t e m p o r a l
d o o r w a y
10/21/63 - Moreno, family, and employee; Trancas, Argentina; evening / early morning
| Report Summary | "...Moreno was awakened... by a fifteen year old employee
at his ranch... The boy told him that there had apparently been an accident
at the railroad tracks... about a half mile from the main house. The area
was illuminated and people could be seen moving around... "Sr. Moreno... awakened his wife... they... [saw] a luminous oval-shaped object which was hovering just a few feet in the air over the railroad tracks. It was projecting a beam of light to the ground where human-looking figures could be seen moving to and fro in single file... Sra. [Moreno] spotted another object which was fairly close to the house, also hovering a few feet above the ground. It appeared to be about 25 feet in diameter and there was a dome-shaped structure on the top of it, as well as lighted apertures which appeared to be windows or ports around its circumference. "Sra. Moreno got a flashlight and shined it toward the disk, whereupon it shot out a narrow, tubular beam of light toward the house... the de Morenos began a... check of the house... [and] discovered ... a total of five disks in the vicinity of the house - 3 stayed between 210 and 225 feet from the house, and the other two, including the nearest one which she had seen first, were within a few feet... One of these latter objects shined a white tubular light at the house and the other a reddish violet light of the same shape and size. "Shortly after the light beams were projected at the house the [de Morenos] began to notice a strong smell of sulfur and a definite rise in temperature. It was not long before the interior of the house was suffocatingly hot... "Forty minutes had passed when... the object at the tracks [elevated] and moved away, followed by the five disks which had surrounded the house. Just before the two closest disks left, the light which was beamed at the house went out, and following the other[s]... where the two closest disks had hovered there remained a misty, smoke-like deposit for several minutes."[footnote 1] According to Peter Brookesmith[footnote 2], the Morenos lived on an isolated ranch; they were a middle aged couple with three grown daughters and a maid aged 15. At about 7PM, the generator broke down. By 8PM, everyone except one daughter (Yolie) had gone to bed. At 9:30PM, the maid knocked on Yolie's door, saying she was frightened by some strange lights outside. Yolie and another sister (Yolanda) found what seemed to be a "small, brightly lit train" about 200 yards from the house, on the railroad track. When they went closer, what had seemed to be a train was revealed as a two glowing discs connected with a tube through which about 40 approximately human figures seemed to be passing back and forth. The women assumed that a train had been derailed by the Peronist opposition guerillas, and returned to the house to get coats and a Colt .38. As they passed the south side of the house, Yolie's flashlight showed that a green light near the front gate was in fact from a metallic domed disc which was rocking gently, estimated to be 30 feet in diameter and bearing six "windows". "A multicolored band of light seemed to rotate inside the... windows, and a white mist began to form around it." A sulfurous odor was noted. Then a blast of "flame" seemed to come from the object, and all three were knocked from their feet. At that time, three more discs along the railroad track became luminous. The object at the gate next projected a beam of light which seemed to be "solid" and extended itself slowly like a tube until it reached the house, which it then began to "probe". The other objects extruded pairs of these light beams toward other outbuildings. It seemed to take some minutes for the beams to reach these buildings. The beams were approximately 10 feet in diameter. The Moreno parents were now awake when the three ran into the house. The internal temperature was well over 100 degrees F, and the smell was strong. Their skin itched and burned. The object at the gate turned a beam in the direction of the town of Trancas, two miles away, and the beam reportedly took ten minutes to reach the outskirts of the town, at which point it bent back toward the object in a U-shape. The beam then retracted, and the object rose into the air to join the five other objects at the tracks, and the entire formation then departed toward the Sierra Medina mountains. The next morning, the mist and smell were still present, and a 3 foot high pile of small white spheres, analyzed to be 96.45% calcium carbonate and 3.51% potassium carbonate were found (U of Tucuman). Two neighbors had seen the objects on the tracks, and a separate witness had seen six disks in the sky roughly at the time when the events at the ranch ended. |
| Hynek Classification | CE-II |
| Original Vallee Classification | Type Id |
| Current Vallee Classification | CE-2 |
| Minimum Distance | "feet" |
| Object Appearance | "luminous oval", disk with dome and luminous rim "portholes". |
| Object Behavior | Apparently surrounded house while engaged in activity at railroad tracks. When a flashlight was shined on an object, the objects retaliated with beams that raised the temperature of the house. Eventually all of the objects departed. |
| Physical Effect | Heat and smell ("sulfur"); 0.5 in diameter carbonate balls may have been left behind. |
| Medical Effect | Sra. Moreno was burned during the incident. |
| Comments / Conclusion | The Lorenzen account implies that whatever the activity at
the railroad, there had been preparation for possible action by the occupants
of the ranch. Deterrent steps were taken to keep the occupants in their
house when their awareness was made known. The Brookesmith account makes
it less clear as to whether this is the case - it is possible that the objects
did not actually "hide" around the house, becoming active with signs of
life from the household, but that their awareness of the occupants of the
ranch began with the use of the flashlight. The observation of the "beams" makes quite clear that they are not light as we know it. The times provided indicate a speed of about 17 feet per second for the beam toward Trancas, and would imply about 30 seconds for the beam to reach from the railroad track to the ranch, rather than the "minutes" cited by Brookesmith. Obviously, given the situation, putting too much credence in the specifics of these numbers is difficult, but it is probably reasonable to assume a speed of between 3 and 20 feet per second for beam propagation. If the beam represents an ionization phenomenon, it is hard to understand why the ionization front moves forward along the beam rather than outward from the center of the beam, assuming that the ionization is caused by EM radiations. On the other hand, if the beam is caused by charged particles, it is possible that the progress of those particles through the air might be proportional to the time of exposure, and that the following charged particles might not be able to move forward until the ionization process is complete. So slow moving a beam would seem (and apparently was) ineffectual as a weapon. Even at 20 feet per second, a human could easily duck out of the way. It seems more likely that the luminosity, and possibly even the heat and smell, were side effects of some other process, possibly including "scanning" objects by some active sensing process. Alternatively, it is possible that the beams were intended to be a relatively harmless form of intimidation until whatever was in process at the tracks was complete. Whether the half-inch carbonate balls had anything to do with the UFOs is unknown. I have not yet heard of any plausible terrestrial explanation for their presence. It would be interesting to know if the electric power from the generator was due to a failure of the generator, or if this was a UFO EM effect. |
Footnotes
1. UFOs: The Whole Story, Lorenzen, 1969 Signet Books p 190
2. UFO: The Complete Sightings, ISBN 1-56619-795-3, p 77