El Yunque: Hell Mountain
EL YUNQUE: NIGHTS ON HELL MOUNTAIN
By Scott Corrales
Much has been written about the significant developments which
have taken place in Puerto Rico over recent years, attracting
the attention of UFO researchers from the four corners of the
earth including an episode of FOX TV’s “The X Files” series and
assorted European and Japanese documentaries. While the bulk of
this study has been centered around the alleged subterranean/
submarine base at Laguna Cartagena on the island’s southwestern
corner, another section of the island continues to demand the
attention of every researcher: the Caribbean National
Rainforest,better known by the name of one of its most prominent
mountain peak, El Yunque.
El Yunque certainly fits Coleridge’s description of Xanadu,” a savage
place, holy and enchanted”: the cloud-enshouded peak can easily be
seen from as far away as the city of San Juan, and closer inspection
reveals an ocean of unspoiled green as lush as that of any jungle. El
Yunque was revered by the ancient Taino indians as the dwelling place
of one of their deities, and there is proof that the Mayas traveled as
far as Puerto Rico to venerate this spectacular place. Similarly,
thousands of tourists from around the world visit this truly unique
landmark every year.
However, El Yunque has a dark side which involves human
disappearances. An undetermined number of hapless visitors have
vanished since Taino days without any satisfactory explanation of
their disappearance having ever been made. Many of these have been
linked in recent times to the inordinate amount of UFO activity that
takes place on the island. The only confirmation we can possibly have
that nonhuman forces are involved in these happenings comes from the
likeliest source: the ones that got away.
In 1974, in the wake of a dramatic UFO flap which included
cattle mutilations, strange creatures and Marian apparitions, an hour-
long documentary aired on Puerto Rican television recounting
highlights of the incredible events. One of the
documentary’s segments involved the curious story of a a group
of young people who had found themselves besieged by thoroughly
bizarre creatures during a visit to the rainforest.
On the night of October 20 1973, nine campers—students led by three
adults—had gone to El Yunque hoping to “contact” UFOs and their
occupants. They made camp high up on a mountain trail, preparing to
spend a night that would turn out to be the longest in their lives.
Mr. Heriberto Ramos, the group’s official leader, stated that at one
point during their ascent along the trail, they met three persons
heading downward. There was nothing “alien” about the trio aside from
the fact that they all dressed exactly alike and with similar
features. One of the group members, who had stayed behind, took a
photo of both the other group members and the three mysterious
walkers, but only a patch of mist appeared on the developed film where
the trio stood.
At a given moment that night, thoroughly convinced that an
otherwise uneventful vigil lay ahead, the campers were
surrounded by five or six vaguely humanoid figures which darted about
the thick vegetation with claw-like hands and elongated ears. Some of
the “monsters” blocked the precipice-flanked trail that constituted
the only way down from the mountain and back to the safety of their
vehicles.
From a prudent distance, one of the creatures regarded Ramos
intently. Upon noticing this, the latter tried walking cautiously
toward the eldritch being, hoping to show that his group’s intentions
were amicable. Ramos stood less than ten feet away from the creature,
and was able to describe it as having a triangular head, and
“extraordinary” eyes. Amazingly, he managed to touch the strange
being, which did not stir. Its skin felt neither cold nor rubbery.
Almost simultaneously, one of the students lit a large, powerful
flashlight in the direction where the contact was taking place,
flooding the area with light.
The clawed creature reacted by racing away from the scene, literally
tearing a path right through the dense vegetation, which led to a 100
foot drop, giving the startled Ramos reason to think he had frightened
the being into jumping. To the man’s amazement, it reappeared
instantly at the side of its fellows, which were still blocking the
downward path.
For endless hours until the sky began to lighten, the beseiged
campers were surrounded by the beings, who remained in constant motion
around them. Terror had led one of the students to bang himself
repeatedly on the head with a flashlight, hoping to
escape the situation by passing out. Seized by an inexplicable
urge, another camper expressed a desire to take a walk in the
woods. Fearing for his mental state, one of his companions
offered to walk with him. Before they’d taken more than a dozen
steps, they found what could only be described as a glimmering,
polychromatic “egg” lying on the ground. While entranced by the
curious flashing object, neither one felt brave enough to touch
it. Later that night, they would see it in the claws of one of
the nonhuman besiegers. Was it “bait” of some sort, its
pulsating colors designed to mesmerize prey?
At sunrise, the campers made a mad dash for the cars they’d left
parked at the bottom of the mountain. Not a trace of the alien
intruders remained aside from their footprints, which were much larger
than a human’s and appeared to have been made by very heavy creatures,
in comparison to the smaller footprints left by the humans. Their
valor rekindled by the morning light, the campers made plaster-of-
paris casts of the prints and photographed them. These materials were
stolen by unknown parties months after the incident, including
valuable infrared prints.
On a recent broadcast of ufologist Jorge Martin’s “Ovnis Confidencial”
radio show, Mr. Federico Alvarez retold an experience that transpired
six months after the unhappy campers’ ordeal.
“Apariciones en El Yunque”
“Ovnis Confidencial”
WSKN, San Juan, P.R.W.
In May 1974, Alvarez led a group of college students at midnight
to El Yunque in an effort to see if there was any truth to the
stories being circulated about the mountain rainforest’s black
reputation.
Driving up to the peak in a car with its headlights off, the band of
investigators had an early taste of the supernatural: a shadowy
silhouette dashed across the darkened road ahead of their vehicle. No
details could be made out of the figure, aside from the fact that “it
was very tall.”
Four of the students, seated in the back seat, opened the doors and
charged out in hot pursuit, charging through the dark woods. Alvarez
stopped the vehicle and joined the chase, realizing that he and his
peers were running along a “path” that appeared to have been
previously cleared through the vegetation. The trail led to a large
stone landing or “lookout point” from which the lights of San Juan
could be seen in the distance. No trace of the mysterious shadow
could be found.
