Dozens of witnesses, including an astronomer, witnessed a UFO over the Chilean capital of Santiago on Wednesday, July 15, 1997.
Rodrigo Fuenzalida, president of AION (a Chilean UFO research group) was at a local radio talkshow, "Radio Mineria," with astronomer Carlos Ibanez. The show was broadcast from the roof of the station, and the idea was to teach people about the location of the planets, how they look and how they are often confused with UFOs.
Everything went fine until they got a phonecall from a listener who told them that there were some strange lights in the sector of "Lo Canas." Looking in that direction, they saw a very bright light turning on and off slowly. This light also made some very fast movements.
After a while it split into two lights. They flashed and turned on and off for a while. Then the second light split in two. Now there were three lights blinking on and off. Then the third light split in two, making four lights.
All this happened in a span of 3 hours, from 2 am until 5 am. Most of this was captured on film.
There were many witnesses. They had around 30 people that night on the roof of the radio station. Many people from different locations of Santiago also saw these UFOs, including the local police.
Thanks to the presence of the astronomer, they verified that it was not a star, comet, balloon, etc. A check of local airports confirmed it was also not a plane or helicopter. The astronomer was astonished.
Ten days later, on Friday, July 25, a local newspaper called "La Cuarta" reported that a bus carrying 42 passengers from Arica to Santiago on July 24 encountered a UFO just after midnight.
Near the location of Cerro Moreno in Antofagasta, the bus suddenly lost all its electrical power, according to passenger Victor Hugo Lizama.
"At first we thought that the bus ran out of battery," he said. "The bus was totally dead."
Lizama said that they then started looking up in the sky and saw four lights, three round ones and the fourth a long cigar shape. All four were changing colors from violet to orange and intense silver white. The cigar-shaped object moved while the other three round objects stayed still.
A few passengers went to a military base in Cerro Moreno and asked about the lights. The guards said that probably they were just weather balloons. Lizana and the others didn't think so because of the intense lights.
The lights suddenly disappeared and then the bus started again and continued its trip to Santiago.
Original file name: CNI - Chile UFOs Again
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