All material (c) 2021 Terry Hooper-Scharf This is taken from the chapter of the same title as this post in Beyond UFO Contact: Aliens from Mind, Time & Space
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For me the story of Dionisio Llanca sums up how badly percipients in UFO encounters can be treated and often used to make money and/or be guinea pigs and not necessarily to gain evidence of “UFO reality.”
Above: Dionisio Llanca c. 1978 © respective copyright owner Dionisio Llanca was a skilled truck driver born in Ingeniero Jacobacci, Rio Negro, Argentina. On Saturday, 27th October, 1973, he got out of bed and hung around his uncle’s house for a while before they later had dinner with his uncle, Enrique Ruiz. Llanca’s Dodge 600 truck that was fully loaded with construction materials ready to be delivered to Rio Gallegos, a long trip in itself. Leaving the house at around 00:30 hrs, he noticed that there was a problem with his back tyre; however, he decided to wait to deal with it later. People have questioned this but there are numerous stories of drivers ignoring a vehicle fault to “deal with later.”
The trip to deliver his load would take around two days but on the route to Rio Gallegos, the tyre pressure got really low under the weight of the heavy cargo and there was then only one option; to get out of the truck in the, in the dark, and attempt to fix the problem himself. It was around 01:15 hrs and so Llanca pulled off of the road on a rather isolated road and began changing the tyres.
Above: Llanca at the scene of his alleged abduction, © respective copyright owner According to Llanca:
“I braked the truck on the shoulder, got down, took out the jack and the
tools and began to change the tire. The road was completely deserted. All
at once the road was illuminated with an intense yellow light that seemed to
be about 2,000 meters distant. Because of the color I thought that they might
be the headlights of a Pugeot and continued with my work. A few seconds
passed and I had my shoulder to the light but it became so bright that it
lighted the whole area. Now the light had changed to a bluish color similar to
an electric arc welder. I tried to get up but could not rise; I had no strength,
and a strange thing – – my legs would not respond. I was on my knees.
wanted to get up and look towards the woods that grew along one side of the
road.
“Then I saw a great thing in the form of a plate suspended in the air at some
seven meters altitude, and three persons at my shoulders looking at me. I
tried once more to get up but could not. The paralysis became total and I
could not even talk. The three beings stood looking at me for a long time,
perhaps five minutes. They were two men and a woman. The woman was
between the two men. I believed it was a woman because of the form of the
breast and the long hair, blonde, reaching to the middle of her shoulders.
“The men were also blond with shorter hair in back. The three were about
the same height, one meter and 70 or 75 centimetres, and dressed in the
same manner: single piece smoky grey coverall suits well fitted to the figure,
yellow boots and long gloves reaching to the middle of the arm of the same
colour. They had no belts, nor weapons, nor helmets nor anything else. Their
faces were like ours except for high foreheads and elongated eyes, like the
Japanese and a little tilted. They talked among themselves in a language
impossible for me to understand. They had no vocal inflections but sounded
like a radio badly tuned with chirps and buzzes.
Drawing of Dionisio Llanca encounter by APRO staff artist Norman Duke ©N. Duke
Above: Fabio Zerpa (4th December 1928 – 7th August 2019) who investigated the Llanca case and published a book on it.
“One of them grabbed me by the neck of my sweater and lifted me
firmly but without violence. I tried to talk but my voice would not come
out. While the one held me up another put an apparatus in the base of my
index finger on the left hand. They looked closely at the apparatus. It was
like a razor but had a small tube. They applied it to me for several seconds.
It did not hurt. When they left I had two drops of blood on my finger, then
I passed out.”
Llanca had observed two of the entities take two “tubes” –one was attached to a high-tension cable while the other was placed into a small lake.
It was around 03:00 hrs when Dionisio woke up between two parked cars in the backyard of the Sociedad Rural Bahia Blanca which was approximately 9 kilometres from the location where he had seen the object and been approached by the entities. Llanca, however, could not recall a single thing about the experience or anything about himself and so he started to walk, but soon passed out. When he next woke up he started to follow Route 3 but was disoriented. As he wandered along he asked anyone he came across how he could get to a police station. Luckily, a driver seeing him wandering in the road realised that something was wrong and Llanca was at risk of being struck by vehicles and so stopped to pick him. He eventually ended up in a local police station and from there was taken to the Hospital Espanol; this because the policemen though he was intoxicated.
