Chile's Roswell: The UFO Crash NASA Tried to Hide
- Cristina Gomez
- May 28
- 5 min read
On October 7, 1998, Mayor Lorenzo Torres stood with 2,500 residents of Paihuano, Chile, watching a metallic cylinder hover over Las Mollacas hill. At 3:45 PM, the 50-foot-wide object rose vertically, split into two pieces, and crashed with a sound witnesses compared to thousands of mirrors breaking. Within 48 hours, unmarked military helicopters would conduct midnight operations to remove the debris, launching one of South America’s most documented UFO incidents. Twelve years later, several cameras at Chile’s El Bosque Air Force Base would capture an object traveling at 4,000 miles per hour without producing a sonic boom — a physical impossibility that prompted Chile’s government to make an unprecedented admission of ignorance.
The Paihuano Incident: Chile’s Roswell
The Valle de Elqui region of Chile sits atop significant mineral deposits including uranium. On the afternoon of October 7th, the entire population of Paihuano witnessed the silvery object’s bizarre behavior. After hovering motionless, it rose sharply, turned at an angle that would destroy conventional aircraft, then separated into two distinct sections. One crashed on the hilltop; the other fell behind it.
The crash triggered immediate physical effects across the region. Weak earthquakes registered on local instruments. Power systems failed in Paihuano, Pisco Elquí, and Monte Grande. Television and radio broadcasts cut to static. These weren’t the effects of a simple impact — they suggested electromagnetic interference on a massive scale.
Chilean Carabineros responded first, attempting to reach the crash site on horseback. According to witness reports, one horse died during the ascent (cause unknown). By morning, military forces had assumed control, establishing a perimeter extending to neighboring towns. The scope of the operation exceeded any reasonable response to a crashed weather balloon — the explanation authorities would later provide.
Omar Prieto managed the Gabriela Mistral tourist resort in Pisco Elquí. Between midnight and dawn on October 9, he observed unmarked helicopters operating without standard navigation lights. These aircraft hoisted large objects wrapped in metallic nets into cargo holds. Heavy military trucks designed for tank transport arrived empty and departed weighted down. A local goatherd reported seeing what resembled an airplane wing on the hillside. This debris remained visible for two and a half days before disappearing during the night operations.
The government’s response followed predictable patterns. Silver-painted stones appeared on Las Mollacas hill — a crude attempt to suggest witnesses had misidentified rocks as metallic debris. Officials proposed various explanations: reflected sunlight from bottles, atmospheric optical illusions, mass hallucination. None addressed the physical evidence or the military’s urgent response.
El Tololo Astronomical Observatory claimed the object was their weather balloon. This explanation immediately encountered problems. CEFAA, Chile’s Committee for the Study of Anomalous Aerial Phenomena, maintained no record of balloon launches in the area. Gustavo Rodriguez, CEFAA’s representative, publicly contradicted the observatory’s claim. Despite this public dismissal, CEFAA secretly dispatched investigators to Paihuano. Psychiatric consultant Mario Dusuel and geophysicist Carlos Leiva interviewed witnesses while maintaining the official position that nothing significant had occurred.
The Committee for the Study of Anomalous Aerial Phenomena (CEFAA) is a Chilean government agency under the General Directorate of Civil Aeronautics (DGAC), equivalent to the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), and operates under the Chilean Air Force’s jurisdiction.
Researchers from ESIO documented evidence contradicting official accounts. They photographed military boot prints throughout the crash site and measured a fresh gouge in the hillside: 5 meters long, 40 centimeters deep. They recorded military radio communications and photographed the helicopter operations. Much of this evidence remains protected to shield witnesses holding public positions.
NASA Cancels Press Conference about UFO in Chile
A scheduled press conference in Paihuano was canceled after what sources described as NASA intervention. According to multiple sources, shortly before the press conference was to begin, the public relations officer received a call from an individual claiming to be a NASA official. This official, speaking in very poor Spanish, reportedly told the officer to cancel the conference and not to release any information, citing the need for more information to be gathered first. The mayor, Lorenzo Torres, was informed, and he agreed to the request, canceling the press conference while waiting for further details that, as expected, never arrived.
