- The desert is a place of great beauty, but also of danger.
It is the place where animals and insects inimical to human life dwell
and also the place seekers go to find hidden wisdom and revelations. Traditionally
the "deserted places" were shunned by the ancients, who believed
that the gods of the ruined cities in the desert reverted into angry demons,
having no one to worship them. Tanith Lee, one of Great Britain finest
authors of sword and sorcery, writes a compelling account of a band of
desert travelers who entertain a stranger by their campfire-who should
it turn out to be but the demon king, come to the surface to listen to
the chorused voices of his "children", the desert predators.
H.P. Lovecraft, whose visions disturb our sleep to this very day, had the
"Mad Arab" Abd Alhazred title the fearsome Necronomicon "Al
Azif" - supposedly the sound made by nocturnal desert insects who
are in fact, evil spirits.
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- But so much for the worlds created by our gifted fantasists.
what wonders-and horrors-do the world's deserts hold for us?
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- Ruins in the Shifting Sands
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- The word association between "deserts" and
"Brazil" fails at a visceral level: Our imaginations automatically
summon us either to the jungle greenery of the Amazon or to the lurid pleasures
of Rio de Janeiro. However, the South American giant boasts extensive coastal
deserts-complete with sand dunes-in the northern region of Maranhao, once
known to be the wealthiest part of this Portuguese possession (so wealthy,
in fact, that a Portuguese monarch was willing to abdicate his crown as
long he was able to keep control over Maranhao). Located between the Mangueira
and Parnaíba deserts, the vast sand dunes are contained within the
Lencois Maranhenses National Park and aerial photography shows the sand
encroaching on the surrounding vegetation, like a stain of white ink on
a green tablecloth. This is not surprising, as the Maranhao dunes stand
a staggering thirty meters talls and are a source of humidity that attracts
all manner of wildlife to it.
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- Aside from its physical oddity, the sand dunes of Maranhao
are the home of highly unusual paranormal phenomena. In 1997, researchers
Pablo Villarubia and Carlos Alberto Martins crossed the desert to visit
remote communities and interview locals about their brushes with the unknown.
The people who somehow wrest a living out of this harsh land speak freely
of a recurrent luminous phenomenon known as the caburé or even
more picturesquely as "the phantom Jeep". Unlike tales involving
phantom cars like the terrifying Haitian zobop, the ghost Jeep of the Maranhao
dunes is seen where no vehicles usually dirve; some claim having been blinded
by the intense blueness of its headlights, which can illuminate the surroundings
like daylight. One man interviewed by Villarubia and Martins was out deer-hunting
when the ethereal vehicle made a beeline toward him, scaring him out of
his wits and making him beleive that he was about to be run over in the
wilderness. Unable to move, he saw the phantom Jeep vanish into thin air
before it struck him.
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- But the caburé isn't the only light in the Maranhao.
Carlos Araújo, born and raised in the area, told researchers that
he was hunting deer among the scrub when he came across a cigar-shaped
light suspended in the air, looking like "the burning tip of a cigarette"
and less than a hundred meters from where he stood in the darnkess. Calling
out to the object, thinking it might belong to a fellow hunter, the cigar
shaped light did something completely unexpected: it changed shape, elongating
up, down and sideways into the shape of a cross. Believing that it was
a sign of God, Araújo dropped to his knees in fervent prayer as
the cross turned to the same blue color associated with the phantom Jeep's
headlights.
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- Yet these experiences are hardly new. As far back as
the 1930's, ethnographers were collecting stories in the area about strange
goings-on that were quickly filed under "folklore". Author José
Carvalho reported that fishermen along the Mangueiras River were used to
seeing objects best described as brightly lit phantom boats that caused
riverboat captains to panic and veer off course before a collision could
occur.
