by UFO History Buff & Author, Charles Lear 

In the Vol. 23, No. 5, February 1978 Flying Saucer Review, there is a report (page 4 of the pdf) out of Spain headlined, “Encounter at Talavera.” It was written by Juan José Benítez and translated by Gordon Creighton. Benítez got the story from the main witnesses who were three airmen stationed at a Spanish Air Force base near Talavera la Real, close to the Spanish-Portuguese border. He describes the case as “simply staggering.”

Benítez explains that the incident occurred on November 12, 1976, and that he got the story firsthand from the witnesses, but kept the details to himself because the three men involved had still been in the service “until a short time ago.”

According to Benítez, at around 1:45 a.m., José María Trejo and Juan Carrizosa Luján were in their sentry boxes on guard duty near the fuel depot of the Talavera Air Force Base and Jet Aircraft School a few kilometers from the city of Badajoz. Their boxes were 60 meters apart and they both heard what sounded like radio interference, which then turned into a piercing, high-pitched whistle that hurt their ears. After a few minutes, it stopped, and then started up again five minutes later, this time near Trejo’s box. Trejo called for Carrizosa to come over and both men searched the area armed with Z-26 quick-firing rifles.

The noise stopped and started again as before and finally went silent. They then saw a light that looked like a flare high up in the sky. It lit up a wide area “over towards Badajoz” and then vanished after 15-20 seconds.

After a few minutes, José Hildago, who was on patrol with a German Shepherd, came up to Trejo and Carrizosa and asked them if they’d seen the light and they said they had. They were soon joined by a corporal and two support guards from a nearby hut, and it was agreed that they should do a search of the area.

Moving along the wall that surrounds the base, they headed for the fuel stockpile. As they were coming up on a sentry box that was under construction “they experienced a sort of ‘whirlwind,’” that Trejo said in his account, was localized in a particular spot.

They then heard branches breaking in a stand of nearby eucalyptus trees and let the dog loose. The dog ran in, and the men stood ready with their rifles for a short time, but heard no barking from the dog. The dog staggered back and acted as if “‘something’ or ‘someone’ had thrashed him and terrified him.”

They sent the dog back in “four or five times” and he came back the same way every time. One of the men is quoted (Benítez rarely specifies which man throughout) saying, “His ears seemed to be hurting. . .  he was whimpering. . . Then, when he returned to us for the last time, he started circling round us.” This is described as part of the dog’s training. By circling the men, he was using his body as a barrier in the presence of a threat.

Trejo sensed that someone was behind him and “felt cold shivers run through his stomach.” He turned around and saw a luminous green humanoid figure that was about three meters tall and about fifteen meters away. The men said that it seemed to consist entirely of small points of light which were brighter on the periphery. It seemed to have a helmet on its head, long arms, thick body, and while it was on the ground, it didn’t seem to have any legs or feet. The men described it as being like a bobbin or a spindle.

Trejo was “paralyzed with astonishment and terror” and took what he estimated was 10-15 seconds to react. He made the decision to shoot at the figure, and at that moment, “he felt as though he was totally bound and shackled.” He felt weak and fell to his knees, and as he did, he yelled, “Down! They’ll kill us!”

As he shouted, the other two saw him fall to the ground and saw the figure. Trejo ended up face down on the grass, and the world around him seemed to fade out as his eyesight slowly failed.

Carrizosa and Hidalgo fired 40-50 shots at the figure, and in the instant they started, the figure either vanished in a flash according to one of the men, or faded like the image on a television screen after it’s turned off according to another. They heard the whistling noise again, which lasted for fifteen seconds this time, and then there was silence.

Trejo told Benítez that he thought it was strange that he started to fall the moment he decided to fire on the figure. When asked to explain why he thought this, Trejo said, “It seemed as though that ‘being’ had guessed my intentions. But how could that be possible? How could that ‘thing’ have known that I was just about to pull my trigger?”

Trejo said that Hildago and Carrizosa helped him up and he felt a pain in his chest that lasted about 20 minutes.

The sound of the shooting put the whole base on alert and the men were faced with the difficult task of explaining what had happened. The next day, fifty men went over the area and found no cartridge casings on the ground or bullet holes in the wall that had been behind the figure, even though the men’s rifles were found to have been fired “by Air Force experts who were called in to investigate the case.”

A few days later, Trejo’s vision failed again when he was in the mess hall, and he was taken to the sick bay. He lost consciousness for fifteen minutes and stayed there for a day. He started to recover, and was then sent to Badajoz Hospital where he stayed for ten days. After all sorts of tests, the doctors found nothing, and at that point, he felt normal.

Trejo left the hospital and his vision failed again for 15 minutes five days later. He then went to a hospital in Madrid where he stayed for a month, and after numerous tests, he was told he had “a nervous maladjustment.” He had another “attack” in the Air Force hospital where he thrashed up and down in his bed as his sight, once more, began to fail. He said that he would feel a pain in the nape of his neck and then in his forehead each time before his sight failed. Benítez reports that Trejo, 21, “has experienced no further abnormal symptoms.”

Next week: A follow-up report.