Introduction

One of the greatest problems faced by ufologists in matters of case histories are those in which the controversial "missing time" phenomenon comes into play. This is something that happens mostly in teleportation events, and something similar occurs with abductions. Both in one and the other, the witness/witnesses describe a "lost time" period, which according to research and subsequent study, can be recovered in whole or in part, but there is also the possibility that this will never occur. All of this will indicate that the "guiding intelligence" affects and governs a part of its brain at will, only allowing what it wants to be recalled. This, at least, is what comes to light when such situations arise...

Incidents in Argentina

Some twenty teleportation incidents form part of our 5,500 case data bank from 1947 to the present day. That is to say, only 0.5% of the reports have manifested as part of the UFO phenomenon in our country. Even so, and given that they contain some spectacular details, some of these points make for a striking analysis. For example, 80% of the case histories have occurred during nocturnal hours. They are further accompanied by certain prior anomalies, such as flashes of lightning during starry nights, dense fog along the road, unusual rainfall in a stretch of the road, flashes in the sky, and sightings of objects with windows resembling those of a railcar resting in the vicinity. During the event, the witness may show signs of tiredness and subsequent nightmares and the manifestation of body marks. As regards the chromatic aspect, there is a preference for violet light at the time of the encounter, and while these cases are located in various Argentinean provinces, two routes in Buenos Aires stand out among the rest: Route No. 5, in the stretch from Western Buenos Aires to the vicinity of the Santa Rosa, capital of La Pampa, passing through Catriló, enigmatic Lonquimay, La Gloria, Uriburo and Anguil. The same applies for the southerly Route No.3, an exceedingly mysterious road, in the straight-line segment from Bahía Blanca to Viedma.

The First Teleportation

It is necessary to bring it up given that it occurred precisely in an area where we shall discuss the case that prompts this article. As with all chronicles of its time, where credibility rarely rates 100%, the story states that at 23:30 hours on a night in late December 1959, a businessman from Bahía Blanca was returning from Buenos Aires along National Route No.3. Only scant kilometers from his city, he was startled by a violet light accompanied by a dense fog that caused him bring his vehicle to a halt and feel "exhausted". He remembers dozing off less than ten minutes and upon awakening, "he was no longer inside his car, and it was no longer in sight...and the landscape was unfamiliar." He thought he had been robbed and flagged down a truck driver along the road, who clued him as to the time and location: he was outside Salta. To his astonishment, he filed a complaint with the local police of that province. Upon phoning Bahía Blanca, he was advised that his car was still on the side of the road, with the engine running. It turned out that the case was investigated by official agencies, even some from abroad.

The Phenomenon in Reverse

The term "Slowdown" is applied when 'the action enables something to become slower or take place at a lower rate of speed'. In other words, it consists in lowering speed, or making a certain process slower. This was not something that appeared frequently in Argentina's logs on the UFO phenomenon until the year 1978. However, another case took place in 2016 of which we only became aware in 2018, and were able to investigate. The protagonists turned out to be a young married couple from Rio Negro, more precisely from the city of Viedma: Celeste and Nicolás.

Images of Another Reality

Celeste and Nicolás set out from Bahía Blanca at 01:00 in the morning on July 27, 2016 heading toward Viedma aboard a 2016 Ford Fiesta 1.6. - in other words, a car with practically zero kilometers on it. Aware that they had 1/4 tank of fuel left, which wouldn't be enough to cover the 280 kilometer distance in three hours, as the car would consume some 20 liters in that stretch, they decided to stop at a filling station upon reaching Pedro Luro. This being the case, their journey, which was identical to others they had taken along the same road in the past, was proceeding quite normally under partly cloudy and dark skies. With the town of Pedro Luro in sight, they approached the service station...and that's when a series of visual and geographic anomalies, worthy of a sci-fi film, began to play out.

The filling station was closed and completely dark. This fact stood out in their minds given that the station remains open at night. But the image they perceived of the establishment and its environs was "a state of desolation and abandonment..."

They decided to press on. Once more on the road, they became aware of the presence of a "white light in the distance", resembling an LED. Thinking it might be some vehicular accident, they stopped and signaled with their headlights, obtaining "a titillating luminous response" but nothing more came of the brief exchange. It was at that moment that they realized that "something abnormal" was taking place, as the bizarre light began to "scan the countryside, increasing in size..." They decided to continue their trip in the silence of the night.

At a given point in time, Nicolás was "stunned" by the circumstances for a few moments, slowing down and staring fixedly at the light which momentarily became red. At this point, Celeste panicked and started to rant and whimper. Both had been gripped by a nervous condition.

From that moment onward, they began seeing the silhouettes of "birds looking like bats" but with long legs. With a height of around fifty centimeters (20 inches), these black-colored, red-eyed entities were running toward the countryside, unfurling their wings and flying away. The apparitions manifested by ones and twos every hundred meters (320 feet) as the car traveled along the road. These creatures are reminiscent of the famous U.S. case that occurred on August 21, 1955 at the Sutton family farm located between the towns of Kelly and Hopkinsville, Kentucky, when members of the family were visited by horrific manlike figures during the night.

The car radio - on which they had been listening to music - became "filled with static" and they noticed that the same song was repeating over and over for several minutes.

Tensions rose even further upon ascertaining that "both of their cellphones had stopped working". The disquieting light remained in the vicinity, crossing the road on more than one occasion. It was truly extraordinary situation that prompted Nicolás to accelerated to some 130/140 Kph (80/90 mph) in spite of the scant amount of fuel in the tank, all in hopes of reaching their destination.

