Dr. Virgilio Sanchez-Ocejo has been investigating UFOs since 1956, when he saw his first UFO at Cuba’s Havana University. He earned his Doctor in Law Degree there in 1960 and came to the U.S. later that year. He was appointed Special Representative at Large for South America by MUFON and CUFOS, and has acted as a bridge between many Spanish UFO groups and the U.S. He’s host of “Looking For An Answer,” a radio program out of Miami. He is President of the non-profit organization, Miami UFO Center. He can be reached at: Miami UFO Center, P.O. Box 960771, Miami, Florida 33296.
Editor: Dr. Sanchez-Ocejo, can you describe to us the type of research you are doing now, what organization you belong to, and what type of studies you are presently involved in?
Dr. Virgilio Sanchez-Ocejo: I’m president of the Miami UFO Center, a non-profit organization registered in Florida. Our organization is made up of a small group of professionals, specialized in different fields. The main purpose of our organization is to study UFO and paranormal-related reports, since the UFO phenomenon may well involve physical and psychic aspects. For the most part, for every occurring physical UFO-related event, somewhere there’s an equally important psychic or a paranormal event taking place.
On the evening
of January 3, 1979, until 1982, we studied an abduction case which required a staggering amount
of work to complete. After careful review, we were convinced that a UFO contact and abduction
had taken place. The case was investigated by a special team of professionals inluding engineers,
doctors, a psychologist, a neurologist and a professional hypnotist. It also
received the special attention of the late Dr. J. Allen Hynek, who maintained contact and
advised us at difficult moments when we needed his cooperation. This case was privately
published in “UFO Contact From Undersea” by Sanchez-Stevens, in 1982. According
to Art Levine of “Miami New Times,” The Filiberto Cardenas incident is “
the most famous abduction case in Miami history.”
Currently, we are conducting some research of what is known as the “chupacabra” phenomenon, an unfortunate misnomer.
Editor: I had met Dr. Hynek at his home in Evanston, Illinois, back in September 1972, back when his book, The UFO Experience was published. He was quite an interesting person. What countries did you and Dr. Hynek visit and investigate cases in?
Dr. Virgilio Sanchez-Ocejo: After the Filiberto Cardenas abduction case, we traveled attending symposiums in Central and South America. In Brazil (we) investigated the Trindade Island case, interviewing Almiro Barauna the photographer. William Ortiz was a young Columbian deaf-mute that aliens had visit(ed) him and claims his hearing was temporarily returned. This may be the first time that ET’s have communicated with a handicapped (person).
One of the most exciting case(s), Hollywood style, that we were involved (with) was Ricardo’s case. Not only the story itself was interesting but also the circumstances involving it. It all began in April 1982, when Argentine forces invaded and occupied the Falkland Islands or Islas Malvinas, a group of 200 islands, population 2121. Born in Mendoza, Argentina, Ricardo Jesus Velazqeuz had an encounter on February 23, 1981, with extraterrestrial entities and was told, during his abduction, that Argentina military will invade and later lose the war, against the British, over the Falkland Islands.
Editor: How did you get involved with the Chupacabra phnomenon?
V.S-O: For many years, we have studied reports of UFO sightings in which people claim to have close encounters with strange entities, suffering traumatic shocks during their abductions. Yet, nothing compares with the bloodless animals and scared witness(es) left by the “chupacabra” attacks in our community. A phone call from our friend Jose L. Cuesta, on the night of Monday the 11th of March 1996, concerning the devastation amongst the animals of a farm not far from my home, caused by the mysterious creature popularly called “ chupacabra.” We knew the havoc caused in Puerto Rico and the reports of a UFO presence in some places where the creature attacks. The first to arrive at the scene was our friend, journalist Manuel Figueroa. He called me and said, “Virgilio, you know how to make plaster footprints. This chupacabra left footprints all over this home. Could you do a plaster of it?” I couldn’t say no. It took me almost two hours to make the prints. Miami, at that time, was under the influence of a most anomalous winter storm, with winds of 30 miles per hour and strong torrential rains, followed by cold between 20 and 25 degrees.
The official version was that all the animal massacres were blamed on a single dog. Our footprints run from small to larger than a dog. The large is 5 inches wide by 4.5 inches long and the relationship between nail and paw is different from that of dogs. Footprints showed only two legs; there were not four legs walking. Also it showed differences (in) sizes so they went in a group. The prey appears punctured by small holes, almost always on the side of the neck, without showing trauma on the other side, as would occur with a bite. Most of the time sucks all the victim’s blood and does not leave blood puddles near its victim.
