April 1988
Excerpt from Dimensions: A Casebook of Alien Contact
(Editor’s note: while Vallée is not Catholic, I believe his insights are more objective than the wishes of many well meaning but naive Catholics. It appears that UFOs and so called space aliens are nothing more than demonic manifestations or fallen angels, and it seems plausible that the Fatima apparitions may well have been deceptive manifestations. Although Vallée does not endorse it, the fallen angel theory of the origin of UFOs and ETs seems most probable and is compatible with Church teaching on demons (see The Malleus Malificarum).—Timothy Fitzpatrick)
What Happened at Fatima
Many descriptions of UFO phenomena force us to deal simultaneously with two categories we always attempt to separate: the physical (or technical) and the spiritual (or divine). Numerous witnesses, in their statements after a close encounter, claim bluntly that the experience of the phenomenon has a religious meaning to them. Perhaps it does. Perhaps we need not only a scientific breakthrough here but a consciousness breakthrough as well, a global, historical grasp of the beliefs – materialistic as well as idealistic – among which we have been groping for ten thousand years. Steven Spielberg capitalized on this idea at the end of the movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind. So did Whitley Strieber in his book Communion. But it has been captured in the most complete and most artistic form in John Fowle’s extraordinary masterpiece, A Maggot, published in 1986.
The famous apparitions at Fatima offer a historical example of the religious dimension of UFO encounters. The case is a celebrated one, yet I am prepared to wager that few Americans know the full story of what happened in 1917 near that small Portuguese town. I suspect that even fewer realize that the entire sequence of observations of an entity thought to be the Virgin Mary had begun two years previously with a fairly classical sequence of UFO sightings.
If we accept the interpretation given of Fatima by the Catholic Church, we are dealing with a phenomenon that cannot be explained either as a physical effect or as an illusion. In its decision of 1930, arrived at after thirteen years of painstaking investigations by many scholars, the church states that:
The solar phenomenon of the 13th of October 1917, described in the press of the time, was most marvelous and caused the greatest impression on those who had the happiness of witnessing it….
This phenomenon, which no astronomical observatory registered and which therefore was not natural, was witnessed by persons of all categories and of all social classes, believers and unbelievers, journalists of the principal Portuguese newspapers and even by persons some miles away. Facts which annul any explanation of collective illusion.
This “miracle,” the reader will note, had been predicted several months before by three illiterate children after their vision of a woman “in a bright glow.” She had not said that she was the Virgin Mary. She had simply stated that she was “from Heaven” and instructed them to return every month until October, when a public miracle would take place “so that everyone may believe.”
The events at Fatima involve luminous spheres, lights with strange colors, a feeling of “heat waves” – all physical characteristics commonly associated with UFOs. They even include the typical falling-leaf motion of the saucer zig-zagging through the air. They also encompass prophecy and a loss of ordinary consciousness on the part of witnesses – what we have called the psychic component of UFO sightings.
The Pattern of Prophecy
The first apparition at Fatima of the woman took place on May 13, 1917. Three children were watching their sheep when a bright flash surprised them, and they walked toward the large hollow pasture called Cova da Iria (literally: the Cave of St. Irene, an old sacred spot) to see what had happened. They found themselves caught in a glowing light that almost blinded them, and in the center of the light they percieved a little woman, who spoke to them, begging them to return every month to the same spot.
While the children had been alone on the first occasion, there were fifty people the second time, on June 13. They watched while the little shepherds knelt and became transfigured, as if transported into another world, at the time of the observation. The oldest child, Lucia, who was ten at the time, addressed an unseen entity whose answers were not heard by others in the group. One spectator, however, reported perceiving a very faint voice or the buzzing of a bee (a typical sound associated with modern-day UFOs). At the end of the dialogue all witnesses heard an explosion and saw a small cloud rise from the vicinity of a tree – on which all the succeeding manifestations would center.