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- But lights aside, the area contains even more compelling
mysteries, such as the abandoned city of Tutóia, believed by 19th
century archeologist Ludwig Schwennhagen to be a Phoenician fortified trading
post in the manner of similar trading posts found along the Red Sea during
the Hellenistic Age. It was believed that further proof of the Phoenician
presence in northwestern Brazil could perhaps be found not in this desert-girt
city but in the swamps and bogs along the shores of the Pinaré River.
- Saucers in the Sand
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- In February 2001, residents of the northern Chilean town
of Calama-located in the vicinity of the country's northern salt deserts-claimed
having seen a "caravan of UFOs" in the Salar de Atacama, one
of the driest spots on Earth. A strange silvery sphere had been causing
a great deal of consternation among locals, but it wasn't until February
24 at 8:30 pm that Adolfo Trigo, a young resident of the outlying village
of San Rafael, claimed having seen a UFO taking off from one of the village's
quarters. The object, he would later tell the Diario de Calama newspaper,
was a "fish-tailed cylinder with a phosphorescent green front, an
electric blue middle and a violet-hued tail."
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- Trigo was spellbound as the multicolored object made
a full turn in the air before rising into the night sky at full speed.
But what makes Trigo's account unique is that he did not see the object
lose itself among the stars, as is often described in UFO sightings, but
rather "disappear into a doorway in the sky."
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- Others would become witnesses to this latest desert mystery.
Weeks later, Gustavo Glade would become a witness to UFO while traveling
by truck along Cuesta El Diablo on the southernmost reaches of the Atacama
Desert. The driver, accompanied by five other passengers, was able to see
a sequence of bright rectangular lights that appeared to be flying in tandem.
It looked, in his own words, "like seeing a train riding through space",
a description corroborated by the others aboard his vehicle. However,
the same peculiarity as in the Trigo sighting was noticed: the heavenly
convoy did not fly away or shoot up into space-it seemed to enter into
a cloud or "dimensional doorway" through which it vanished completely.
Glade's sighting lasted a total of eighteen to twenty seconds and the objects
involved were no mroe than a dozen, flying in an upward direction, which
discarded the suggested possibility that the driver and his passengers
had seen a meteor.
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- The UFO phenomenon's interest in Chile is mirrored by
the U.S. military's interest in both the country and the phenomenon. According
to journalist Cristián Riffo (www.ovnivision.cl), a Col. Hubert
Brandon prepared a dossier on the anomalous activity in this country in
1965. This Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) dossier documents UFO sightings
and encounters reported by trained professionals, including the Septemebr
1965 encounter between a LAN Chile airliner piloted by Marcelo Cisternas
over the city of Arica, in which a zig-zagging object buzzed the aircraft
for a number of minutes.
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- Months before the Trigo and Glade sightings, researcher
Jaime Ferrer of the Calama UFO Center managed to collect a compelling account
from the desert community of Chiu-Chiu which took place in October 2000.
A man named Gonzalo, owner of a hard candy factory in the area and who
distributed his product personally to the local towns, told Ferrer the
following story: he had been driving some forty kilometers along the road
when he saw a bright light the size of the full moon which appeared to
be coming in for a landing. However, the bright object was actually suspended
in mid-air. Gonzalo pulled his delivery van over , turned off the headlights
and lowered the driver side window for a better look. To his astonishment,
the object "exploded" and vanished, scattering three lights-red,
yellow and blue-- in separate directions. What truly astonished him, he
told Ferrer, was that no sooner had the lights scattered, he could hear
a helicopter taking off in the darkness, although he couldn't see it. The
helo kicked up a dust storm and Gonzalo noticed " a powerful ultraviolet
light" aimed at the ground. Three wheeled vehicles, which he took
to be Jeeps or 4x4s followed the helicopter's beam and lost themselves
in the desert - proof that the Chilean military is as interested in UFOs
as it ever was, despite strenuous protestations that it keeps no files
on the phenomenon?
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- Why Chile? Why the Atacama Desert with its thousand year-old
mummies and vestiges of the earliest civilizations in South America? Archaeologist
Juan Schobinger has written in his Prehistory in the Americas (NY: M.E.