Those who know National Route No.3 or have driven on it are clearly aware that it is a busy road both during the day and at night, and it is common to see trucks going by. However, during the several hours of the journey, the couple's Ford Fiesta did not meet any other vehicles, nor does the couple remember passing by the exit to any towns on their trajectory after passing by Pedro Luro!(towns such as Juan A. Pradere, Villalonga and Stroeder). Another striking detail is that they did not see the lights of any houses deep in the country.

The couple never noticed any other service station at which the gas tank could be filled. The light kept tailing them, the car was easily traveling at 130 kph, time went by, the strange figures at the side of the road went on in succession and their nerves had gotten the better of them. Reaching their home in Viedma was their sole concern.

The End of the Experience

Upon reaching the exit to Carmen de Patagones, the couple agreed that this was when the persistent light 'vanished" and the city lights became clearly visible. With their fuel tank virtually empty, they arrived at their home in Viedma (Río Negro) after 06:00 in the morning...in other words, a journey that normally takes three hours took them five! Other external details surrounded the case, but what is important is that beyond all of the misadventures, the question is what happened during the missing 120 minute time span. This is where the infamous "Missing Time" comes into play. Here, without question, lies "the key" to the incident. We were able to reconstruct the scenario chronologically, in the awareness that while the couple claims not having lost consciousness at any point, events suggest that something completely anomalous took place in their surroundings and that "there is something missing" in those endless five hours that we need to complete the jigsaw puzzle. It is much like watching a movie with surrealistic images and with flashes, making the end taking much longer than necessary. Clearly, this case is not closed. Neither of the two presented any subsequent physical after-effects. The investigations, supported by Celeste and Nicolás willingness to find out what happened, will continue on our part, but they will no longer try to make the same journey at night...

Conclusions

As the case cannot be considered closed, the epilogue is thus reduced to the realm of the hypothetical. Everything leads us to supposed that the continuous out-of-context visions as they drove along the road were *controlled* by the agencies causing the incident, and while the young couple appears "to remember the succession of events", the missing 120 minutes indicate a distortion - psychic? physical? temporal? Nor do we see clear signs of abduction. But a disquieting question emerges from all this: Were Celeste and Nicolás chosen *at random* on the road, or had they already been *singled out* from the moment they set out from Bahía Blanca to be the subjects of such manipulation? What leads us to entertain such a bold hypothesis is that from the moment they left the city, they have *no memory* of going through the mandatory phytosanitary checkpoint located less than thirty kilometers from Bahía on Route No.3. Nor do they have any recollection of having noticed the towns of Teniente Origone, Mayor Buratovich and Hilario Ascasubi, all of them previous to Pedro Luro! The only fact is that we are facing the second case of "temporal slowdown" in Argentina and one of the few worldwide in over seventy years of UFO phenomenology.

Comparative Ufology

Here we find the episode known as the "Rally Racers" as a way of drawing an analogy with the case involving the couple from Rio Negro. While to many this was a teleportation, in other words, "being moved ahead in time and space", this was not the case. The coincidental fact that it took place in the same sector of Route No.3, only 38 years later, is also notable.

Chilean drivers Carlos Acevedo and Miguel Angel Moya were taking part in the Vuelta a la America del Sur Rally in a Citroen No. 102. After 02:30 hours on 23 September 1978 (with the Argentinean UFO wave in full swing) they drove through Viedma, where they stopped for fuel, and crossed Carmen de Patagones on their way to Bahía Blanca. Minutes later, they crossed the exit to the town of Cardela Cagliero, and upon reaching the area of the Agarrobo nitrate field around 02:50 hours, they noticed "a bright light approaching at high speed from behind". The car's passenger compartment became filled with a cloudy yellow light with purple shades. Acevedo, at the wheel, realized they were floating some two meters over the pavement. Amid nervous and shouts, the car came to rest on the paved surface once again endless seconds later. The light diminished and things slowly returned to normal. At the same time, both drivers observed a luminous cone flying away to the West. They got out of the vehicle, and ascertaining that all was normal, continued to drive, reaching Pedro Luro only fifteen meters later. They had covered 130 kilometers in a little less than twenty minutes!

But here we find the incredible similarity with the case involving Celeste and Nicolás. The racers reached the Pedro Luro service station at 05:10 hours in the morning, and passed by the Algarrobo nitrate field at O2:50 because their wristwatches, through the intervention of the light, marked two hours and twenty minutes to cover the segment, when in fact it takes little more than one hour to cover it! How, then, can we understand this? The strange luminous object, while speeding up those 130 kilometers physically, set them back two hours and twenty minutes temporally. And we face the same questions as in the case of the couple. If everything took place in twenty minutes, for Acevedo and Moya, what was it happened in the missing two hours? The only one who knows was the Citroen's odometer, which marked that only fifty-two kilometers had elapses from Viedma to Pedro Luro. In other words, the eighty kilometers from the Algarrobo nitrate fields is where everything could have happened

Faced with the race car driver's complaint, the local police at Pedro Luro took over the case under the command of Inspector Jorge Oscar Osimi, who subsequently rendered his report to his superiors in Bahía Blanca.

More and more questions without definite answers. The only truth is that are facing two exceptional cases of 'slow-down', nearly identical in the same geographic area and with nearly four decades between them. What unknown forces have been at work for decades in those desolate and remote locations of southern Buenos Aires?

[Translation (c) 2018 Scott Corrales, Institute of Hispanic Ufology (IHU) with thanks to Luis Burgos, FAO]