by Charles Lear
UFO abduction cases have been controversial ever since the very first cases were reported. The main factor working against them is that most of them are single witness reports. There are exceptions, of course, the most famous being the 1975 Travis Walton case. In this incident, six of Walton’s co-workers (they were working in Sitgreaves National Forest in Arizona on an NFS Timber Stand Improvement contract) reported seeing Walton knocked back by a beam of light from a UFO and then lifted up by the beam. Walton was missing for five days and the Navajo County Sheriff suspected his co-workers of murder. They were subjected to lie-detector tests at the Navajo County Courthouse in Holbrook, Arizona, and all six of them passed. This case is still discussed and held up in support of abduction claims, but another abduction case with multiple witnesses that also seems worthy of consideration is nowhere near as well known.
While the story might seem like it’s on its way towards being dismissive and mocking it takes a turn:
But understand that there are witnesses, three of them, all friends of Cárdenas. They too talk of buzzing, of blinding red-violet colors that lasted a few minutes, of a Cárdenas who seemed to be sucked into the light.
The case was investigated by Dr. Virgilio Sanchez-Ocejo, a lawyer, and Wendelle Stevens a UFO researcher. Richard Hall wrote a summary of Sanchez-Ocejo’s investigation and Stevens wrote an overview based on his own investigation.
According to Stevens, Cárdenas, 46, his friend, Fernando Marti, also 46, Marti’s wife, Elizabeth, 36, and daughter, Mirta, 13, were in Cárdenas’s car on U.S. Highway 27 at around 6 p.m. on January 3, 1979. They were returning home after being unsuccessful in their search for a pig the Martis wanted to buy for a pig-roast the next day. Fernando Marti was driving when the engine stalled.
Marti and Cárdenas got out of the car, lifted the hood, and looked in. As they did so, they saw that the engine was reflecting different colors: red, violet, blue, orange, and Bluish-white. According to Cárdenas, they then heard a noise “like many thousands of bees.” Cárdenas said he was paralyzed and could hear the women screaming in the car. He then realized he was rising, and when he was five to ten feet over the car, he lost consciousness.
When Cárdenas came to, he was on his hands and knees. He saw two lights coming towards him and then heard the screeching of tires. A man (who presumably got out of the car that just avoided hitting him) lifted Cárdenas by his collar and helped him to the side of the road. Cárdenas later learned that this was 16 miles away from his stalled car.
According to Stevens a “motorist” called the police and Patrolman William Christian found Cárdenas at around 8:15 p.m. and took him to the 5th Precinct station. Christian told Stevens that Cárdenas said he had no idea what had happened to him. When Stevens interviewed Cárdenas, Cárdenas said he didn’t say what really happened because he didn’t want to look crazy.
While Cárdenas was being lifted, Fernando Marti looked up in time to see Cárdenas’s feet in the air. Cárdenas was shouting “Let me go! Let me go!” Marti then felt weightless himself and grabbed the engine. The light faded and the feeling of weightlessness faded with it. Marti then came out from under the hood and watched as Cárdenas floated up in a beam of light into a “dark bag-shaped form” that then flew off to the west.
Marti went to comfort the women who were shouting, “They took Filiberto! They took Filiberto!” He then was able to start the car and drive. The car sputtered along like it was running out of gas and then smoothed out.
Marti called the police and reported the incident. He then called Cárdenas’s wife, Iris, who was understandably upset when Marti told her what had happened
When Cárdenas was found, Iris went to the station and took him to a clinic. He was then taken to Jackson Memorial Hospital where an Air Force team from Homestead AFB tested him for radiation. The tests were negative and he was released.
The Herald reporters interviewed Cárdenas in his home the next day. According to the Herald article, Cárdenas was in bed “with his wife, Iris, standing guard.” According to the article, Cárdenas’s hands shook, and he had four small burn marks on his forehead. According to Stevens, Cárdenas was “sweating profusely,” had a ”short memory,” a “sulphurous [sic] body odor,” and his urine was “a very dark yellow-brown.
Stevens wrote that Homestead AFB reported nothing unusual on their radar at the time of the reported incident.
Cárdenas underwent four hypnotic regressions with Dr. Jose Yedra. What he described was a combination of both an abduction experience and a contactee experience. Later, both he and Iris claimed to have gone aboard a craft voluntarily and to have had full conscious recall of their experience. It is perhaps because of the contactee aspect of this case that it has been overshadowed by the Walton case. There was, however, an intriguing detail regarding the aliens’ clothing that showed up in an earlier case that makes the Cárdenas case a little harder to dismiss.
Next week: What the Cárdenas’ said they experienced.