As a society, late 20th century America is obsessed
with "accentuating the positive," even in situations
where the silver lining is often impossible to assign.
In matters dealing with the paranormal, this manifests
itself in an urge to downplay incidents in which human
eyewitnesses or percipients received some kind of
bodily harm as a result of their fleeting brush with
the unknown.

  
   Apologists for these unknown forces are quick to
indicate that there can be no malice behind these
attacks, and that the force behind them is no more
guilty than the pane of glass that brought a hapless
bird's flight to an abrupt halt. One can only derive
cold comfort from such thoughts.

 
 Feature articles like Charles Bowen's "UFO Beams that
Cure or Kill" (SAGA UFO, 1974), or book-length
treatments on the subject, such as Bob Pratt's
excellent UFO Danger Zone (1996) or Jacques Vallee's
Confrontations (1990), have successfully illustrated
the deleterious effects of UFO encounters. We would be
fortunate indeed if the vast corpus of literature on
this manifestation of the phenomenon could be
circumscribed to these works. Yet, there is much more.

  
The Consul's Report 
  
The National UFO Reporting Center recently posted a
letter that appeared in Scientific American magazine a
little over a century ago-on December 18, 1886, to be
exact. The letter, dated November 17, 2000 purports to
be from one Walter Cowgill of the U.S. Consulate in
Maracaibo, Venezuela, and discusses a curious
phenomenon that took place on October 24, 1886 on a
proverbially dark and stormy night. A family of nine,
sleeping in a shanty not far from Maracaibo itself,
was awakened by "a loud humming noise and a vivid,
dazzling light" that turned night into day.

 
This could be a description of lightning or even its
more sophisticated cousin, ball lightning. But what
happened next is what catapults this case into the
high-strangeness ballpark. Cowgill's letter goes on to
indicate that in a belief that the Second Coming was
at hand, the frightened Venezuelans prostrated
themselves in prayer. "But their devotions," he
writes, "were almost immediately interrupted by
violent vomiting, and extensive swellings commenced to
appear in the upper parts of their bodies, this being
particularly noticeable about the face and lips." 

  
The members of the family were stricken with large
black facial blotches, which were painless until the
skin peeled off and the blotches turned to sores. The
letter reports that hair loss was also in evidence,
"upon the side which happened to be underneath where
the phenomenon occurred." Amazingly, the dwelling
itself was unaffected, and all doors and windows were
bolstered. No traces of lightning strikes could be
observed on the structure, and the injured occupants
allegedly stated that no sound beyond the curious
humming had accompanied the bright flash of light. The
trees surrounding the dwelling showed no signs of
damage until the ninth day, when they began to wither
"simultaneously with the development of sores upon the
bodies of the occupants of the house."

  
The letter closes on a less than upbeat note. The
consular agent indicates that he visited the members
of the injured family in one of the city's hospitals
and that "their appearance was truly horrible." It is
likely that their ultimate fate will forever remain a
mystery. While UFO advocates will protest that there
exists no clear-cut evidence of a connection with the
phenomenon in this case, we shall "fast-forward" sixty
years from 1886 to 1946, when an equally frightening
event occurred in Brazil.

  
The Aratariguam Incident 
  
At dusk on March 5, 1946, Joao Prestes and his friend
Salvador dos Santos returned to their neighborhood
after a day's fishing. Prestes said goodbye to his
companion after reaching his home and proceeded to
search the windowsill for the key to the door. He
became momentarily aware of "something" that was
hovering over his house; whatever it was, it fired a
potent beam of light directly at his face, prompting
him to cover his face with his hands in an instinctive
effort to ward off the luminous blow. The "force" of
the strange burst of cohered light toppled Prestes to
his knees.

