate and continued to do so, making it difficult for her to steer. She negotiated another turn off the road she was on, brought the car to a halt, opened the car door and leaned out and down and looked to ascertain if the transmission could have been causing the trouble. It had not.
OBJECT SEEN
Mrs. N. continued driving and the vibrating stopped. She executed another turn onto another road and saw that the woods ahead were brilliantly illuminated. At first she thought that there was a helicopter search in progress because of the lights and was very frightened. She again stopped the car, and at this point sighted a huge object about l/2 mile west of her. She now feels the explosion she had heard earlier was the object coming down over a clay and gravel pit in the vicinity.
The thing was huge — later estimated to be 7 to 8 stories (70 to 80 feet) high and "six telephone poles" (210 feet) wide, and appeared to be moving toward her at 4-5 miles per hour. The evening had been clear and cool and she had driven with the car windows closed. After the explosion, she noted a "chopping wind, a high-pitched sound and a roaring sound" as well as the vibration. She particularly noted the "whipping of the wind — like a tornado."
FEAR GONE
When the object reached a point fairly close it stopped and all of the noise stopped. It was completely silent and Mrs. Norris lost all of the fear she had felt before. She then got out of the car to get a better look. She strained to take in every detail — feeling like a child with "unbelievable happiness."
Mr. Norris said that although Pat told him of her sighting after it happened, he didn 't realize how important it was to her until she started checking books out of the local library pertaining to UFOs and "related subjects."
She estimates the time duration of the sighting as five minutes. As the craft appeared Mrs. Norris' attention was drawn to a top deck with a long window which she estimates 53 feet and through which she viewed 20 to 30 persons, apparently oblivious of her presence, walking about as if they were changing shift. The wall behind them was curved and white. There were no instruments. The people did not give the appearance of looking out. The beings were pale skinned, dressed in white one piece suits. She judged them to be about our height, five feet 10", quite slender but with chests larger than ours, the top of the head more prominent, no hair, and having the lower half only of ears similar to our own. She noted nothing out of the ordinary about the eyes. What did draw her attention was the great grace of their movements. The atmosphere seemed "sterile."
DETAILS OBSERVED
Below this top deck window was an opaque window. The area around it was all white. This window was in sections and was inset. The glass was tinted.
Below the center of the craft a door was closing from right to left. (See drawing). And she looked onto a street that was dark as if made of asphalt or possible concrete. Off to the side of this street was tubular rectangular equipment. All across the craft she saw rivets and portholes. She said she could see the portholes "inside out" as she peered into the craft. She saw some construction that included "huge I beams like they put ships together with and beams holding the glass in there." The bottom side was tiered upwards. The construction reminds her of a ship or submarine. She said it seemed possible, very likely, it could have been constructed here on Earth.
The very bottom of the craft was formed into a cross made with one foot square mirrors and an observation deck hung down and around the bottom with beings in it. In this case, unlike the top deck, the people were peering out, while overhead she heard a very low pitched but clearly audible (almost like a growl) "announcing" coming from the area of the observation deck now closest to her.
Mrs. Norris said she believes they didn't realize she was there until directly over her position.
As drawn, she saw four pipes projecting six to eight feet out from the craft set in three or four foot square boxes. They had a hollow flange on the end like a tank cannon and she believes "it looked like a weapon."
The craft took a southerly turn as it went on from where she was parked. She said it was staying in the wooded area and did not cross Highway 90 again. Possible it was doubling back towards Irvington and Pascagoula. It lit up the wooded area, and all beneath it as it moved on off. It had white spotlights and to the side blue and red lights that intermingled, pointing up to the clouds and then down to Earth.
She told Mr. Brown she had prayed she might have such a sighting. She had extensive dream material both prior to and after the February 4 incident. The late dreams contain a detailed physical examination and scan of her emotions, which we expect to present later, when prepared.
After the object was out of sight, Pat continued on home, arriving at 1:10 a.m.
I woke up after a couple hours sleep and the first thing I thought of was the Maurice Masse Valensole encounter in 1965 (covered in detail in UFO Contact).
Maurice Masse AE/CE3K archive
Masse had a conversation with two entities. No, they were NOT "Greys" as depicted in retellings over recent years. No, Masse remembered everything and there was no missing time or onboard examination.
