by UFO History Buff & Author, Charles Lear
Many people who have more than a passing interest in the UFO subject might be aware that the scene in Steven Spielberg’s 1977 movie, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, where several UFOs go speeding by the main character’s stalled car, followed by police cars in hot pursuit, was based on a real case. This was the 1966 incident where police officers Dale Spaur and Wilbur “Barney” Neff reportedly chased a single UFO at high speed across the state of Ohio into Pennsylvania, with other officers joining them in the chase. However, another scene in the movie, where a house occupied by a mother and son is flooded with light from a UFO, was also inspired by a real case, but this one is not nearly so well known.
The front-page headline of the November 1963 APRO Bulletin is “Family Beseiged [sic] by Discs.” According to the article, on October 21, 1963, at his ranch near Tranca, Argentina, Antonio de Moreno was woken up by a fifteen-year-old employee who told him there seemed to have been an accident at the railway tracks about a half mile away from the house, as, in the reporter’s words, “there was a lot of light and people moving around at that location.”
Moreno, 72, is said to have woken up “Senora Teresa Kairus Moreno” (we assume she was his wife), 63. According to the article, they both looked out a window and saw an oval-shaped object hovering a few feet in the air over the railroad tracks that projected a light on the ground, where the couple could see “people” walking back and forth in single file. Teresa Moreno reportedly then saw another object very near the house and close to the ground. It’s described as dome-shaped, 25 feet in diameter, with “windows or ports around the circumference of the object.”
Teresa is said to have then gotten a flashlight and shone it at the object, “whereupon it shot a bright white tubular beam of light at the house.” She is described as remaining calm but unsure as to “the meaning of the incident,” which led her to gather up all the children in the house with the help of her sister and hide them.
After this, the Morenos are said to have checked all the windows and to have discovered that there was a total of five discs near the house, with three staying about 210-225 feet away, and two within a few feet. According to the article, one shone a white tubular light at the house, and the other shone a reddish-violet tubular light, and shortly thereafter, the house heated up “until it was ‘like an oven’ and there was a strong smell of sulphur in the air.” Even though the heat was almost too intense to bear, the family was afraid of going outside because of the discs, and Teresa instructed everyone to be quiet.
According to the article, after forty minutes, the object by the railroad tracks lifted up and moved off, followed by the discs surrounding the house, with the lights of the two closest discs going out. A “misty smoke-like deposit” is said to have remained for several minutes where they had hovered.
Adding credence to the story, the reader is told that a reporter from the Cordoba Province newspaper, Clarim, “also providing information for the France Press Service,” stopped by “several hours later” and reported that the house was still quite hot and that there was a sulfur smell as well. Also, Francisco Troupano (presumably a neighbor) is said to have reported seeing a group of lit discs move through the sky at around 10:15 p.m., which is when the Morenos reported that the discs left their area. The article closes with the Morenos being described as a family with a reputation for “integrity and honesty.”
While this account was published close to the time of the event, no credit is given for the writer, though the report could possibly have come from Dr. Olavo Fontes, who was a friend of APRO founders Coral and Jim Lorenzen and was APRO’s man in Brazil.
There is another account with more details, and a quote from one of the witnesses involved, in an article headlined, “Argentina: The 1963 Trancas CE-2 / CE-3 Revisited,” that was posted on context.com on June 2, 2001, translated by Scott Corrales in 2011, and reposted on inexplicata.blogspot.com on June 6, 2011.
This account begins with the information that on October 31, 1963, the Moreno’s daughters, Argentina, 28, and Jolié, 21, along with their three small children, came from Rosario to visit their parents and older 30-year-old sister, Yolanda. They are said to have come because their husbands, who were officers in the army, would be taking part in maneuvers and passing by Trancas the next morning, going from Tucimán to Salta.
According to the account, after dinner, everyone went to their rooms to sleep, and at 11:00 p.m., 15-year-old domestic worker Dora Guzman, who lived in the back of the house, “appeared repeatedly, stating that she could see lights on the railroad embankment, located 200 meters in front of the ranch.” At that time, the parents were asleep, Angelina was reading, Jolié was feeding her 4-month-old son, and Yolanda thought the lights could be from a passenger bus, but Guzman is said to have “prevailed upon the sisters to check out the ‘strange lights’ she was seeing.” They are described as being a set of five, blinking on and off intermittently, shooting out beams of light in different directions, and lighting up the farm.
An aspect of this account that puts it into the context of its time is that when the women reportedly noticed the humanoid shapes moving about in the lighted area, they are said to have become fearful that they were seeing guerillas in the act of sabotaging the very railway tracks that their husbands would be travelling on in a few hours. It is noted that there had been “the rural guerilla warfare of Taco Ralo in Southern Tucumán in late 1962.”
One of the sisters is said to have “remembered” flying saucers being seen in areas around the world and a particular case in Monte Maiz that involved a truck driver reporting he had seen a craft and had been “burned by a thin beam of light.” The sister is said to have suggested that saucers were what they were seeing.
According to the account, they went outside to get a better look, saw a “dim greenish light” they thought might be a farmhand’s truck, went to the gate, and then “suddenly found themselves bathed in a light emanating from a source eight meters distant.” They are said to have then seen a craft described as “8 x 3 meters, with a turret and large rivets on its surface.”
According to the account, they ran inside with Guzman screaming she had been burned, (Argentina and Yolanda determined she was just scared) and with the entire household awake at this point, the description of the events that followed is similar to that in the Bulletin.
Apparently, the family was overwhelmed by reporters and curious visitors after their story got out, as it is reported that “police intervention was subsequently requested.” It is also noted that “dusty white residue found at the site” was tested by the Chemical Engineering Institute at the University of Tucamán and found to be “calcium carbonate with potassium carbonate impurities.”
As for Spielberg being inspired by the case, Jolié Moreno is quoted: “My mother was desperate and my sisters were running around. My son was asleep in his little bed, perspiring in such a way that…outside were those lights, lighting everything up, moving intelligently and those figures…it was like Steven Spielberg’s film Close Encounters of the Third Kind, which was authorized base on the information that existed on this case. I authorized it.”