The students decided to make for the Yokah Observation Tower— a three-
story, turret-like structure that affords an excellent view of the
surrounding countryside and the neighboring peaks. The incident with
the elusive shadow had visibly disturbed some members of the
expedition, causing nerves to fray. The possibility that they too
might become the victims of a siege by unknown and inhuman forces was
now all too real.
As a rudimentary alarm system against possible intruders, Alvarez
explained on Martin’s program, the students devised an ingenious
“tripwire” consisting of aluminum cans, which they strategically
placed at the bottom of the stairway leading to the observation
tower’s top. “Between one thirty and one forty five in the morning,”
Alvarez stated, “The cans began to rattle.”
Hesitantly, the students descended from the tower’s observation deck
to witness an unsettling sight: the cans were moving around of their
own accord, motivated by an invisible force. Some group members felt
that things had gone far enough, and wanted to leave the site
immediately, yet they were prevailed upon to remain for what promised
to be another long night.
Any doubts they might have had about UFOs were resolved at two o’clock
in the morning, when a massive, coruscant oval—some 300 feet in
diameter, by Alvarez’s calculations—appeared from the gap between two
adjacent peaks. It remained motionless for five minutes and in full
view of the students before vanishing behind one of the mountains.
The unknown craft did not reappear.
Later in the radio interview, Alvarez added that he had returned
to El Yunque several years later—this time to a campground on
the other side of the rainforest—when around the “witching
hour” of 2 a.m. electricity in the entire area went out. All
those present automatically looked upward. A disk-shaped
vehicle flew directly overhead and straight into El Yunque. The
vehicle’s wake was strong enough to topple a birthday cake that
had been left on a picnic table.
Many more UFO-related encounters would take place in the years
that followed, and others would not have the luck of the nine
campers or that of Federico Alvarez’s group. A small boy
vanished without a trace in 1975--only to establish a telepathic link
with his grieving father.
According to the account, which appeared in an issue of the defunct
SAGA UFO REPORT, the father heard the missing child’s voice calling to
him one night after the disappearance. The man felt that he was
either being driven insane by his grief or that someone was playing a
prank on him. One night, he felt a compelling urge to get into his
car and drive to El Yunque, back to the site where the boy had
vanished.
Through some form of telepathic link, the boy told him that he
was “safe and comfortable on another planet.” His captors were taking
good care of him, and were preparing him “for a future
generation.”
Letter to the editor, SAGA UFO REPORT, August 1977
While not one satisfactory explanation for the strange activities that
take place in the rainforest has been put forth, the fact remains that
a vast menagerie of creatures reportedly has the tenancy of El Yunque—
ranging from the claw-handed entities seen in 1973 to the large-headed
Greys and hairy, Bigfoot-like creatures sighted in more recent times.
The increasing volume of UFO sightings over the rainforest has created
a “de facto” belief in an alien base lurking somewhere in the forest.
Many of the vehicles sighted are seen hovering above Pico del Este,
one of the rainforest’s peaks which houses a JSS (Joint Surveillance
System) radar and communications site attached to the Roosevelt Roads
Naval Base.
Fieldhouse, Alan.
“Nuclear Battlefields”
Cambridge: Ballinger Publications, 1985.
p. 230
UFOs have emerged from the mountainside, hurtling skyward at
dizzying speeds to the startled eyes of a growing number of
witnesses which includes forestry service workers. In 1987, one
such vehicle allegedly crashed into the rainforest, prompting
sudden military “training exercises” which were construed as
efforts to recover the downed UFO. It is further alleged that
this crash left a huge bald patch in the jungle, which has been
fenced off due to high levels of radiation.
Humans have often populated mysterious or poorly explored places with
exotic and downright bizarre creatures, and this is obviously the case
with El Yunque, but can so many reports of encounters with non-human
entities be dismissed as “folklore”? What are we to say when
“folklore” walks out of the hills and into a residential
neighborhood?
In August 1992, Mrs. Soraya Collazo, a resident of the Colinas del
Yunque neighborhood, witnessed a truly peculiar sight: two green-
skinned beings were walking down the middle of the street, plainly
visible from her house. She described them as being some four feet
tall and very thin, with the curious detail that they wore white
cutoffs with a red stripe on each side.
Martin, Jorge.
“Extraterrestres Visitan Colinas del Yunque”
ENIGMA! No. 60 p. 49
According to Mrs. Collazo, what truly drove home the
strangeness of the event was a seemingly trivial item: the
creatures were walking leisurely on the sun-heated blacktop,
which should have been hot enough to burn the soles of anyone’s
feet. The pair later vanished into the tropical vegetation on
the hillside, but not before neighborhood children had followed
the creatures on their bicycles...at a prudent distance.
Scott is also the editor of SAMIZDAT, a newsletter of UFOs and
the paranormal, a quarterly independent publication devoted to
the research of UFO and paranormal phenom. as it occurs in the
Spanish-speaking countries of the Americas and Spain. (The
newsletter’s name, SAMIZDAT, comes from Russian and is used to
describe the self-published, often clandestine circulation of
certain written material in the former USSR. It’s purpose is to
make English-speaking readers aware of the research, cases and
breakthroughs in UFO and paranormal investigation in the Central
and South America, the Caribbean, Spain, and when possible,
Portugal and Brazil.) This publication is only available through
Arcturus books at this point. He has recently completed a 70
page report on the Chupacabras that can also be obtained only
from Arcturus books.
Arcturus Books is at:
1449 Port St. Lucie Blvd,
Port St. Lucie, Florida