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Encounters of the Unknown—Alternate Perceptions Magazine, October 2016


Tiny Entities Reported in Columbia

by: Gordon Creighton


Writing in Professor Fabio Zerpa's Fortean and ufological Journal Cuarta Dimensions (*), No. 23, Sr. Rafael Barrero Cortes, Director of the “Cirex” research group in Columbia, gives many details of an extraordinary case in which four schoolboys and a policeman allegedly had a close view of extremely small humanlike beings of the type so frequently recorded in the annals of research into what is generally called the Fairy Traditions.

The date of the occurrence was August 10, 1973.

The four boys, Medardo Martinez, Hipolito Garcia, Hernan Manjarras, and Mario Fernandez Ramirez, are described as pupils at the local Escuela Normal in the town of Ibague. (Ibague is a little over 100 kilometres or so to the south-west of Bogota, Capital of the Republic of Columbia.)

The boys were outside the town and were approaching a ravine (quebrada) known as El Jordan which lies just a few miles distant from Ibague. They were on an expedition to gather botanical specimens from the semi-dry bed of a nearby rivulet.

Arrived at the banks of the stream, the boys observed, with vast astonishment, four small beings no more than 20 cm. in height standing beneath and slightly in front of a little stone footbridge and seemingly engaged in searching for something in the mud of the river-bed.

The boys described the little creatures as “dressed in white, with tiny grey caps on their heads, and with humanlike features.” The boys walked on towards them, and then suddenly the little creatures were gone, “disappearing in the air as though by magic.”

There is no account of any machine or craft having been seen, and consequently the case falls into the voluminous category which has been accummulating for centuries past, and from every corner of our planet, of alleged encounters with tiny “elves,” “goblins,” “trolls,” “fairies” - creatures which we find dozens and dozens of names merely in our languages of Western Europe. As I began to emphasise more than ten years ago, this whole question of the so-called “Fairy Tradition” must be tackled if we are ever to have any hope of knowing what the latterly more fashionable stories of “flying saucers” and “UFOs” are all about.

As for the policeman, we are told that his name is not being divulged, but that the report which he submitted to his superiors was identical in substance with the account given by the four schoolboys. According to Sr. Rafael Barrero Cortes, a group of Columbian experts are now engaged in a thorough study and analysis of both versions of the affair.

After their initial shock and surprise the boys stepped down into the bed of the stream (shown in the accompanying photographs as just a creek about ten or fifteen feet wide) and found a whole series of tiny footprints in the mud. One of the pictures shows some six or seven of these marks, which certainly look quite deep. They are roundish, do not look to me particularly like “small human footprints,” and, as is usual in such cases, are altogether rather unimpressive and certainly totally inconclusive. As always, all that we have to go on are the statements of the five witnesses, who affirm that they saw what they saw – tiny humanlike beings.

When the affair became known, vast crowds of people descended on the area of the El Jordan Ravine to have a look at the spot, and the story of the little dwarves became the main topic of conversation not only in Ibague but throughout the whole of the Columbian Republic.

English translation: Fourth Dimension, published in Buenos Aires, by Fabio Zerpa and the O.N.I.F.E. UFO Research Group.

Reposted from England's Flying Saucer Review, Volume 21, Number 5, 1975 (Published February 1976)


Friday, March 29, 2024