Removed from reality: mysterious disappearances

Scott Corrales is the director of the Institute ofHispanic Ufology (IHU) and is the author of"Chupacabras and Other Mysteries" and "Flashpoint:High Strangeness in Puerto Rico". Visit Scott'swebsite at: http://inexplicata.blogspot.com/. Youcan contact Scott by email atlornis1@earthlink.net.REMOVED FROM REALITY: MYSTERIOUS DISAPPEARANCESby Scott CorralesTeleportation has traditionally remained in the province of science fiction:Isaac Asimov’s “Pebble in the Sky” features a protagonist who steps out of a 20th centuryChicago building to find himself in a dead, radioactive Earth of the far future. Non-fans areaware of teleportation and its perils from the events in the 1950’s classic “The Fly” and itssequel. Even generations raised on Star Trek’s apparently seamless transporter units knowthat teleportation entails risks.Is instantaneous – though unwilling – abstraction from one location to another possible ormerely the stuff of fantasy and hearsay? Recent scientific advances in the field ofteleportation have given a smattering of dignity to what until recently was dismissed as“crankery”. In 1993, a group of scientists of international repute stated that teleportation,far from science fiction jiggery-pokery, was theoretically possible. This opened the door to anumber of experiments in this direction, none of them, however, involving the translation ofsolid objects, much less living ones. For the time being, science has restricted itself toexperimental demonstrations of teleportation using “trapped ions” and laser beams. Possibleapplications for these research endeavors include long-range quantum communications, butno transporter rooms a la Star Trek, since the scientific principles at work suggest that theoriginal must be destroyed in order for teleportation to work.But what about events of teleportation that do not involve any inconvenient machinery?Sudden, unexpected transportation to “somewhere else” is without a doubt one of the mostterrifying things that could conceivably happen to anyone. Imagine yourself walking down afamiliar street or driving along a road on the way to work or play when a sudden, unexplainedforce removes you from your surrounding reality to deposit you elsewhere: another city, stateor even country, without any memory of how you got there or in many cases, how to return.

Gone for Good?Mist-shrouded El Yunque has always been a source of mystery involving paranormalphenomena and more recently, UFOs. Dozens of individuals, largely weekenders and campers,have disappeared inexplicably from this mountain rainforest. A child disappeared whilewalking down a trail with its parents, and even rescue teams sent to investigate have beenswallowed by this deceptive wilderness area. Forestry officials are quick to blame quicksandand unexplored sinkholes as the reasons for these evaporations, even when they occurred inareas far from where any of the aforementioned conditions would be encountered.The following appeared in a privately circulated paper entitled Abductions in El Yunque - AreAliens Responsible? by Hermes Rivera (1989). “About ten years ago, some 15 childrendisappeared in El Yunque while on a school trip. The teacher responsible for the kidscommitted suicide because the students were never found. A search team from the U.S., sentto the mountain to try and find the missing youths, ran into a short humanoid creaturewandering around the bushes. As soon as the creature realized it had been seen, it ran anddisappeared. The search was fruitless: no trace of the creature or of the missing children wasever found. The involvement of Tupamaro revolutionaries was suspected, since they had longbefore threatened to kidnap children all over the U.S. and Latin America to sell them formoney [...]. Two Italian kids, about 9 years of age, were also reported missing between 1976and 1978. Their case was put on hold because of their father’s involvement with the Mafia.The Colón brothers, who used to live on the road that leads to the top of El Yunque where thefirst UFO landed, were also reported missing without a trace about 25 years ago.”http://www.ufodigest.com/news/0408/disappear2.html