Sharpe, 2000) that Chile faces one of the richest seas in the world and
is backed by one of its most forbidding deserts. The dryness of the salt
desert, where rainfall is measured in inches per century, made it ideal
for preserving cultural artifacts such as baskets, textiles and even food.
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- It also preserved something darker-the rituals of forgotten
shamans who would bury sacrifices deep in the desert for the "gods"
to feast upon. The sacrifices would be held at night and the victim, usually
a llama or a dog, left out. At daybreak, the ancient medicine men would
return to the site to insure that the gods-the meandering lights of the
desert-had accepted the offering. The carcass would be utterly exsanguinated
and a puncture mark could usually be found somewhere on the body, which
was then transported back to the primitve settlement to be consumed by
the community. Subsequently, evidence of this communion between man and
his deities was buried under a cairn known as an apachetca, a tangible
link of the trade betwen ancient man and supernatural forces. It is easy
to dismiss this as the savagery of ancient man until we remember that the
books of the Pentateuch mentioned that the blood of the sacrifice belonged
to the godhead. Contemporary thinkers of the paranormal like Salvador
Freixedo have written at length about this curious aspect of the human
worship (Defendámonos de los dioses, Spain: Quintá, 1985).
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- Nightmares of the Cryptozoological Kind
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- While the deserts of our world may hold an array of
paranormal wonders that can chill the blood of an unwary visitor, the
are apparently non-supernatural oddities that can claim lives.
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- Spanish author Miguel Seguí, writing in Año
Cero magazine, mentions a conversation a conversation he held with Tunisian
camel driver Mohamed Charaa regarding the perils of the northern reaches
of the Sahara desert. In the vicinity of the town of Gafsa, said Charaa,
the truly unlucky ran the risk of coming across monstrously large snakes
known as taguerga which measure up to 4 meters in length and whose poison
is lethal. In the late 1950s, desert nomads spoke of giant snakes that
devoured their goats and and sheep; when one specimen decided to help itself
to a young camel at a desert campsite, the nomads decided that no matter
how much they loathed the idea of doing so, it was necessary to appeal
to the colonial authorities for help.
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- It was thus, according to Seguí, that a French
army detachment was sent to investigate from the vicinty of Beni Ounif.
It wasn't long before these romanticized desert warriors came across the
largest snake they had ever seen-so large that their Enfield rifles were
unable to fell it. The soldiers had to resort to a heavy machine gun to
slay the beast, which measured a nightmarish 20 meters long-very nearly
90 feet.
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- Although the serpent's skin was preserved for a while,
the political turmoil of the times and the withdrawal of French forces
from the area caused all traces of the spectacular find to be lost.
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- Seguí was able to determine, however, that a
year earlier, a native auxiliary had been attacked by a giant snake measuring
anywhere between fourteen and fifteen feet. The skin of this desert beast
had indeed been preserved and seen by many, but was ultimately sold for
forty-five thousand Francs to a private collector. The notable characteristic
of this monster snake is that it appears to be able to "jump up"
to bite a human or camel in the head, and has a singular characteristic:
what appears to be a crest of long hairs on its head, which also have horns.
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- Years would go by before another case was reported.
It wasn't until 1967, during the construction of a massive dam in southern
Morocco, that bulldozer operator Hamza Rahmani saw a seven long serpent
engaging in a singular activity-eating its way through the construction
site's entire supply of engine grease. Using his bulldozer's blade, Rahmani
was able to kill the creature, which measured a little over nine meters
long and had a "mane' of hair running along its head. According to
Seguí, the construction project was bedeviled by the creatures,
with a ten meter long one-complete with twisted horns-being seen the following
year and twelve to fifteen meter one reported two years later. While even
the most open-minded may scoff at these measurments and call them overblown,
the author reminds us that eighteen-meter long snakes were common during
the Pleistocene in South America.