Doctor Ricardo Smirnoff from the Hospital Espanol examined Llanca and noted:
“The subject has no visible injuries, but refuses to be touched on the
head as if he is having a profound ailment located there. There is also
a barely unnoticed abrasion on his left eyelid.”
One can only imagine the turmoil Llanca was going through as the amnesia continued and he was constantly crying and asking in what city he was. It was then decided that he should be moved to the Hospital Municipal. It was on 30th October, at 10:00 hrs, that Llanca woke up in the hospital with his memory fully restored. The first thing that he did was look for a cigarette and see what time it was but his cigarettes and watch were missing but it was noted that he still had his 150,000 pesos. He now fully recalled the UFO experience but he more worried about his truck; the police informed him that they found it parked on a roadside in Villa Bordeu, approximately 18 kilometres from the town of Bahia Blanca. It was also discovered that a few meters away from the truck a pylon was damaged.
The team led by Fabio Zerpa (a well known Argentine ufologist) contacted the company that supplies power to Bahia Blanca and they noted that on Sunday, 28th October, between 02:00 to 03:00 hrs, there had been an unusual increase in electricity consumption and this coincided with Llanca’s encounter; but does not necessarily mean that there was a connection. The case investigation by Fabio Zerpa eventually led to his book El Reino Subterráneo.
Above: Charles Bowen Flying Saucer Review Editor
Above: Gordon W. Creighton Flying Saucer Review consultant, later editor
Dr Eduardo Mata, a psychiatrist examined Llanca and concluded that he was “quite normal” but was shocked an ill prepared for the attention following the publicity concerning his encounter –that he had not initiated it has to be noted. Again, Ufologists seem to have contacted the press. The Rio de Janeiro newspaper, O Globo (17th February, 1974) had a tape recording of the “hypnosis and truth drug sessions” involving Llanca by Dr. Eladio Santos –at which Dr. Mata was present. The calming voice of Dr. Santos is noted but:
“By contrast the voice of Dionisio Llanca was grave, monotonous
and tired. His breathing was affected, and he was panting at times.”
Part of the session reads:
Santos: “Tell me what you did on October 27, after midnight?
Llanca: “I leave the Esso Filling Station on Calle Don Bosco. I have a punctured tyre. I am going to change it.
Santos: “On what road are you?”
Llanca:”Avenida 3.”
Santos: “What are you doing now?”
Llanca: “I am changing the tyre…a light comes…yellow…like the headlights of a Peugeot”
(Note: at this point his voice becomes “feeble” and he feels a great tiredness –a profound fatigue.)
Llanca: “…who… are… you… people? What… do… you… want? No… Please…don’t do anything to me…you can take the truck and my money.”
Santos: “Whom do you see?”
Llanca: “Them…two men…and there’s a woman too.”
Santos: “How are they dressed?”
Llanca: “In silvery clothing, closely fitting the body. And boots, and gloves.”
Santos: “What is the colour of the gloves?”
Llanca: “Yellow. Orange-yellow.”
Santos: “Do they speak to you?”
Llanca: “No. I hear a buzzing noise, like bees in a hive, or like a badly tuned radio.”
Santos: “Do they threaten you?”
Llanca: “No. One of them approaches me, and touches my hand with an instrument.”
Santos: “Does it hurt?”
Llanca: “No.”
Santos: “What is the instrument like?”
Llanca: “Like an electric shaver.”
Santos: “What are they doing now?”
Llanca: “They are carrying me…where are they taking me?”
Llanca was taken by a beam of light along with the two entities into a strange place with a floor that looked the colour of lead and a rounded window. Unfortunately, even checking the FSR account, the next part is unclear as we are told that “there were many instruments there” which we assume is meant to be control panels, etc. but then; “…a boat, two television sets and a radio. In one of the TV sets he could see the stars” which is confusing. This case has never been fully translated into English but we can presume that by “TV sets” Llanca meant monitors of some kind which makes more sense than Earthly TV sets. The radio, again, is explainable when Dr. Santos continued his questioning but “boat”?
When asked by Dr. Santos whether the entities had spoken to him, Llanca replied that only the “radio” spoke to him in Spanish. Familiar in these report accounts is the fact that the place he was in was lit up by a yellow light. The female entity was then seen to put on a black glove and approach and then touched him; at this point in the session, Llanca raised his hand to his forehead in an attempt to cover his left eyebrow. He then flinched and “passed into a state of profound lethargy.” This seems significant since Dr. Smirnoff had noted that: “There is also a barely unnoticed abrasion on his left eyelid.”