Not even well-trained and armed soldiers are immune to whatever force is behind thedisappearances. In March 1976, two Marines stationed at the Roosevelt Roads naval facilityvanished in El Yunque. Ten years later, a man named Angel Bernard and his son had vanishedfrom the same spot, and also in the month of July. The Bernards, father and son, were lostfor 4 days after wandering off one of the area’s many trails, coming across strange featuressuch as bottomless pits, not normally a feature of the rainforest, pools of quicksand, and themost distressing feature – the skeleton of a hapless, unknown person who never made it outof El Yunque’s shroud of mystery. Angel Bernard added another interesting note – while themoment they became lost in the rainforest was four o’clock in the afternoon, “there was asudden, abnormal nightfall” at that time – a feature that has been observed in highstrangenessexperiences associated with alien abductions. The elder Bernard encountered ared-eyed, human-looking being surrounded by what he first thought were children, only tosee them vanish a lightning speed. Their peals of laughter made him realize that someparanormal force was a work; it prompted him to tell his son that amid their precarioussituation, they were also facing forces against which only the deity could ward them. Fourdays later, they found themselves on another trail on the far side of El Yunque rainforest,having no idea of how their wandering could have led them to that location.Were these individuals possible victims of alien abduction? Unwilling guests of the elementalforces that traditionally occupy such places? There is no shortage of speculation in thisregard.When the Dutch sensitive Gerard Croiset was employed by the Puerto Rican police in the mid-1970's to find two children belonging to a local millionaire, he concluded, chillingly, that thechildren were nowhere to be found on this physical plane. Unwilling to be blinded by whatthey perceived as mysticism, the police thanked Croiset and resumed their investigations withconventional means: the children remain missing to this very day.Certain locations on the planet have acquired the reputation as places where humandisappearances are quite common. Some of them, like the Bermuda Triangle and the Devil'sTriangle of Japan, have formed part of "pop" paranormal study for decades. Nonetheless,mountains play a greater role as locales for mysterious disappearances than any other site. Inancient tradition, travelers straying too close to Greece's Mt. Parnassus or Mt. Olympus wouldoften be lost for good. Puerto Rico's El Yunque, Vermont's Mt. Glastenbury, and EasternZimbabwe's Mt. Inyangani never quite managed to acquire the name recognition of thebetter-known ones, despite the vast number of unexplained cases which have occurred in andaround them.Author Salvador Freixedo, who looked into the subject of these bizarre disappearances as partof his book La Granja Humana, cites the curious case of a vehicular accident in Burgos, Spainwhich caused the deaths of a number of people and the disappearance of a 10 year-old fromone of the trucks involved in the accident. He was not found among the victims of the crash,and has never been seen again. The police initially believed that the boy had wandered awayfrom the crash scene in an amnesic state, and a thorough search of the area was mounted byboth civilians and police officials, yet nothing was turned up. In order to bring the case to a

close, the authorities suggested that the boy had been disintegrated, in fact, by a cargo ofsulfuric acid being hauled by the tanker truck in which he was a passenger.Jose María Carnero, a 26 year old medical student, vanished off the face of the earth in April1987 while on maneuvers with the military unit to which he belonged on the MontelareinaMilitary Base in Zamora, Spain. Reports indicate that José María wandered away from hissquad in the midst of a light rainfall, while the other soldiers tried to find shelter under thetrees. The young man was never seen again, even after a massive search by the Spanish army,which to this day lists him as a deserter.http://www.ufodigest.com/news/0408/disappear3.htmlEnigmatic ArgentinaAnyone who has been following the UFO/paranormal press with certain regularity should beaware of the wealth of paranormal events coming out of the southernmost country in theAmericas. However, unexplained cases of teleportation are perhaps Argentina’s greatestclaim to fame. Despite the controversy surrounding the now legendary disappearance of theVidal family from an Argentinean highway and their sudden reappearance in the Mexicancountryside thousands of miles away, there are other cases involving mysterious roadsidedisappearances that cause even the most prudent researcher to wonder. Many of theseunusual vanishings take place in a curious location that local investigators of the unusual havecome to know as the Triángulo Interprovincial (the interprovincial triangle, in reference tothe Bermuda Triangle) between the towns of Victoria (Entre Rios), Pueblo Esther (Santa Feprovince) and San Nicolás (Buenos Aires province). Juan Carlos Gauna, a private pilot who hasdedicated himself to reporting about this strangeness-prone region of his country, suggeststhat this arbitrary triangular area “activates” every forty-five to sixty days and either unusualaerial phenomena or disappearances occur. He takes his conclusion a step further by notingthat these disappearances take place in a straight line running from the city of Victoria (UFOand cattle mutilation hot spot) to the banks of the Paraná River. “The disappearances ofhuman beings from the southern reaches of the Triángulo Interprovincial,” he writes, “aremuch more alarming than those occurring elsewhere in the world, since people here havevanished before the eyes of friends and relatives, as though gobbled up by space itself.”Gauna is a first-hand witness to one such disappearance. One day in June 1996, while at theheadquarters of the Pueblo Ester Aero Club, accompanied only by the airfield’s staff, adistress called was received at 19:00 hours from a Cessna 172 Skymaster belonging to a clubmember. The pilot anxiously reported that he was lost and that his VOR was inoperative. Hehad taken off from Junín for the 40 minute flight back to Pueblo Ester, but now, after 90minutes aloft, had completely lost his bearings. Gauna took the microphone headset andasked the frightened pilot to give him some visual reference in order to steer him back to theairfield, asking if any large communities such as Arroyo Seco or San Nicolás were in view, asshould have been the case from a small aircraft flying at 1000 feet. The answer was negative– the pilot could see only darkness.An effort was made to guide the pilot verbally toward the air field, but the answer was stillthe same – nothing at all except inky darkness could be seen from the small cockpit. At onepoint, Gauna and the staff could hear the Cessna flying over head, but could not see it nor itslights (and the pilot couldn’t see the runway lights either). Suddenly, a wild cheer of joycame over Gauna’s headset: the pilot’s VOR had suddenly come back to life as mysteriously asit had died, and the runway lights were now perfectly visible. An uneventful and verywelcome landing followed.In January 1997 it would be Gauna’s turn to face the unknown. He was a passenger aboard aPiper PA-11 toward San Nicolás and was suddenly awakened from a nap by the plane’s pilot,who worriedly told him that “he didn’t know where he was”. Thinking it was a joke, Gaunalooked out the window and saw a landscape he had never seen before. He inquired if the pilothad at any point crossed the Paraná River, to which the flyer said no, but the landscapebelow was filled with unknown islands similar to the ones in that river’s estuary. Thisalarming situation went on for thirty minutes until “there was a sudden change in thelandscape below” and both men were able to recognize the town of Zarate, which meant thatin 50 minutes of flying time they had covered a distance that usually requires 90 minutes.Others were affected by whatever space/time distortion was taking place over Argentina atthat time. Gauna reports that a phone call was received from the Casilda Aero Clubrequesting emergency search assistance in finding a missing Cessna that ultimately appeared