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- But stranger things than giant snakes can be found in
the world's deserts. Ing. Marco Reynoso of Mexico's Fundación Cosmos
A.C. describes a case involving a group of teenagers during the months
of December '89/January '90 as they traveled to visit a series of caves
located in Cerro Pajarito, in the Mexican state of Chihuahua on the road
leading to the Paquimé archaeological site. According to Alvaro
Villareal, one of the witnesses, they found two dead, 3-point deer and
one doe on their path. The animal's carcasses were not rigid and the eyes
had been eaten by ants. Three perforations, spaced at 3 cm., were on their
necks forming a triangle. Footprints similar to those of a puma were seeing
in the area.
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- When the group entered into one of the caves, they heard
squealing sounds and smelled an odor of burned wood; standing on an outcropping
15 meters away was an entity resembling the one described as the "Chupacabras",
which advanced toward them. Seized by panic, one of the would-be speleologists
drew his pistol and fired an entire clip at the creature, which was impervious
to the hail of bullets. The group ran out of the cave, uncertain if the
creature was dead or not. They also claim having encountered a thin, metallic
green entity standing some 80 cm., which they took to be an "extraterrestrial".
Drawings were subsequently made of both creatures. It is worth noting that
the deserts of Northern Mexico have also been the locale for many encounters
and sighings of winged creatures best described as "gargoyles"
or even "Birdmen" (see "Return of the Birdmen" by Scott
Corrales, FATE October 1998).
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- Nor is the Chupacabras the only paranormal terror to
haunt the wastelands. In the 1970s, a number of authors stressed the fact
that encounters with the hairy hominids collectively classified as "Bigfoot"
were as common in the desert as they were in the Pacific Northwest, where
the phenomenon was typically thought to be found. In the summer of 1973,
author and researcher Peter Guttila took part in an endeavor aimed at finding
Bigfoot's enigmatic desert cousin by traveling to the Mojave Desert in
Southern California.
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- Witnesses had reported seeing a "torpedo-shaped"
UFO delivering a number of shadowy shapes that wandered off into the darkness.
Although the witnesses were unable to describe the shapes with any precision,
they agreed on their massive size and red eyes. Guttilla's team later found
evidence that something had indeed been there-large, five-toed footprints
characteristic of a Bigfoot's prints. More reports would emerge in successive
days, such as one from a ranching family that heard high-pitched screams
from the desert foothills which caused their dogs to cower in fear. The
expedition would have better luck than most when something happened: two
team members had managed to spot the eyes of a distant creature in the
desert, eventually getting close enough to it to ascertain that it was
an ape-like entity leaning on its side and looking straight at the human
explorers.
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- The events that occurred next verge on the incredible,
and represent a rough parallel to the story of "Gonzalo" in the
Atacama Desert nearly 30 years later-a convoy of trucks belieed to be military
plowed into the area, apparently in search of the simian creature, which
came to the beck and call of a man wielding a flashlight. Other men (soldiers
from a nearby military facility?) fanned out from the trucks searching
for something with high-powered flashlights, causing the team to beat a
hasty retreat. The possibility of military involvement in the "big
hairy monster" is echoed on the other side of the U.S., namely at
Maryland's Aberdeen Proving Grounds, around which numerous Bigfoot sightings
that tookl place in the 1980s. Bigfoot researcher Mark Opsasnick also mentions
sightings of such creatures in the vicinity of Fort Dietrich in the summer
of 1978, leading local radio show hosts to speculate that animal mutation
experiments were being carried out at this facility.
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- What exactly is going on in our planet's deserts? Are
the military establishments of a number of countries, acting independently
or in concert, interacting with unknown quantities-whether interplanetary
or interdimensional-for reasons we cannot even imagine? Are we merely continuing,
in some unguessable way, the tradition that the ancient denizens of the
Atacama practiced for centuries, offering sacrifices to dark gods? And
in exchange for what?
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