When Llanca came out of this state of lethargy his first memory was:
“I’m falling…falling slowly into the corral. They said they will return
for me. I feel cold. I reach the Avenida and start walking along it…
Who am I? Who am I?”
Dr. Mata had some doubts about the investigation:
“When listening to the first tape one gets the impression that some of
the questions carry, implicit in them, their own reply. This was correlated
later when we put the conducting of the hypnosis entirely under Dr.
Eladio Santos.”
In effect, Dr. Mata was stating that he felt the whole process had been contaminated by initial errors which meant that they “could not attribute 100% veracity to what Llanca said.” Dr. Mata noted, however, that none of this detracted from Llanca’s previous recall which had “been entirely consistent.” Which seems clear enough but some might be confused by Dr. Santos’s when the O Globo reporter asked whether Llanca was telling the truth:
“He is speaking his truth…At the beginning I was most sceptical, and
at the moment there is only one thing I can say to you: when subjected
to tests by methods which in normal practice are acceptably sure, such
hypnosis and Pentothal, Dionisio told what he thinks he experienced.”
This type of statement confuses they layman who probably thinks that this means Llanca was imagining it all. In fact, it is expressing an opinion, based on his experience, that Llanca is telling the truth but Santos was not there on the night and so saw none of what his patient experienced. To make this clear, when Dr. Santos was asked he:
“…revealed that Llanca had been given an exhaustive psychiatric
examination, and that there was no evidence that he had been
lying, even though his statement may not be sufficiently valid for his
claim of having made contact with extraterrestrial beings in a space-craft
to be taken as the established truth.”
The psychiatric analysis of Llanca’s personality “eliminated any possibility that he could be a hoaxer.”
What this all means is simple: Llanca did not show the type of personality of imagination to make up such a story and carry it through cleverly hoaxing everyone. He was just a normal person more interested in his everyday life. It means that people have to decide for themselves whether they believe the account. The power company noted that power surges are not unknown and have various causes.
As for Llanca, he disappeared and nothing more was heard from him until the newspaper La Nueva Provincia (Sunday, 8th December, 2013) published a kind of update:
"‘If it happened again, I would not tell anyone. It did much harm, I was slandered and used. In these past 40 years I have been hospitalized for different emotional and health problems in hospitals in Rawson, Mendoza and Buenos Aires.’
“Dionisio lives hoping that no one learns about his past in the southern city, where for four years he has worked as a manager in a gas station.
“His incognito life made it difficult for La Nueva Provincia to find and contact him. In fact, several of his relatives were unaware of his whereabouts or whether he had actually died. Other relatives mentioned that after that experience, the man became a kind of nomad.
“The truth is that he only had telephone conversations with one of his brothers, who recorded the number from which he received the call, and only passed it on after consulting with Dionisio, to see whether the newspaper interview was possible. The only person who knows his past in his current environment is his boss.
"‘A while ago her (his boss’s) daughter read of my case on the Internet and asked me about it. I had to tell them all but with the promise that they would not tell anyone, because the truth is I do not like to remember it.’
"‘In the year 1976, tired of being injected with pentothal, called the truth serum, and the problems that generated with remembering everything I decided to escape’ he says.
“His escape into anonymity took him to places he never imagined. He had spent a total of two and a half years in hospitals in Mendoza, Buenos Aires and Rawson.
"‘My skin was falling off all over my body and at times both eyes reddened and it looked like I was going to go blind. The doctors told me I had indications of exposure to radioactivity’, but the worst part is that occasionally he saw the light of the UFO" he says.
“Even today, every time he washes his hands, a small hole in the finger is noticed. He also claims to have a mark on his left eyelid which is seen most clearly when his face gets wet.
"‘In all these years many things have happened. If I were to tell them all I would not finish. The reality is that I still find it puzzling, in fact I was getting to know what happened for about 25 minutes when I was in the ship, but I did not want to be part of more experiments.’
‘Well, buddy’…you can tell as if to say he does not want to keep talking. Before hanging up the phone he returns to say that despite having reached 65, he has not yet found any sense, a reason for what happened and that keeps him awake at nights.”
In 1980 Flying Saucer Review published a lengthy article on the Dionisio Llanca UFO abduction case (Gordon Creighton and Charles Bowen, “The Extraordinary Case of Dionisio Llanca and the Ufonauts” FSR vol.26 no. 4, November, 1980: pp. 2-10). Since that time bits and pieces of the article have been used online –however, most modern Ufologists seem to have no idea about the case.
