Einstein famously said in his theory of relativity that time is relative. In other words, the rate at which time flows depends upon where you are and how fast you are traveling. In 1971, physicists Joseph Hafele and Richard Keating put atomic clocks onboard jet aircraft and sent them flying around the world. When the clocks returned, they were different than the ground-based clock by exactly the amount predicted by special relativity. Other evidence we’ve seen with this phenomenon is that astronauts age slower during space travel than they would have if they remained on Planet Earth.
In this post we will examine a case where a Chilean man experienced this phenomenon, although time seemingly went quicker not slower, and there appears to an extraterrestrial component leading to much speculation.
In the early morning of April 25th, 1977, just outside Putre, Chile six members of an Army patrol unit were sitting around a campfire telling stories and singing in order to remain awake. As two soldiers were standing guard, around four in the morning one of the men who was standing guard, Private Rosales ran back to unit leader Corporal Armando Valdes to report that they saw two bright violet lights in the hills nearby. One of the lights disappeared behind a small hill while the other moved to the foot of a mountain. As it began hovering closer, Valdes told his men to cover the fire with blankets. It then began approaching and retreating in a strange manner as the unit watched.
After around three minutes, corporal Armando Valdés, walked away from his companions and toward the light. There was no sound and the Chilean high plateau was amazingly quiet.
As this occurred, his unit watched in horror as their leader would seemingly disappear into thin air. The unit began searching for him yelling and after around 15 minutes he reappeared. They heard their leader’s voice as he begged for help staggering toward them.
He looked and seemed different. Despite being clean shaven just a short time ago, he now had a beard. In order to assist him, the bewildered team sat him near the fire.
Then a strange voice came from Valdes mouth.
He went onto to say, “You will never know who we are, nor where we come from, but we will return again.”
Valdes then fell passed out.
Unconscious, his men would try and help him until he woke two hours later. The UFO also disappeared about this time.
After Valdes awoke, he recalled to his unit that he didn’t remember anything from the moment he left the group.
Things would only get stranger though.
As he looked at his watch and ordered the group to move out, he let the unit know being 4:30 am, it was time to go. His unit were perplexed though, as it was actually 7am. Even more confusing, his calendar watch had advanced 5 days to April 30 instead of being April 25.
The group was shaken and soon the event would begin drawing attention.
The initial investigation of the event was conducted by Pedro Araneda, a schoolteacher in Putre. Araneda was also the first person to encounter the confused and scared soldiers when they returned to Putre after the encounter. Araneda immediately returned to the scene of the incident with the witnesses, where he brought a tape recorder and interviewed all of them.
He was later quoted saying,
“I was surprised at the corporal’s appearance. He had around six to seven days’ growth of beard. I knew soldiers have to shave every day. It was obvious that the soldiers had been through some kind of extraordinary experience. Even two or three hours after it happened, they were all still in a state of complete shock, I would say, near panic. And all the men told me the same story.
As the event’s popularity grew, the Valdes case would begin appearing in newspapers around the country including some of the most prestigious. Soon though the Chilean military would begin to censor it somewhat limiting interviews with the witnesses and stopping various types of testing.
(Read about the Alien Abduction of Tim Cullen here)
Later in 2010, Journalist and researcher Patricio Abuselme took up the challenge of reinvestigating the case and interviewed the unit. This was described in his 300-page book, “La Noche de Los Sentinelas”.
In his book, it’s a comprehensive look at initial reports as well as thorough interviews. The book initially looked like the story was going to be somewhat straightforward until the Valdes interview. Interestingly, the Valdes account was different than that of his men, whose accounts all aligned.
He admitted the ball of light hovering near the soldiers, but he informed Abusleme that he never went inside the UFO. He alleged that he left the soldiers to urinate and then stayed behind a wall throughout the key fifteen to twenty minutes of his disappearance. He then said that he decided then to play a prank on the soldiers by pretending he had vanished. The beard he explained by saying he hadn’t shaved for several days. He also said that his watch wasn’t working, and the date change was just a coincidence.
Still, Valdés’s confession is not as simple as it seems. For one, the everyone else in the unit still support the original version. Then, there is the additional important factor that Valdés became a devout evangelical Christian many years ago. Many believe Valdés denial is based on his religious faith, a position which the author Abulesme himself considers plausible.
As time has progressed, this case without doubt is one of the most controversial UFO encounters from Chile. The incident is fully acknowledged by the Chilean authorities, although the only official word was that the event was “unexplained”.
So, what did happen on that night? Many theories exist to what happened to Valdes.
Many believe he was in fact abducted. He may have even had his memory wiped. It’s not uncommon for abductees to experience missing time, forgot memories and it’s not well understood yet how time is experienced.
Many also point out that Valdes changed his story years later and suspiciously somewhat since he became a Bishop. These people point out that many evangelical Christians might not accept him as a leader if he were to admit what happened.
(Read about the Alien Abduction of Luis Carlos Serra)
Others believe that he could have simply experienced a time slip. The possibilities seem really endless here with different universes, simply moving into the future or something else. Some speculate perhaps a parallel universe manifested itself momentarily and that caused the time differences. That might explain why he seemingly vanished into thin air. Skeptics will claim though that doesn’t account for the UFO lights appearing to the men too.
Still, although there have been many alleged cases of alien abductions, there’s few with multiple witnesses. In this case, we must point out though that all the witnesses did know each other. However, as Valdes conflicted the original account years later and the unit remained steadfast, this provides some interesting evidence that something strange and unexplained really did happen that night.
Corporal Valdes stated, “after praying to God and ordering the light to leave . . . after demanding that it identify itself, I moved a few meters away from my men.”
The corporal moved toward the object. He disappeared for some 15 minutes. When he reappeared, he was shaking, and his voice seemed different. The light had been illuminating the whole area.
These are the bizarre circumstances in the case. Many of the details were related some two hours after the incident to Pedro Araneda, a correspondent and lecturer. “The surprising thing was the way it approached us. As soldiers we are trained to deal with any situation. But this phenomenon didn’t seem to have any logical explanation. I would like to regain my memory of those fifteen minutes. I would even like to submit to hypnosis to draw out information about what happened.”