  
 But the light vanished as suddenly as it appeared. The
terrified victim ran toward the nearby home of his
sister. As they listened to Joao's story, his sister
and the members of her household noticed that Prestes
flesh was gradually acquiring the aspect of "meat that
has been allowed to boil for a while." Curiously
enough, this only occurred in the lower parts of his
arms and legs, the exposed parts of his body that had
not been covered by clothing. The true horror
commenced when the onlookers realized that Joao
Prestes was melting before their very eyes. 
Skin slid off the fisherman's bones; an ear slid down
to the man's shoulder before hitting the ground; lips,
nose and eyelids fell off as the screams of his
terrified relatives split the air. Adding to the
hellish situation was the fact that Prestes insisted
he felt no pain whatsoever even as his body
disintegrated before his eyes. His final request
before dying was a drink of water. 
This mind-bending story was originally featured in
Italy's Il Giornale del Misteri, accompanied by a
truly frightening artists' depiction of Prestes' last
moments. Jacques Vallee adds the detail that Dr.
Felipe Santos Carrion, a researcher who managed to
interview Prestes' friend, dos Santos, before the
man's death, has ascertained that the weather was fair
and that there was no threat of a thunderstorm.

 
  Perhaps it is in poor taste to dwell on these
unfortunate cases, or even preferable to leave
undisturbed the memory of individuals who died in such
appalling circumstances. Hundreds of people die each
year from lightning strikes, whether on the golf
courses of the industrialized world or in open fields
of the Third World, and not a single case of "death by
lightning" has involved such gruesome results, which
are strongly reminiscent of the fate of the victims of
Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Yet nuclear energy was unknown
in 1886, and had only been barely harnessed in 1946.
What could have been the unknown source of these
strange deaths? Knowing what we now know, could UFOs
be the answer?

  
Wrong Place, Wrong Time 
  
Today, we are accustomed to reading cases in which UFO
eyewitnesses complain of a number of symptoms brought
about by microwave radiation issuing from the
mysterious objects in question. Rashes, burns, eczema,
temporary blindness and loss of reflexes are only some
of the side effects of involvement with the UFO
phenomenon. On January 7, 1970, Aarno Heinonen and
Esko Viljo, two Finnish skiers from the town of
Heinola in southern Finland, were thrust into
prominence by their encounter with a strange artifact
and its even stranger occupants.

  
 With fresh snow on the ground and clear skies on that
early day in January, Heinonen and Viljo went skiing
deep in a wooded area as part of their training for an
upcoming competition. At a given point, both men
became aware of an unbearably bright luminous object,
which deviated from its trajectory in the heavens and
turned around and headed for the forest clearing where
the men were resting. The light, which on closer
inspection was enshrouded in a reddish-grey cloud or
mist, emitted a loud buzzing sound. When it descended
to a height of fifteen meters (50 ft.), the skiers
were able to see a solid, disc-shaped craft at the
core of the swirling mist. 

  
The object descended within a few feet of the ground,
close enough for one of the men to tap it with a ski
pole, and the mist dispersed. Heinonen reportedly felt
something grab him and push him away from a luminous
tube that projected from the bottom of the craft. Both
men were startled to see a strange being, standing no
taller than three feet and holding a black box in its
claw-like hands. The humans later described the entity
as wearing tall black boots, a jumpsuit made of an
unknown but lightweight material, and a curiously
hooked nose. The creature seemed to give off a strange
radiance.

  
So stunned were the humans that they did not react
when the entity pointed the black device at Heinonen
and fired a beam of energy at him, followed by the
same reddish-grey mist that had encircled the unknown
craft. Heinonen now found himself enveloped in sparks
of red, violet and green, which did not produce any
kind of painful sensations.

  
 The odd mist became so dense that Viljo was unable to
see the non-human entity or his friend, even though
the latter was only a few steps away. Suddenly, the
lights contracted and were sucked back into the
device. The reddish mist lifted and dispersed. There
was no sign of the entity or of the disc-shaped
vehicle that had loomed over them. The encounter with
the creature had lasted, by their estimates, no more
than 20 seconds.

  
There would be a price to pay following this exposure
to unknown forces: Heinonen was afflicted with a
sensation of lassitude that prompted him to fall into
the snow, requiring his companion to carry/drag him
back to his home a mile away. Viljo's face was swollen
and congested. Heinonen urinated a dark liquid
resembling "coffee poured onto the snow."

  
In spite of the fact that local physician Paul
Kajanoja thought at first that the men were suffering
from a particularly severe bout of flu, he was
concerned by their abnormally low blood pressure,
vacant stares and the lack of coherence of speech.
While he felt that he was looking at two potential
cases of radiation poisoning, Kajanoja lacked a Geiger
counter with which to ascertain the possibility.