The usual questions asked is “What happened to Llanca?” and “Was the case ever proven not to have happened?” along with the usual “Where is Llanca now?” I hope this chapter answers all of those questions. There are things we need to look at, though.
Firstly, based on the FSR account and what I could find in books or, rarely, online, I looked at the fact that he was on a long, boring journey at night and if not a hoax then the theory that this was a dream state experience –Llanca wandering about later on could indicate this but there are problems. He was obvious confused and dazed but still asked anyone he came across how he could get to a police station and we have no information on what responses he got but, if the police thought this, members of the public might also assume Llanca was drunk so ignored him. If he had been struck and killed by a vehicle on the road we would not even know the name of Dionisio Llanca –luckily, a motorist stopped to help him.
Amnesia following a dream state is not, as far as I am aware, normal. Llanca also seems to have been in some form of shock with the constant weeping, etc. However, one might say that his problems started when someone contacted Ufologists and the newspapers. It is very clear that all Llanca wanted to do was get back to his truck and normal life while no one seemed to really be that interested in his needs or how they could help him (it seems).
Llanca was treated as a “guinea pig” and hypnosis and Pentothal to try to open up his memory has many problems even if administered by medical professionals. One might assume that medical professionals having checked he was physically and psychologically fine would send him home with a future appointment date to see how he was going and whether there were any lasting effects. Reading the reports it is almost as though everything was done to just see if he was just lying.
I need to point out that FSR and its Editor -Bowen- and contributor later editor -Creighton- were very prejudiced in how they described someone. In the main if you were someone from a country in South America you were ill educated, semi literate if literate in any way. In report after report from the 1960s on it is over stressed just how "primitive" /"ignorant"/ "illiterate or ""introverted" witnesses were. In the case of Llanca the term "a savage" was used several times in the FSR article. This is, in fact, a form of ethnic prejudice and I made very clear that this attitude was unacceptable in a letter to the publication (no one responded).
How “ignorant” Antonio Villas Boas was; hardly able to read, he would not be able to understand anything in articles about UFOs etc, etc, etc. This was a lie. It was known by Bowen and Creighton (Creighton doing the translation work) just how literate Boas was (as detailed in UFO Contact?) and he rose to a very prominent position in the community. In the 1975 FSR report on (Oscar A. Galindez, “The Anthropomorphic Phenomena at Santa Isabel” vol. 21 no. 2, August, 1975: pp. 11-16 and vol. 21 nos. 3 & 4: pp. 16-21) we read of the semi literate and introverted workers (all of them apparently). One wonders whether these were descriptions given by Galindez or “interpreted” by Creighton in his own words.
Boas was no dope but this is FSRs legacy: everyone from a Latin American country is a dope unless they are persons of high standing in which case their credentials were fawned over and then came "Why would they lie with so much to loose?”
I think it fair to write that, in Llanca's case, he was not highly educated but was certainly no dope. He would be put in the class of person who has a certain routine and life-style and never really veers from it (oh, being ill educated he is, as FSR points out, obviously, a lazy so-and-so). Why repair that tyre and make more work for yourself? He would not be the first driver I've known who did this! Llanca was/is basically an everyday working person in 1973.
It was claimed that "despite the time, he says he still wears marks on his body" and I believe that quote is from 1980 but I had no definitive source until the La Nueva Provincia item. According to rumours reported by an FSR correspondent, Llanca’s family shunned him because "he would not work" -he had been pulled into some financial deal that was not that rewarding for him and a personal relationship seems to have suffered. In fact, it looks as though Llanca was suffering some form of post traumatic stress. This quote says everything and echoes the words of many other alleged UFO abduction percipients:
"If that night happened to me again, I wouldn't tell anyone. It did me a lot of harm, they defamed and used me,"
Was Llanca abducted by aliens? We can forget the alien cover story of being here to help Earth because I have never really given that credibility and some doubt was cast on early hypnosis used on him ("question that offered the answers"). The problem is that this could have been some altered state experience because there was only one percipient but if Llanca suffered from exposure to radiation we have to throw that idea out. In fact, this exposure to a form of radiation is a quite common aspect of these encounters and we have to ask how a truck driver changing a tyre was exposed to radiation on a quiet stretch of road in Argentina?
Others were seeing UFOs in the area at the time? That adds some additional information but is coincidental evidence only. By inference, it seems that in the La Nueva Provincia item, the words of Llanca may reveal that he has recalled more of his experience: “In all these years many things have happened. If I were to tell them all I would not finish.” Some might think that this means he is indicating that he is a multiple-abductions victim but that is reading a lot into his words. That “occasionally he saw the light of the UFO" does not necessarily mean that it was the object involved in his encounter –it could be a misidentification of something more earthly but abductees do tend to display paranoia to a degree but post traumatic stress can explain a lot of after-encounter sightings.