The following month, on July 13, the number of witnesses rose to forty-five hundred. This third apparition was especially remarkable in several respects. It included detailed descriptions by some of the spectators of physical phenomena that are specific enough to be compared to UFO data. In the words of Joseph Pelletier, in The Sun Danced at Fatima:
A buzzing or humming sound, a decrease in the Sun’s glow and heat, a small whitish cloud about the three of the apparitions, and a loud noise at the Lady’s departure.
It is also remarkable that the children were shown a vision of hell that terrified them and were given a specific prophecy announcing more apparitions of unknown lights in the sky:
The war is going to end, but if people do not stop offending God another and worse one will begin during the reign of Pius XI [note: he died in 1939]. When you see a night illuminated by an unknown light know that this is the great sign that God is giving you that he is going to punish the world for its crimes by means of war, famine, and persecution of the Church and of the Holy Father. To prevent this I shall come to ask for the consecration of Russia…. If they heed my request, Russia will be converted and there will be peace. If not, she will spread her errors throughout the world.
The mixture of seriousness and absurdity that we have already noted in several contactee stories is an unmistakable characteristic of this statement. We will find the same thing to be true in Lourdes, where the alleged Virgin Mary instructs the little Bernadette to perform meaningless actions.
The pattern of prophecy followed its course. On August 13 eighteen thousand people were at the site of the apparitions. The children, however, were not present. They had been kidnapped and jailed by a local official who had decided to put an end to this “nonsense.” In their absence, a clap of thunder was heard, followed by a bright flash. A small whitish cloud was forming around the tree. It hovered for a few minutes, then rose and melted away. The clouds in the sky had turned crimson red, and then changed to pink, yellow, and blue. “Colored light like a rainbow on the ground”; “clouds around the sun reflecting different colors on the people” – such are some of the terms the witnesses used to describe it. The witnesses saw “falling flowers,” the famous phenomenon of “angel hair” so consistently reported after the passage of a UFO, and sometimes interpreted as an ionization effect. One man, Manuel Pedro Marto, in a statement made under oath during the canonical inquiry, reported seeing clearly a luminous globe spinning through the clouds. On August 19, the children had been released and were tending sheep near Aljustrel when, about 4:00 P.M., they noticed a sudden lowering of the temperature. The sun, they said, became yellowish; the colors of the rainbow once again filled the countryside, visible to adults in the vicinity (as was later established). The bright flash was seen, and a glowing light came to settle about a tree near the children. The entity, clothed in white and gold, stood once more in the center of the glow. The witnesses fell on their knees and “feasted their souls in rapture.” A dialogue followed in which the apparition asked the children to “make sacrifices for sinners.” After ten minutes the Lady of Light departed slowly toward the east with a roaring sound.
Apparitions of a Flying Globe
On September 13 the crowd numbered thirty thousand, including two priests who were absolutely skeptical and had come specifically to establish the falsity of the much-heralded “miracles.” The site of the apparitions was a wide amphitheater where most of the crowd had gathered to be close to the tree of the apparitions. However, the two skeptical priests had chosen a spot on the higher ground from which they could observe everything. The following is based on their report.
Noon. The sun got dimmer, although no clouds were seen in the sky. Thousands cried: “There she is… look!” A globe of light was seen by all, advancing slowly down the valley, from east to west, toward the children. It came to rest on the tree. A white cloud formed and, out of the empty sky, shiny white “petals” began to fall. Let us ponder this description of the phenomenon by a witness:
As the people stare at this strange sight they soon notice that the falling, glistering globules, contrary to the laws of perspective, grow smaller and smaller as they near them. And when they reach out their hands and hats to catch them they find that they have somehow melted away.
The children saw the entity again in the center of the globe, and the dialogue began once more between the Lady and Lucia. The promise of a miracle on October 13 was repeated. Then the radiant globe rose and disappeared into the sun.
Asked what he thought the globe was, one of the priests, now quite shaken, stated that “it was a heavenly vehicle that carried the Mother of God from her throne above to this forbidden wasteland.” The concept of the earth as a prison or forbidden wasteland is a popular one among those who have been exposed to these phenomena.