Before continuing with the attack of the blood predator, I would like to intercalate here a note that appeared at that time in The Miami Herald, section B, April 16, Saturday, with the headline: “Mystery Bird, Backyard intruder creates a flap passing through Northeast Dade, by Cherie Henderson. The note describes a bird three feet tall with a face like a turkey, hopping through the yards of several North Miami homes. The bird has been spotted with a partner. Witnesses say the birds are “black with white flecks, with beaks similar to toucans and a seven-foot wingspan.” Police tried to catch it with help from the Fort Lauderdale-based Wildlife Care Center, but it flew away. Metro Zoo officials say they have received reports of about 10 sightings in the Northeast area but the birds do not belong to them.
It suggests that these strange birds have been seen also all over the surrounding cities, and that they were seen not only by the Latin people of the area, as emphasized in the press.
Another case that we studied happened to a dentist who prefers to remain anonymous. When leaving his clinic, located on Southwest 8th Street in the heart of the city, at 7:30 p.m., on Wednesday, March 20, he went to the parking lot behind the building and sat down in his car. Starting the motor, he heard a flapping sound, and opening the car window, he observed a huge bird. Stepping out of his car, he could see the huge bird flying away in the darkness, leaving in the parking lot a dead dove and a frightened dentist. The dove showed a hole in the neck, and the bird was also without a single drop of blood.
Finally, when we were ready to catch it with a sharpshooter with high-powered rifles, night- vision gear, a portable lab, electronic paraphernalia, etc., the attacks suddenly stopped.
After participating in the First International Encounter with Contactees, celebrated in Capilla Del Monte, province of Cordoba, Argentina, we took the opportunity to travel to its neighbor Chile, from where we had received news of blood predator attacks in that country, especially in the northern part. We arrived in Calama on Monday, July 18, 2000.
Prior to the trip, we had made contact, via Internet, with ufologist Mrs. Lilliana Nunez in Santiago, Chile’s capital, and Mr. Jaime Ferrer, a resident of Calama, who sent us news of blood predator attacks as printed in Chile’ s newspapers. We briefed Mr. Ferrer on how to interview witnesses, how to obtain physical evidences by making plastic molds of tracks, collect hairs, etc. At that time, he passed that information to a group of youths in Maria Elena, which is a working camp for a local mining company in the Atacama Desert.
The mining company, SOQUIMICH, owns the camp and provides free housing for its workers. Total population: 8,000. I like to point out that because some workers complained with fear of seeing some blood predators within the mine, the company issued an order forbidding their workers to speak about the subject, or risk losing their housing and employment. We arrived at Maria Elena under that pressure. We stayed there the last three days of our trip from Friday, July 21 to Sunday, July 23, 2000.
It all started the night of March 18, 2000, when a big light illuminated the whole sky of Calama, Maria Elena and Tocopilla, a town next up the Pacific coast.
The first attack report was on April 1, 2000, at La Banda, a suburb of Calama. Witnesses notified me that the first attack happened at a ranch. They pointed at a tree that looks like a Christmas tree. From there the attacks to domestic animals spread to most of the ranches and to the city of Calama.
Eyewitnesses acknowledged that they observed two separated star-like UFOs shifting to the place
where the attacks occurred. Another witness was able to video a UFO in daylight for a few minutes
and also at night. He gave us a copy of it. UFOs were seen almost every night in Calama and in
Maria Elena. Other witnesses drew them during our interviews.
A witness, riding a bicycle, was headed for Ojo de Opache Street, and while passing by the Lion’s Club building, heard a groan and stopped to see what happened. At the side of the building, he saw a dead dog in the grass and, next to it, the large shining eyes of a blood predator. His eyes shined so much in the dark that he almost could not detail his body. But what most was impressive to him, was that when the entity lifted the dead dog with his hands and afterwards raised some 50 centimeters from the grass, and he doesn’t know how, after being at a distance of 30 meters, instantaneously he was only 10 meters. The shock of seeing this horrifying sight made him to start pedaling his bicycle. (He was) frightened and returned home.
On the grounds of a private children’s school, Colegio Ecologico Montessori, a female vicuna and a female goat were found dead inside their cage, both of them without blood. A male goat inside the same cage was found in good condition. The night shift guard did not hear anything and on his round at 4 o’clock in the morning found the dead animals. He called the school director, Mr. Juan Vega, informing him of the fact. The two dead animals were taken to the back of the building so the children would not see them.
That afternoon, after school, Mr. Vega, who has a Masters in biology and chemistry, performed a necropsy on the two animals. Both animals presented an orifice of 2 centimeters in their necks. According to Mr. Vega, the hole went directly to the aorta and to other arteries, shattering them and apparently sucking all their blood helped by the pumping heart. The punctures seem(ed) surgical, there were no tears and no evidence of mastication, and there were no trauma on the other side of their necks. There was no blood stain on the cage floor (and) neither around it. The school has guard dogs and they were found under a tree, neither of them made any noise to alert the night watchman. The dogs were inspected for blood in their mouth, with negative results.