the search for her missing sister.http://www.ufodigest.com/news/0408/disappear5.htmlThere exists the theory that she may have vanished in Bolivia, but not even this hypothesishas aided the efforts to find the whereabouts of that girl--today a woman--who vanishedforever in Pampa Unión.”Skeptics will inevitably – perhaps even correctly – argue that hapless Nora Suarez fell througha poorly covered mining pit or a crack in the ground, not into another dimension or whiskedaway by unfriendly non-humans covetous of young females. But during northern Chile’sChupacabras epidemic in the summer of 2000, researchers discovered that there had been anunusual increase in reports of missing young women from the mining communities that foundthemselves besieged by the paranormal predator. The official explanation involved “whiteslavery”, but it nonetheless prompted author Ramon Navia Osorio of Spain’s I.I.E.E.organization to write: “All of these disappearances took place in Iquique, in the northernreaches of the Atacama Desert, where the [Chupacabras] attacks commenced. Assuming thata band of human traffickers was involved, it would be more logical for them to behave morediscreetly and not operate in the same area constantly. We must bear in mind that the entityhas always expressed a preference for females, and if they are pregnant, so much thebetter...whenever this subject is brought up for discussion, I am reminded of the case of theyoung woman from Gavá (Barcelona, Spain) who vanished in broad daylight not far from thetown’s only police station, and as she walked behind two young men. A year after herdisappearance, her parents asked why we associated their daughter’s disappearance with theUFO phenomenon. Upon explaining the elements that come into play under suchcircumstances, including some of a meteorological nature, the parents were reminded of aparticular incident. They had kept the circumstance to themselves,as it was incomprehensibleand illogical. The forces that we are at war with are always present, and appear to have anintelligence that employs camouflage as a quotidian device (my italics). Time has shown thatthis has served them well and they continue to make use of it, due to human intransigence,which avoids facing reality, because it feels afraid....” (Navia, Ramon. La Verdad Oculta,IIEE, 2005).As this disturbing passage from La Verdad Oculta has unwittingly taken us from South Americato Spain, let us examine a case involving the disappearance of a young celebrity – a giftedyouth named David Guerrero, remembered to this day as el niño pintor (the artist child).Had David Guerrero not entered the chronicles of high strangeness, he would have certainlygone on to become one of Europe’s talented young visual artists. Thirteen years old, anintroverted loner with a spectacular gift for drawings and paintings, David lived in the Spanishcity of Malaga with his parents and older brother, who also shared his love of the paintbrush.On April 6, 1987, David Guerrero left his home to visit the La Maison art gallery where one ofhis works was going to be exhibited (an image of Christ). At 6 p.m. on that fateful day, theyoung artist left his building to walk the hundred or so meters that separated him from thebus stop from which he would travel to the downtown atelier.But David never reached the exhibit that evening, and he never returned home.As could well be expected, a massive police search ensued. Relatives and classmates weregrilled for answers, all of the spots where a putative criminal could have disposed of a bodywere searched to no avail. Some theories suggested that the young genius had deceived hisparents and gone off to a rendezvous elsewhere; even more bold theories posited thelikelihood that he had been abducted by an international ring of art forgers, interested inputting his talents at their service. The only possible suspect in the case, an elderly Swissgentleman who had been lodged in a hotel in Malaga at the time, died two years later.Twenty years have elapsed since el niño pintor vanished without a trace, and no satisfactoryexplanation has ever been put forth. However, Salvador Freixedo suggests the intriguing andotherworldly possibility that the non-human djinn – creatures of Islamic tradition occupying alevel between humans and angels – may have spirited the boy away. “Faced with such strangeand terrifying circumstances, as they are to the human race, we must be filled with wonderat the fact that centuries ago, other cultures and civilizations had already become aware of

this and set it down in writing. It matters not at all how they passed judgment on it, or whatnames they gave the culprits. What is important is that they were aware of it, while ourtechnological civilization has not yet become aware of this alarming situation,” writesFreixedo. “The explanation they gave it then is the same one we seek to give it now: thatnon-human entities endeavor to kidnap human beings, especially children, to places unknownand for reasons equally unknown.”