Masse was followed, spied on and there were even attempts to threeaten/bully out of him all the details of the encounter -by Ufologists because it was THEIR right to know. Masse stood by the promise he had made that he would never reveal what was said not even to his wife. He kept his word and the full details died with him. Not even a written record.
Had it not been for his blurting out the account to the first people he saw while in a state of shock we would never have heard the mname Masse. That said Masse did get very excited when someone showed him a photograph of the object seen at Socorro, New Mexico (24 04 1964) and he blurted out that it was incredible -someone had photographed it (the object he saw). Then they told himit was a model based on another incident.
Normally I might think that this was a case of altered state created by boring routine and early working but there was far too much to the case. We'll never know.
Just how many incidents do we not hear of? These are rare encounters and I tend to look at why some that seem genuine suddenly become "life long". But each case has to be looked at and the percipient listened to. If you go into an investigation and already have your own conclusion then it is not the percipient that needs to be judged.
Above all you RESPECT the privacy of the percipient and their wishes. You are NOT entitled to their account so you can put it in a book, cut a TV deal or anything else. Even reporting on the case you MUST not reveal anything identifying about a person.
After the 6th January, 1976 Stanford, Kentucky UFO incident occurred Louise Smith, Mona Stafford, and Elaine Thomas were in a state of shock. They were quite traumatised because their whole world view had been shattered. There physiological effects and the women decided only they would know what happened. One stary unguarded sentence then saw the trio targeted (it was nothing else other than targeting) by Ufologists. There were the threats of revealing their story to the local media unless they did not tell investigators their "story". They relented and the Ufologists did deals including with the tabloid Natrional Enquirer -the women were openly exposed to the public against their wishes and by Ufologists breaking their word. Dr R Leo Sprinkle is the only person who came out of that with a clean slate.
Stafford, Smith and Thomas AE/CE3K archives
Ufologists got their story -articles, chapters in books and then...the trio were dumped. Ufologists (those that actually know of the case) had no idea Smith and Thomas had died. Checking all the groups, including MUFON, not one knew whether SWtafford was still alive.In fact, checking with reporters and newspapers that had interviewed Stafford in the mid 2000s when a play opened about the event... they did not even have contact details. They got their stories and moved on.
Hickson and Parker AE/CE3K archives
If you look at the three women their faces and eyes say a lot. Look at Parker and Higson after the 1973 Pascagoula incident. I have seen similar faces in cases of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder -something I have repeatedly written about particularly in relation to UFO percipients before the term ptsd was created -PTSD was previously called by other names including b"shell shock": The term "Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder" (PTSD) was coined and officially adopted in 1980 by the American Psychiatric Association (APA) in the third edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-III).
There are many cases where, had it not been for others finding a percipient in a collapsed/shocked state and an object being independently observed, we would never have known anything had happened. The Dechmont Woods (Livingston) UFO incident occurred on 9th November 1979 and Robert Taylor would never have spoken out. How it affected him is something we will not know but his attitude is something a lot of UFO percipients Known and Unknown take: "It's something that happened and you get on with your life".
Eileen Moreland had an early morning encounter on the 13th July, 1959, Blenheim, New Zeland. There were other witnesses to objects but Moreland seems to have undergone time loss and more BUT she would never talk about that or discuss it with her family. When she confided in the Royal New Zealand Air Force what had happened they promised never to reveal what she told them. The documents were released but ONLY of the UFO incidents no other information. What happened Moreland took to her grave ...and is also in an RNZAF document somewhere gathering dust decades after her death.
Eupora, Mississippi, 1973. Once those witnesses are gone we have lost everything but a meagre few details of what they saw. Ufology has no right to use the terms "professional ethics" or "Science based" while it's grifting as well as petty racial prejudices still exist and -I believe- will never go away.
Streets of Silence version...surname incorrect but this seems to happen in several online sources -internet Ufology 2026. Also as soon as Budd Hopkins gets involved all bets are off whether genuine originally or not.
Cynthia Vodovoz on Her 1973 Alabama UFO Abduction and Ongoing Alien Encounters
The First Observation and Vehicle Malfunction
In October 1973, 12-year-old Cynthia Vadavas and her mother were driving along US 31 near Gardendale, heading to a dance class in Birmingham. During this night journey, Cynthia noticed an unusual object in the sky. She described it as a large, round, bright green object with a yellow ring around it, visible above the treeline and keeping pace with their vehicle.