We calculated with Mr. Vega the amount of blood the two animals had, some 17 liters of blood (1 liter equals 0.264 gallons, or 17 liters about 4.5 galloons). The problem is that we don’t know how the blood predator, loaded with 17 liters of blood, could leave the cage through an opening of only 30 centimeters in size.
In the two days we were in Maria Elena, the witnesses testimonies we put together were numerous. We are still evaluating them. We were to meet with a group of young students, whom I had previously instructed via Internet on how to obtain eyewitness depositions, how to collect evidence and also how to make plaster casts. They showed me a plaster cast they had made and we had a big surprise. After comparing it with a copy we brought from Miami attacks of 1996, they were identical! They matched! They belong to the same blood predatos! In science it’s important the comparative study. Tracks do not lie!
Editor: You are saying then that the footprints that you got from Miami matched footprints down in Chile?
V.S-O: Right. And later on one in Spain.
Editor: That’s incredible.
V.S-O: When I asked them to show me the place where they obtained the plaster cast,
they took me to a site eight kilometers outside Maria Elena. There we observed high power lines
and the mining company railway. We found about 40 footprints still preserved in the dry desert.
Some tracks ran in pairs, some were bigger than the rest, some ran side ways. The bigger tracks
ran a shorter distance, then they vanished to show up again some meters ahead, and so on. The
size of the small tracks were 9 centimeters with 2.5 centimeters finger or claws. The big tracks
were about 13 centimeters with 4 centimeters finger or claws. The small tracks were always
following the big ones.
The youths pointed out three strange holes, some 60 centimeters in diameter and 25 centimeters in depth. These measures are not exact because the wind and the dust of the desert had eroded the edges accuracy. I presume they were made a couple of months before. I had three of the youths step inside of the holes and, from a little mound, I took a picture. We estimated its size, from A to B, some 4 meters and from B to C and A to C some 7 meters. Presumably we had discovered the UFO landing place from where the blood predators had been released! According to the triangle, the UFO could have been some 30 meters in diameter. It was follow holes 25 centimeters in depth.
But that’s not all. From the mound, where I took the photo, we observed that all the tracks followed only one course toward Maria Elena’s camp. There were no tracks on either side or behind the triangle.
Editor: So you’ve got the tracks and the tripod type indentation?
V.S-O: Right. Also we had the opportunity to analyze, with the Maria Elena’s Museum curator, hairs retrieved from the claws of dead cats attacked by the blood predator. With knowledge of all regional animals and after a microscopic analysis, the curator, Mr. Claudio Castellon, concluded: “The hairs do not belong to any known animal in the region; dogs, fox, cats, etc. They seemed to be human but they are not!” We have all-- the exam and the conclusions in video. We also brought with us hair samples for further examination. We sent hair sample to the Biology Department of the Granada University in Spain and preliminary DNA test show(ed) that it did not belong to any human. Physical evidences are important because it separates the chupacabra phenomenon from the mystical aspect.
Editor: Ya, it changes everything.
V.S-O: It changes because it shows a new physical aspect. They are real, like us.
Editor: Right. Now you have science.
V.S-O: An incident of particular interest happened at the Imperio Disco Night Club in Maria Elena. At about 3 a.m. the owner, Mr. Carlos Silva, heard on top of the music some blows on the back door of the club. Fearing an assault, he asked two of his staff to find out what was causing the noise. One of them, David, armed with a knife and a broom stick, opened the back door and went to the patio fence door. There, in the dark, a creature was pushing the door from outside. This door has a metal screen on the top half part and was assumed to be secured with nails to the frame. In the dark, David could only see a dark shape across the screen. With the broom stick David kept the door from opening and threatening with the knife, David was, for 5 minutes, at only two meters from the creature that kept charging against the door. In the lower part of the door, the nails were already loose, caused (by) the blows every time the creature ran into the door.
David asked the other employee to bring an emergency light to illuminate the place. In that moment, the creature “opened” his eyes. David could see large and luminous yellow-orange eyes, like a 15 watt bulb, looking at him. Then, at the same time, the creature made a guttural sound gasping at him with a heavy powerful smell, “like ammonia,” that made David stop breathing, making him to retreat looking for fresh air. The other employee showed up with the lamp that illuminated the place. In a flash, the creature jumped to a tree and from there to a house roof, fleeing in the darkness. For an instant, David could see the creature and describes it as having short black hair on his face. When he jump(ed) to the tree, (he) could see longer black hair along his back. He was some 1.30 meters height, some 3 _ feet tall.
This encounter left David and his assistant aware that it was not a person, but a blood predator.
In Chile, we found chupacabras the size of a football. The same shape as a football with two legs, two arms, but with different hair. These little chupacabras did not attack or suck any blood. They just go around with the big one.