  
After the ordeal, Heinonen's weakness became chronic
and he was unable to return to work. He developed
constant nightmares and grew afraid of his friend Esko
Viljo, identifying him with the occupant of the
unknown vehicle. A physicist from the University of
Helsinki remarked that Heinonen's symptoms matched
those of an over-exposure to X-rays.

  
Later that same year, Swedish researcher K. Gosta Rehn
investigated another Scandinavian case involving a
similar situation. On October 25, 1970, Norwegian
technician Reidar Salvesson, 35, was driving home to
Kristiansland from a business trip to Stavanger when
he was blinded by an amazingly powerful source of
light more powerful than a "welding arc," according to
his description. Bringing his car to a stop on the
darkened highway, Salvesson was able to make out an
enormous ball of light heading toward his vehicle,
eventually hovering directly over him. The driver got
out of the vehicle after the unknown object had
extinguished its luminescence to reveal a
saucer-shaped flying object measuring some 20 meters
across. "It met the description of what I'd read about
flying saucers," remarked the technician, adding that
the object was perfectly silent and was tilted at a
slight angle.

  
Dutiful to the nature of his profession, the
technician quickly pulled a notepad from his pocket
and began making a quick sketch of the object,
calculating its distance from the ground, its width
and other measurements. After fifty seconds by his
count, Salvesson felt a strong blow against his back,
as if the object "had cast an electric wave at him."
Falling to the ground, he then heard the sound of his
car's windshield shattering to bits. Immediately after
that, the unknown object took off heavenward at
breakneck speed, disappearing from view.

  
After the event, Salvesson indicated that he felt a
numbness of the tongue and face, as if a dentist had
applied a particularly strong anesthetic. His eyesight
had been negatively affected for almost a week
following the event, making it almost impossible to
drive during daylight hours and causing severe ocular
irritation.

  
  These incidents are by no means specific to
Scandinavia. Since the 1950s, people worldwide have
been affected by anomalous phenomena often directly
related to UFOs. Many times, the harm is circumscribed
to physical effects such as those enumerated above,
stemming from close proximity to the anomaly or
through the intervention of a beam weapon of some
sort. The hapless victims of these microwave or other
unknown radiations do not always make a complete
recovery.

  
 Martins was taken to the Red Cross Hospital in Rio de
Janeiro where the attending physicians discovered a
new problem: the policeman's legs were now paralyzed.
Clinicians and psychiatrists alike were unable to find
the underlying causes of the blindness and the sudden
paralysis, particularly since the eyes appeared
undamaged as a result of the flash of light.

  
A UFO Steamroller 
  
On other occasions, the damage is not merely
circumscribed to frail human bodies, but also includes
the surrounding physical infrastructure. The following
case was first made known to the world through the
pages of Britain's Flying Saucer Review and caused
quite a sensation at the time. Although mention is
seldom made of it in our Roswell-minded times, it
nonetheless represents the most vivid example of UFO
"vandalism.ä 
At 11:30 a.m., August 7, 1970, the Ethiopian villagers
of Saladare were distracted by a sound issuing from a
nearby forest. Many suspected at first that the source
of the noise was a low-flying airplane or helicopter.
The noise's intensity grew steadily worse, from loud
to unbearable. Astonishment quickly turned to terror
when people saw a luminous red ball÷described by some
as being "shaped like a tree trunkä and by others as a
"ball followed by a tailä÷sweep through the village
and reduce everything in its path to rubble: trees
were torn from the ground, grass was charred, and the
asphalt on nearby highway melted into tar as the fiery
object rolled along.

 
  Eyewitnesses reported that the object traveled toward
a hillside, remained stationary, and then turned
around once more, retracing its way parallel with the
initial swath of destruction. The supernatural
abomination destroyed more homes and vanished the same
way it had first appeared. In total, over forty
buildings were destroyed and nine villagers were
either wounded or slain. Dr. J.A. Hynek, who featured
this nightmarish account in his book The Edge of
Reality (Regnery, 1975), noted: "This is one of the
few documented cases where harm has been caused by
something we must regard as a UFO. It was certainly
flying, it was obviously an object, and it certainly
was unidentified.ä

Death by Saucer? 
  
The possibility of death by UFO activity, whether
deliberate or accidental, is anathema in most
discussions of the subject: contactees believe that
the "kind space brothersä are incapable of hurting
anyone and ET Hypothesis proponents scoff at the
thought of advanced spaceships crossing the
interstellar abyss to kill innocent humans. However,
there exists a considerable body of information on
precisely such events on a global basis.