The object's presence was concerning enough that Cynthia's mother verbally wondered if it might land. As they continued driving just north of Gardendale, the object began descending directly in front of their car. Suddenly and without warning, their vehicle stalled near an intersection. Cynthia observed that several other cars in the vicinity had also stopped.
The object appeared to hover near some power lines, seeming "bigger than a plane" according to Cynthia's recollection. Her mother rolled down the window despite Cynthia's distress. In the car next to them, a man with a lit-up face leaned toward them when Cynthia's mother asked if he thought it was a UFO, to which he replied affirmatively.
Subsequent Memory Gap and Lost Time
Following this exchange, Cynthia recalled feeling an unusual heaviness throughout her body as a bright light shone into their car. She found herself unable to move, as if paralyzed by an unknown force. This was her last clear memory before an abrupt discontinuity in her recollection.
The next thing Cynthia remembered was sitting in the car with her feet in her mother's lap. A car door slammed against her back, which seemed to awaken both Cynthia and her mother simultaneously. Her mother frantically attempted to restart the vehicle, which eventually started, allowing them to continue their journey to the dance class. They arrived approximately 40 minutes late.
In 1986, thirteen years after the incident, Cynthia met with Dr. Richard Neal, a hypnotist, to explore her missing memories. Noted UFO researcher Bud Hopkins also participated in the case. Under hypnosis, Cynthia recalled seeing numerous stopped cars at the intersection, initially assuming there had been an accident. She described "mayhem" with people screaming and gesturing before becoming suddenly subdued.
According to her hypnotic regression, three small whitish beings approached her door, opened it, and pulled her from the vehicle despite her resistance. She recalled being transported into a craft with a bright white interior and placed on a table alongside another young girl with "sandy curly hair."
Family Relocation and Incident Dismissal
Following the incident, Cynthia's mother contacted her father, Irvin Vadavas, who worked with the Federal Aviation Administration in Birmingham. He immediately dismissed their experience, suggesting the object was simply a NASA rocket test.
The following year, the family relocated to Washington, and Cynthia later moved to Los Angeles to pursue dance. Despite these changes, she remained troubled by the incident and couldn't dismiss it from her mind.
In 1990, Frank Sikora, a civil rights historian and writer for the Birmingham News, interviewed the now 28-year-old Cynthia about her experience. Jeff Ballard, the state director of the Mutual UFO Network at that time, hoped Cynthia's public account might encourage others who were on US 31 that night to come forward.
Cynthia mentioned that after their sighting, her father received a call from someone claiming to be an Air Force colonel who reported seeing a UFO, but her father couldn't track this person down for verification. The year 1973 has been documented as particularly active for UFO sightings, earning the nickname "the year of the humanoids" due to numerous reported alien encounters.
Meeting with Dr. Neal
In 1986, Cynthia Vadavas took a significant step toward understanding the puzzling events from her past. After years of troubling uncertainty about what had occurred that October night in 1973, she sought professional help from Dr. Richard Neal. As an obstetrician-gynecologist with expertise in hypnosis, Dr. Neal offered a potential pathway to access the missing memories that had haunted Cynthia for over a decade.
The meeting represented Cynthia's determination to uncover the truth behind her experience. Having relocated to Los Angeles to pursue dance, she remained unable to dismiss the incident that had occurred near Gardendale when she was just 12 years old. Dr. Neal's hypnosis techniques presented a possible means to retrieve the lost time and fill the gaps in her recollection.
Involvement of Bud Hopkins
Cynthia's case drew the attention of prominent ufologist Bud Hopkins, who became actively involved in the investigation. Hopkins, recognized for his extensive work in alien abduction research, recognized the significance of Cynthia's experience and collaborated on the case. His expertise proved valuable as the hypnotic regression sessions revealed increasingly complex details about the encounter.
Hopkins's participation highlighted the unusual aspects of Cynthia's case, particularly the public nature of the incident. Unlike most reported abduction cases where encounters occurred in isolation, this event allegedly took place on a busy highway with multiple witnesses. The involvement of such a respected figure in UFO research lent additional credibility to Cynthia's account.