Editor: You’re assuming the small football-sized one is a child?
V-S-O: We call them babies. There hasn’t been any report of the babies attacking a domestic animal. I interview(ed) an eyewitness who was close to three feet from one of these babies. We collect samples of his hair. Every day we check for reports of any paranormal phenomena that happened in the area. One of them was a spontaneous fire (at) the offices of the Wackenhut security agency in Iquique, a city in the north part of Chile, close to Peru.
Editor: You said Wackenhut?
V.S-O: Yes, the American security agency. This is what El Mercurio newspaper report(ed) on Sunday, October 8, 2000:
“The Fire Department is looking into a series of seven combustions recorded in different days and times within a building on Avenida Arturo Prat 480, where the offices of the Wackenhut security agency are located. The firemen who put out the flames claim having seen clocks and pictures fly through the air while at the same time hearing cries, lamentations and the sound of chains.
Volunteer firefighters are at a loss to explain the seven spontaneous fires which they have had to extinguish in the past several days. The strange paranormal phenomena are taking place in an old wooden house located in front of Cavancha Beach; within the structurewhich until last Sunday served as the headquarters for a security companycan be heard the sound of chains, shattering lamentations along with the unexplained fires.
The most harrowing situation occurred last Friday, just before President Ricardo Lagos and Iquique Mayor Jorge ‘Choro’ Soria toured Cavancha Park, located some 500 meters from the ‘haunted house’: a tremendous fire broke out at the location, which caused the mobilization of several fire departments. The fire crews were hard pressed to extinguish the tongues of flame, above all because the flames appeared to emerge out of nowhere.
While the fire was being put out, several department functionaries and company workers claimed having seen plates, pictures and clocks fly from one end to another of the main hall. Some volunteers also claim having heard the sound of children screaming, babies crying, and the clinking of chains. Decorations which had been nailed to the wall also fell to the ground.
What is truly spooky is that firefighters were forced to return to fight several outbreaks of fire in the same residence that very day. Experts of the Fire Department’s technical team were unable to find a logical explanation to justify the source of the fires.
‘What most attracted our attention on Friday was that a wall clock fell down and wound up some two meters away. Desks and other furniture also moved around. It was terrible,’ said one of the volunteers.
The superintendent of the Iquique Fire Department, Federico Petrillo, reported that the specialized volunteers are engaging in a detailed investigation into the strange cause of the fires. He also claimed to have seen with his own eyes how chairs, tables and desks moved around on their own.”
We don’t know if these spontaneous fires had something to do with the chupacabra phenomenon, but we do have reports of poltergeist effect(s) when the chupacabras are around. Kitchen tables, glasses, dishes and objects start shaking when these chupacabras run through the rooftops. Also they affect people too. In two cases, the witnesses report hearing a telepathic order from the chupacabras. Evelyn Esbry Algunta from El Rutero, (a) small truck stop between Antofagasta and Calama, had a face-to-face encounter with a chupacabra. Evelyn claim(ed) she heard a voice in her head ordering her: “Do not scream.” She black(ed) out. Paramedic Rodolfo Gonzalez, who perform(ed) first aid and took Evelyn to the Hospital Regional of Antofagasta, found two scratches on her back. He also said that in another case in Sierra Gorda the chupacabra ordered a couple sitting in their car to: “Open the door and step out.” Something they refused to do. “These cases made us think that the chupacabra is not an animal but a thinking entity,” Gonzalez said.
We also received reports of strange birds seen in different places. Big ones. Three foot tall with ten foot wingspan.
I would have liked to have stayed in five star hotels in Santiago, the capital of Chile, or in Antofagasta City, but I decided to go to the heart of the problem, to Calama and Maria Elena. I wanted to share their fear and to obtain firsthand witness testimonies and concrete evidences. We visited the city dump looking for and finding sucked animals. We suffered an unnatural Antarctic wind reaching the Atacama Desert, where it hadn’t snowed in human memory, sleeping fully dressed in a small room and in a bunker without heater and breathing the powerful smell of these creatures that wander(ed) in caves beneath my room and across Maria E lena’s camp. At one point, the smell was so strong that I sense(d) his presence next to me. I turn(ed) on the light and left it on all night. Back in Miami my wife had to wash a few times my garments which were still saturated with that pungent and characteristic odor. I hope I will never smell it again, but if that happen(s)I will know I’m close to a blood predator.
Editor: What did it smell like to you? The odor has been described as “rotten eggs” and sulfur” and “ammonia” by others.
V.S-O: It was not “rotten eggs,” “sulfur,” or “ ammonia.” It was very strong odor, not stinking but no pleasure either. Nobody could identify it. Completely “strange” and “different.”
Source: Alternate Perception Magazine, Issue # 73, October 2003
