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Encounters of the Unknown—Alternate Perceptions Magazine, February 2019


“The Tamarind Tree and the end of times”

by: Albert S. Rosales




Location. Villa Blanca, Caguas, Puerto Rico
Date: 1975
Time: 22:00

A singular incident occurred one night at the residence of a married couple, Mr. Pedro Orlando Diaz and his wife Rita Santana, both already elderly at the time. According to the couple, they had been already in bed that night in their bedroom located at the rear of the house by a courtyard when suddenly a very bright light invaded the whole house, accompanied by a powerful wind that shook everything within the house. Rita had a stack of papers on a desk and they flew everywhere. Looking out the window of the room, Rita saw something like a “flying saucer” suspended above a tamarind tree that was located in the back of their yard, the bright light emanated from that object. At one point, a sort of hatch opened up on the side of the object and a ladder came out. Rita then says she heard a voice which told her “that the end was near, and that they had come to bring Rita and her family with them”. Rita was convinced that ‘they’ wanted to take her and her family.

At this point, Rita told the voice that she could not go yet, that they must give her and her family more time for them to prepare and say goodbye to their families. The occupants of the object (whom she never saw) responded that it was fine with them if that was what she wanted to do but that they would return some other time. Moments later the ladder retracted itself back into the object and the hatch closed. The object then became extremely luminous and the strong wind was felt again. The craft then rose up into the air and disappeared in an instant.

Rita was left terrified after the encounter. Her husband, Pedro, had at the beginning of the incident apparently fallen into a deep sleep and did not react to her screams or her desperate pulling of his arm. According to their son, Mario Orlando, the next day several individuals arrived at their residence and identified themselves as employees from the nearby Radio Observatory in Arecibo and were there to investigate what happened. They carried ID’s which said they were employed by the Observatory. However, no one knew how anyone besides them had learned of the incident. The visitors wanted to know every detail of the encounter, and wanted to take samples or everything in the house and of the tamarind tree. However, a couple of days after the incident the tamarind tree over which the object had hovered began to change color, and in a week it had turned a sickly gray and was completely dry. Sometime later the family cut the tree down and disposed of its remains. The alleged Observatory employees interviewed the elderly couple and warned them not to talk to anyone about the incident. The family was greatly perturbed as to how these alleged Observatory employees learned of the incident. It seemed to them that these men “knew” that the incident had taken place and had arrived immediately to ‘investigate it’ but they also wanted the incident not to become public knowledge. A neighbor of the couple, Mrs. Gloria Acevedo, was also a witness to the strange event. That night she had just left her bathroom and had gone to the living room to watch her favorite television show, when suddenly the electricity of the house went out, almost at the same time an intense bright light appeared outside. According to Acevedo, some sort of impulse which she could not control made her get up from the couch and walk to the side window and look outside. She then saw the large object which she described as egg-shaped, hovering behind the house of her elderly neighbors. She saw a sort of ladder come out of the object along with a very bright white-pinkish light which somehow did not blind her. She did not see the occupants of the object but knew that there was something or someone inside of it because she could hear noises. She also heard something which she termed as “gibberish” or the sound of several persons talking very fast all at the same time, almost like a murmur, or a record played at very high speed. Mrs. Acevedo remained at her window looking at the object and heard Rita yell something, but was afraid to go to her. She remained there watching the hovering object for some time, when suddenly her eyes teared up and she felt an intense stinging pain on her right eye. At this moment she heard a strong humming sound and the craft disappeared suddenly. Stunned by what she had seen she went to her bedroom and sat on the bed, while her young daughter, concerned about her state, kept asking her what had happened. Mrs. Acevedo could not answer her. She remained in a kind of stupor for about 20 minutes. She felt like it was something that was communicated by the occupants of the object to her. She believes they told her, “You will not talk. You cannot talk”.

She additionally described the object as “pretty in appearance,” somewhat egg-shaped, encircled with a bright-pinkish light and other multicolored lights. She dared not talk to Rita and Pedro until the next day. According to Mrs. Acevedo, Rita told her that she heard voices coming from the object telling her that the end was near, and they had come to get them. According to Rita, she had to lock herself in her bedroom and close the windows because something powerful attracted her to the object. She was convinced that it wanted to take her, and they kept talking to her. She yelled and screamed but her husband Pedro remained in a stupor or trance-like state.  

Mrs. Acevedo also reported being visited the next day by several men claiming to be employed by the Arecibo Radio Observatory. According to her, the men wanted to know all the details. One of the men who seemed to be an American asked her to draw what she see saw. They also showed her several pamphlets which contained drawings and photos of “flying saucers” of all sizes and shapes, and wanted her to point out which one closest resembled what she had seen. She pointed to one and immediately the American-looking stranger looked at the other man who appeared Puerto Rican and said, “It’s the same” without explaining anything to Mrs. Acevedo. It was as if they “knew something we didn’t.” The Puerto Rican man insisted that Mrs. Acevedo come with them and perhaps give some conferences to audiences at the Observatory of what she had seen. But something made her weary and she refused to go anywhere with them. They insisted but Mrs. Acevedo was firm in her refusal. One of the men told her, “You should feel lucky. I have been working on this for 30 years and never seen one of those objects myself.” He added that it was possible that she might see the object again and perhaps the occupants “would give her some information of importance.”

Later Mrs. Acevedo suffered terrible eye irritation apparently produced by the intense light emitted by the craft, and later lost most of her vision in her right eye. Another witness, a nurse that lived across the street from the elderly couple also saw the intense light, but did not go outside to see what was causing it. Instead she went into her son’s bedroom where she found him sitting on the bed, staring in a stupor at the window, which was closed, but multicolored rays of light were seeping through. At that moment she realized that something out of the ordinary was happening. She attempted to go outside but some strange force prevented her from doing so.

Source: Jorge Martin Miranda, Puerto Rico
Comments: Translation by Albert S Rosales


Friday, March 29, 2024