Hypnotic Regression Details
Under hypnosis, Cynthia provided remarkable details about her experience that night on US Highway 31. She described seeing numerous cars stopped at an intersection, initially assuming there had been an accident. According to her regression testimony, she witnessed a tall, thin humanoid figure walking between vehicles, seemingly putting people into trance-like states as it passed.
Cynthia's hypnotically recovered memories included these key elements:
Three small whitish beings approached her car and forcibly removed her
She attempted to resist by gripping the air conditioner vents, which broke
She was "floated" into a craft with a bright white interior
Another young girl with "sandy curly hair" was present on a separate table
A medical examination took place, including an injection in her navel
She was returned to her mother's car inside a "transparent globe"
The regression session revealed that when the beings placed Cynthia back in the vehicle, the car door slammed on her back—the precise moment where her conscious memory resumed. This detail aligned with her original recollection of suddenly "waking up" in the car with her mother, finding themselves 40 minutes late for dance class.
Hypnosis revealed why a figure would walk openly down the highway. It systematically placed witnesses into trance states, affecting multiple vehicles and drivers simultaneously. This approach differed dramatically from typical cases where entities operate covertly.
Hypnotic recovery suggested the presence of another abductee - a girl Cynthia had never mentioned in her conscious memories. This discovery raised questions about potential patterns in selection criteria for these alleged examinations.
Well, what a merry chase the internet idiots give us. It is CINDY Vodovoz so there is no credibility in reporting here. The Centree for UFO Studies has checked and they have no information so I am trying to get a copy of the Klass file.
During the night of July 8 to 9, 1996, in the center of a village, in Eastern Romania, a police sergeant and a guardian had a close encounter of the III-rd kind. They saw a UFO hovering above the road and three humanoids around it. Some other events seem to be connected with.
The case was observed in the village Cerţeşti (pronouncedTchertzeshty), district Galati, in South of the Moldavian Region of Romania. Only newspaper and tabloid reporters investigated the CE III in the next days and not UFO "professionals", because of the lack of funds and of appropriate UFO research structures in Romania. The TV producer Mihai Badescu, with a small team, was gone to Certesti, on August 12, 1996, to make a short film about this event, for TVR1, the main Romanian Public TV channel. He invited Calin Turcu and me (both of us having books published in Romanian about the UFO phenomenon) for comments. During that day, we had detailed discussions with the witnesses of this encounter and with other people, including skeptics. The main findings are mentioned bellow.
Officer Mancu
The police sergeant Marian Mancu and Marcel Rusu, voluntary guardian, were patrolling on the main road passing the village Certesti, on July 8 to 9, 1996, at night, in front of the police office. In this place, on both sides, between the road and the sidewalks, there are deep ditches, with small bridges across them. The houses are behind the fences, in the middle of orchards and gardens, except a two-storied apartment house, opposite the police station. The police sergeant lived in one apartment of this building. Around 0.30 AM, Mancu told Rusu that he would go home for ten minutes, to eat something. The entrance is behind the building. The moment the sergeant passed the corner, he heard a whistling sound from the street and sensed a current of air. He turned immediately back, seeing on the road something which "splashed blue and red lights, making a sound like voom-voom".
Rusu
At the first moment the sergeant had the impression that a police car from the district capital Galati arrived in a routine control. Getting closer he realized that the object was hovering half meter above the paving and a small and very strange person is moving around it. He cried "Guard"! As an answer, he observed the horrified guardian, coming half out from the ditch were he was hiding himself, below a bridge. He whispered - "Mister Marian - the Satan!"
Rusu declared later that, immediately after the sergeant disappeared behind the apartment house, "a fluttering from the above appeared..." The neon lighting of the street seemed to change in intensity. The object descended smoothly, without noise, behind him. For a short instant he was convinced too that it was the police car, for a routine control, but, turning, he became frightened when realized that the object had no contact with the ground and that three small human like creatures are moving around it. As he declared "when I saw how they are, their ugliness, I told myself they are not our own folk. I became afraid and I was hiding myself in the ditch... if something happened... because I have never seen such things in my life..."
As both witnesses agreed, the object had the form of a flat hut, 5-6 meters across and 2-2.5 meters high, and was hovering and balancing 0.5 meters above the ground. Around the edge it had a continuous girdle of light "as a rainbow". The colors: red and blue (or green in other declarations) changed from each other and flared. At the bottom of the object was a bright white light. None of the witnesses saw doors, portholes or other details.