  
  
Otherwise, how can we explain the strange death of
Arcesio Bermudez following a UFO close encounter on
July 4, 1969? Thirteen people, some of them members of
a prominent Colombian family, were witnesses to the
event, which occurred in a ranch in the municipality
of Anoilaima, 50 kilometers distant from Bogot. As the
family pursued its activities for the evening, they
were surprised to see a small light appear in the
distance, reminiscent "of a balloon lightä (sic). The
light grew brighter as it drew nearer, eventually
flooding the ranch house with blinding light. The
object eventually landed close to the house and
extinguished its light.

  
  
Arcesio Bermudez was the first of the family members
to approach the object, armed with nothing more than a
heavy-duty flashlight. Pointing the electric torch at
the object, Arcesio reportedly shouted: "Hey, there's
a Martian inside!,ä after which the vehicle turned on
its lights, rose into the air, and vanished in the
general direction of Bogot. Arcesio took ill that very
same evening and died three days later. Dr. Csar
Esmeral would later indicate that his patient had
slipped into a coma and was in an odd "hypothermic
condition.ä Shortly before dying, Arcesio would tell
his relatives that the unknown device contained a
single occupant standing one meter tall.

  
  
Another case occurred in Peru in late 1968 and
involved the death of a child in the Amazonian
community of Tingo Maria (northeastern Peru).
According to the information presented in a local
tabloid, Ultima Hora, three children playing in a
rainforest clearing witnessed the descent of an
unknown object. The eldest of the group, a twelve
year-old, ran ahead of his companions to reach the
curious device before falling to the ground short of
his goal. The two remaining children reportedly saw a
pair of small creatures who gestured at them to remove
their fallen companion's body. The boys obeyed, and
found that their friend's body was nearly charred.
According to the tabloid article, they were able to
return the boy to his family, who promptly took him to
a medical dispensary. The boy died of the burns
shortly later. Military authorities tried in vain to
find a rational explanation to the event.

  
  
While this shocking case could easily be dismissed as
tabloid sensationalism, there are other UFO burn cases
that stand up to scrutiny and have been investigated
by competent agencies, such as the 1968 incident
involving Adela Casalvieri, 53, a nurse at a
psychiatric hospital in Mendoza, Argentina, whose case
was studied by that country's Aeronautical
Intelligence Service, the Forensic Police and the
National Commission on Atomic Energy.

  
  
According to Casalvieri, she was in the women's ward
of the hospital attending to her professional duties
when she suddenly noticed an intense red light
accompanied by a persistent buzzing sound. Thinking at
first that it came from a space heater in a patient's
room, she was startled to find that a sizeable red
object had in fact landed in the hospital's courtyard.
Walking out to the courtyard, the nurse found herself
suddenly unable to move.

  
"The light focused on me ... I felt a burning
sensation and the inability to move. The light was red
and very powerful, and I could neither scream nor
move.ä Casalvieri would later describe the object as
"shaped like a mushroom and giving off flashes of blue
and red light.ä When she was finally able to break
free from its thrall, she ran back into the building
and called for help. Casalvieri was treated for the
burns and released, and the only evidence that
remained of the encounter was a lead-colored scorch
mark on the hospital courtyard, which remained visible
for two days before disappearing.

  
  
Conclusions 
  
  
The preceding cases will more than likely be dismissed
as doom-and-gloom retellings of events that happened
long ago and far away. The Brazilian policeman's
blindness and paralysis will be dismissed as
psychosomatic, the Argentinean nurse's burns as mere
exposure to "harmful UVs,ä the destruction of the
Ethiopian village as hearsay, and the alleged death of
the Peruvian boy as a hoax or worse. For indeed, how
can entities higher up the evolutionary scale share
the sad human penchant for murder and mayhem?

  
  And precisely there lies the crux of the matter:
despite its dazzling maneuvers and light shows,
despite the undisputed power of its technological or
paratechnological devices, the force behind the UFO
phenomenon (whether extraterrestrial,
ultraterrestrial, infraterrestrial, etc.) presents
itself as indiscriminate, lacking regard for the well
being of other sentient beings, regardless of their
intellectual capacity.