There is a twist, in Ufology there has to be. In The UFO Book: Encyclopedia of the Extraterrestrial (Omnigraphics Inc.m, 1997: pp. 299-300) Jerome Clark writes:
“The magazine article and subsequent newspaper pieces based on it
mention physicians and psychologists who supposedly had investigated
the story, but when Argentine ufologists tried to check for themselves,
they found that the story was an invention put together as a money-making
scheme. It is not clear if either Llanca or the medical experts even existed.”
This is odd. First “they found that the story was an invention” then “It is not clear if either Llanca or the medical experts even existed” –now that is nonsensical. They proved the case to be a hoax but are unclear on whether the doctors or Llanca existed. It sounds to me that no proper re-investigation was carried out.
- Did Fabio Zerpa, a prominent Ufologist on whom I can find no dirt or reports of him faking cases, not exist then? He investigated and spoke to Llanca and what of his UFO team –did they or didn’t they exist?
- Was La Nueva Provincia also carrying out a hoax because if it was then it did not come up with much new sensationalism to sell the story?
- Who exactly did FSRs correspondent, Jane Thomas who travelled with Pedro Romaniuk from Buenos Aires in October 1974 talk to? They spoke to neighbours and others who knew Llanca (this is where a fair bit of defamation of Llanca came from) so did two people who, at the time, checked into the report make it all up? Did Thomas and Romaniuk exist?
- Who then is the person in photographs identified as Llanca?
We would need to accept that everyone was in on the hoax, including people who did not know each other or have any contact with reporters. We also need to assume that the “Ufologists” carried out a thorough investigation so we have to ask:
- How long after the event did they carry out their checks?
- Did they consult any register of medical professionals in the area?
- Did they check with public records re. a registration of Dionisio Llanca’s birth or housing records
- Did they check the street named as being where his (named) uncle lived and ask neighbours?
- Did they check with Zerpa (he died in August 2000 so was certainly alive when Clark wrote the book and that was after the “re-investigation”)? Clark says he went by info he was sent so did not carry out any personal investigation but passed on incorrect information to the English speaking Ufological world.
We have to be cautious because Ufology has many problems including people grudges, for one or more reasons including disputes with other Ufologists or who are following a debunking agenda. This is very common and a great deal of time wasted on it.
I remember in the 1970s a supposed UFO landing with a number of entities being seen at Llanerchymedd in Wales. I knew the two UFO groups involved in looking into the reports but rather than cooperating they fought. I was “piggy-in-the-middle and was receiving phone calls from each as well as reports and both contradicted the other and included insinuations about the other “fabricating reports”. In fact, as I pointed out to them after quickly checking, they had both delivered incorrect reports because a local military exercise was taking place. How do I know? Well, I picked up the telephone and asked the RAF if anything was going on in or near Llanerchymedd. The RAF man told me that there was not but added “The Army are on exercise in that area, why do you ask?”
There was an FSR follow up (Gordon Creighton “The Case Dionisio Llanca in Argentina” vol. 30, no. 2, 1984: pp. 25-26) in which Creighton notes how FSR was chastised in an Argentine UFO publication (UFO Press no. 19, January-March, 1984) for not correcting the record after their findings of which neither Creighton or Bowen had been aware of because they had never been sent to them! Creighton back-pedalled by resorting to ethnic slurring again and stating that, based on the information received, Bowen had obviously published the account that Creighton had translated in good faith. Creighton asked that UFO Press be kind enough to furnish him with the new evidence. I checked volume 30 and 31 but cannot find anything else.
Creighton did note that in recent years in the United States and elsewhere some credible UFO incidents had been investigated again and reclassified as hoaxes by “Ufologists”; these re-investigations in fact turned out to be fabrications themselves. This became common and still is to an extent with debunkers calling themselves “Ufologists” so that their work carried credibility. I cannot find out much about UFO Press and it was certainly not a publication mentioned by my Argentine contact at the time, Hector Oswaldo Deambrosi (it does not take long to fake a UFO publication).
Dionisio Llanca would now (2020) be 71 years of age. It can only be hoped that he has/had found it possible to carry on with his life away from prying Ufologists and journalists.
If he existed.
It is Ufology that does not exist.