After about two minutes, as they estimated, the UFO rose vertically. At that moment its lights became much brighter, but the neon streetlights went off. When the object reached around 30 meters, it changed direction and turned toward East, with a tremendous speed. The neon light went on after not more than thirty seconds.
The guardian Rusu saw better the humanoid creatures. Sergeant Mancu noticed only one and only from behind. Their height was estimated to be around one meter, maybe less ("as a child of six years"). Rusu said he heard some noises made by them, "as the rain in the drain pipe". Both agreed the creatures gave the impression of "abortion" (in the sense of "unfulfilled" as they mentioned later). The visitors had a big head, very elongated behind, and covered with bumps, with no hair, big ears ("as a palm of a man"). Their face was white and they had big eyes. Gray scales with a metallic shining, as the fish scales, covered their body. The belly was relatively big and limp. The arms were "not thicker than two fingers". None of the witnesses remembered the nose, the mouth or shoes. The witnesses could not tell for sure if the creatures were walking or flying above the ground, but accepted as more likely the second possibility. Rusu said they moved, "as they were drunk".
The physical traces were weak. A huge sweet cherry tree nearby had around 15% of its leaves affected, as by an extreme heat, on the side where the object was seen. The damage was visible even after one month, when we were on the place. Some people from the village told us that next morning, after the encounter, many leaves and broken limbs were spread on the road on that place. Some others were convinced that was a result of human activity. No other signs were recorded. Nobody measured the radioactivity or took samples.
Sergeant Mancu declared that, after the object disappeared he had to help Rusu to come out of the ditch. The guardian told him that he was sick and he had to sit on the grass for a while before becoming capable of walking. He remained convinced he was seeing Satan. After about a quarter of an hour a tractor was coming on the street, driven by Nicu Chicos. The two asked him if he had seen something. The tractor driver finally admitted that he and another countryman EmilBugeac, of the nearby village Carlomanesti, had seen a bright light, with some colored blinking, in the evening before at 10.30 or 11 P.M., three kilometers away from Certesti. But it could be a plane too.
More interesting should be the testimony of the countryman GheorgheGhenghea from Certesti. He was watching that night, with his daughter, a song contest on TV. In a certain moment, the image deteriorated, extinguished, restored for a moment, extinguished once again, and after a short while came back without other problems. No other lights were on in the house; so, it could be a short blackout. The witness went out, to ask a neighbor about, but apparently, everybody was sleeping. The color TV appliance was new and he had no problem with it until that moment, or after. The inhabitants told us that some other electrical appliances in the village were disturbed too. We had not the time to verify these allegations.
Another interesting witness was Stefan Dumitru Carje, from the village Cotoroaia, 4 km Northeast from Certesti. He woke up, the same night, because of the barking of dogs, at 1.12 AM (he remembered seeing the watch). The backyard was lighted by "very powerful and extended yellow through red light" coming from the high. Going outside, he was not capable to identify any source. "The sky was red and the ground red... it was so bright you could read a newspaper". He told he was 62, he had three years of army with the air force but it was a light he had never seen. The witness controlled the dependencies. "All the animals were up, but not scared. The birds were not croaking or cackling... Only the dogs were barking". After a while he re‑entered the house. When he was thinking to wake up his wife and two grandsons, to see the phenomenon, "the light became thinner and thinner... easy, easy... maybe it lasted three minutes until that powerful light disappeared and remained the light of the night". He added later: "I saw something as a haze raising up to a certain height and afterwards disappearing slowly in the air".
Cerțești
The witnesses are credible. The police sergeant Marian Mancu (30 years) was, for a while, veterinary technician, before graduating a police school. He is married, with two children and he is healthy and sane. The majority of the village population, including the village mayor Gheorghe Nechifor, considers him a serious person, not capable of lies or hoaxes. Mancu was interested in the historical events of the region. He led an initiative to build a monument for the heroes of the village, from the two world wars. He had a personal library of several hundreds of books, but nothing about UFOs, paranormal or connected issues. The sergeant told me that even he heard about UFOs, he did not believe in them and was not concerned about.