The timing raises eyebrows — why would the American space agency concern itself with a Chilean weather balloon? The region itself adds another layer of mystery.
El Bosque: When Military Cameras Captured a UFO
November 5, 2010, brought thousands to El Bosque Air Force Base for the Change of Air Force Command ceremony. Professional photographers, television crews, and spectators documented the Halcones aerobatic team’s performance. Days later, an engineer from the Pillán aircraft factory discovered something extraordinary while reviewing footage: a dark object had passed through the formation at impossible speeds.
Seven different cameras captured the same object from positions scattered across the airfield. This wasn’t a photographic anomaly or digital artifact — it was a solid object moving through three-dimensional space, casting shadows and reflecting sunlight consistently across all footage.
CEFAA assembled experts from multiple disciplines. Astronomers, Air Photogrammetric Service specialists, and international analysts examined the evidence. Their findings challenged basic physics. The object maintained speeds exceeding 4,000 miles per hour at low altitude. At sea level, any object moving at Mach 5.2 creates a shock wave powerful enough to damage structures and injure people. The crowd at El Bosque heard nothing unusual.
The object’s flight path revealed intelligent control. It executed low-altitude trajectories, sudden directional changes generating G-forces that would kill any human pilot, and deliberately approached the Halcones formation before veering away. These weren’t random movements — they demonstrated awareness and capability beyond known technology.
Skeptics proposed the bug hypothesis. An insect flying close to a camera could create the illusion of a distant, fast-moving object. This explanation collapsed under analysis. The same object appeared in seven videos from cameras separated by 20–30 feet. The probability of an insect creating identical effects across multiple cameras approached zero.
Leslie Kean consulted three entomologists. Dr. Jason Dombroskie from Cornell found insect explanation theoretically possible but surprising given the multi-camera consistency. Dr. Brett Ratcliffe from the University of Nebraska stated the behavior didn’t match any known insect flight patterns. Elizabeth Arias, specializing in Chilean insects, definitively ruled out the insect hypothesis.
Scientific analysis produced conflicting results. Dr. Richard Haines, former NASA scientist and NARCAP founder, determined the same object appeared in multiple videos with sufficient separation for triangulation. His calculations indicated a large object at significant altitude. Dr. Bruce Maccabee, retired Navy physicist, argued variations between videos suggested different objects. This disagreement highlighted the case’s complexity — either one large object defied physics, or multiple objects operated simultaneously over a military installation.
CEFAA’s investigation was thorough. Pilots saw nothing unusual. Radar detected nothing. Weather conditions were normal. Audio analysis found no sonic boom. The object appeared only on optical recordings, demonstrating capabilities beyond current understanding of physics and materials science.
General Ricardo Bermúdez made a statement unusual for any military official: “We do not know what it is or where it came from.” CEFAA released videos and analysis publicly, inviting global scrutiny rather than classification. This transparency contrasts sharply with typical government responses to UFO incidents.
Chile’s UFO cases demonstrate that unexplained aerial phenomena aren’t limited to blurry photos and questionable witnesses. Sometimes entire towns observe objects that defy explanation. Sometimes military cameras capture impossibilities. Sometimes governments admit ignorance rather than manufacture explanations. These Chilean incidents remind us that our skies still harbor mysteries that challenge our understanding of what’s possible.
Sources
https://www.ufoinsight.com/ufos/cover-ups/paihuano-ufo-crash-retrieval http://www.ufoevidence.org/documents/doc1674.htm https://cooperativa.cl/noticias/pais/region-de-coquimbo/el-roswell-chileno-inauguran-mirador-donde-cayo-un-ovni-en-paihuano/2024-09-25/172914.html https://www.huffpost.com/entry/ufo-chile_b_2123947 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7jts2KQaIeU&t=57s&ab_channel=UFOCasebook
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