The guardian Maricel Rusu (41 years) graduated six classes, but his education seems lower. He reads little, with difficulty, and only "about some crimes in newspapers". He has never heard almost anything before about the UFO phenomenon. Maricel Rusu is Orthodox Christian but not bigot or even practicing. This explains his first hypothesis, that he met Satan and the fright after this finding. He has no recorded psychic disorders, and he served in the army as sapper. The villagers did not remember he was lying in the past. Even if he drinks sometimes, he has never been seen drunk. Before the close encounter he had his arm badly injured by a horse and he was following a treatment with antibiotics, so he was restrained to drink alcohol.
It is unlikely the witnesses could invent all the very peculiar details and to expose them in such a highly natural and convincing manner. It is also unlikely that it could be a delusion staged by someone else. Unfortunately we had not other means to certify this impression, e.g. psychological tests, or lie detector, but we did not discover anybody with any motivation to invent such a story.
Not all the villagers gave credit to the witnesses. A mathematics teacher contests the story telling she was awake in this period of time, living in the same apartment house as the sergeant, but she heard and saw nothing. A person said that his "Mercedes" was on the street, and it was confused with a UFO. Another person objected that the place was too narrow for landing, because of the telephone or electrical wires on both sides of the road. This objection was rejected, the distance between the wires being comfortably wider than the dimensions estimated for this UFO. More interesting, the "debunkers" were mainly people that had legal problems with the local police, or people related to them.
On the above premises, we consider that the Certesti case could be qualified as a CE III. But was it more than that? Maybe it was a CE IV; in other terms, was it abduction? A first argument is that, in the following days, sergeant Mancu felt sick and powerless; he supposed he was irradiated. The guardian Rusu had repeated nightmares. As he declares: " I was dreaming on the following days... about how I was hiding myself in the ditch... then I woke up frightened... because they were so ugly".
I questioned both of them about a possible "missing time" period. None of them had such an impression. But when I tried to establish more precisely the time marks, I found that none of them had a watch. The sergeant said "I had not my watch with me... because the bracelet was torn". Rusu had no watch at all.
Trying to establish the succession of the events, we found strange discontinuities. No one of the witnesses remembered to see the humanoids descending from the UFO or reentering. More than that, the witnesses could not explain how the visitors did that, because no doors or entrances were visible. Maricel Rusu declared "I did not see which way they descended... They were already turning around". The situation was the same when the UFO was flying up - the creatures simply were no more there, and nobody saw them going up in the object. The same witness declared: "they disappeared, but I didn’t take notice what way they disappeared... I don't know where they entered and I did not see them entering... maybe behind..." Sergeant Mancu recognized also that he could not explain how the little men disappeared. His impression was that he observed the small creature only for four-five seconds...
In the literature there are many cases when the witnesses considered they had a CE III only for several seconds or minutes, but after some complementary procedures, for example hypnotic regression, they discover that it was a much longer story and a CE IV. Therefore, we agreed, it would be interesting to use this technique, or something similar, in this case too. Unfortunately, in Romania we face a lack of professionals practicing hypnotic regression or willing to apply it in such situations. Even the traveling expenses to arrange sessions constitute a problem.
Another curiosity discovered in our visit was that the villagers of Certesti told us about several other very interesting and quite typical UFO observations, even close encounters, in the last years. They have never been reported. They would have remained completely unknown if the main event had not happened. I wonder about how many similar situations are in the villages of Romania and of many other countries too.
As a peculiar but not unique sequel, we can mention that, after two years, sergeant Mancu was fired from the police, most probable because he tried to be "hypercorrect" in several cases, even against his chiefs. One argument used was that Mancu is "that guy who sees UFOs"
"Two or three people on a quiet country road at night stop their cars and get out to observe maneuvering very bright object in the sky. Why were they not abducted?"
Well, they probably saw UNP -natural light phenomena that we know as much about as we do ball lightning! These objects are bright and very impressive and can vary in size but, despite people believing they must be under intelligent control they are not.
Also, if we accept that on board experiences do take place, then we have to admit that we have no idea what criteria are involved or what "aliens" think. The people in those cars that stopped might not suit the criteria or anyone aboard said objects might not be involved in interactions.
Once a straight forward report gets to Ufologists they can put any slant on it they want and in more than one case I have heard people involved say "But I never claimed that!"