The last apparition, as predicted, took place on October 13, 1917. The crowd numbered seventy thousand this time. (The size of the assembled crowd had grown in the following progression: 3,50, 4,500, 18,000, 30,000, 70,000.) The vision was preceded by a flash of light at noon and a sweet strange fragrance. The children engaged in a dialogue with the Lady. Witnesses did observe the dramatic change on the faces of the three children, enraptured by the vision.
The predicted miracle took place as the apparition left the Cova da Iria. The rain that had been pouring down on the crowd suddenly stopped, and the heavy clouds parted. The sun appeared as a disk of brilliant silver, “a weird disk that turns rapidly on its own axis and casts off beams of colored lights in all directions. Shafts of red light shot out from the rim of the sun and colored the clouds, the earth, the trees, the people; then shafts of violet, of blue, of yellow and of other colors followed in succession.” These colors have been described by an objective skeptic as “monochromatic sectors,” and they were definitely revolving.
The reports speak of a flat disk rather than a globe. After a while it stopped spinning and “plunged downward in zig-zag fashion toward the earth and the horrified spectators.”
Most witnesses believed their last hour had come. Many of them, including the debunkers, knelt in the mud and began publicly confessing their sins. Finally the disk reversed its motion and disappeared into the sun, the real sun, once again fixed and dazzling in the sky. The astounded crowd suddenly realized that their clothes were dry.
Such is the story of Fatima as it can be reconstructed from reports of the time and from church investigations. The final “miracle” had come at the culmination of a precise series of apparitions combined with contacts and messages that place it very clearly, in my opinion, in the perspective of UFO phenomena. Not only was a flying disk or globe consistently involved, but its motion, its falling-leaf trajectory, its light effects, the thunderclaps, the buzzing sounds, the strange fragrance, the fall of “angel hair” that dissolves upon reaching the ground, the heat wave associated with the close approach of the disk – all of these are frequent parameters of UFO sightings everywhere. And so are the paralysis, the amnesia, the conversations, and the healings.
The Angel of Peace
Few of the books on Fatima provide us with details of the children’s background. Yet in all apparition phenomena, it is crucial to investigate this background thoroughly and to ask as precisely as possible for descriptions of the earliest incidents that set the witness on a path to extraordinary realities. In the case of Fatima the events did not begin – as most authorities indicate – on May 13, 1917. It is true that such is the date of the first apparition of the Lady, but this had been preceded by a series of sightings of an angel a couple of years before. These sightings cast serious doubts on the interpretation of the “miracle” given by the Catholic Church.
In April 1915, when Lucia was eight, she was reciting the rosary near Fatima when she saw a transparent white cloud and a human form. This happened a second time in the same year, and a third time in October. Then, during 1916, Lucia was visited three times by the angel.
The first occasion was in the spring. Lucia was with two of her cousins when rain started to fall. The children sought shelter in a small cave. After lunch the rain had stopped, and they were playing at the entrance of the cave when they heard the rumble of a powerful wind – another constant in UFO behavior – and a white light appeared. It was gliding through the valley above the tree tops. In the light was a youth of admirable beauty who came close to them and said, “I am the Angel of Peace.” He taught the children a prayer and disappeared. The three little ones were left in a trance: they kept repeating and repeating the prayer, mechanically, until they literally fell from exhaustion. The next incident took place on a hot day in midsummer 1916. This time, the angel appeared suddenly and asked, “What are you doing? Pray! Pray a great deal! Offer prayers and sacrifices continually.”
“How are we to offer sacrifices?” asked Lucia.
“Make a sacrifice of everything that you possibly can…. Above all, accept and bear with submission the suffering that the Lord shall send you.”
The children were left paralyzed. It was only toward the evening that they regained their senses and began to play again. In this case, as in the previous one, the witnesses did not want to discuss the matter – not even among themselves. Pelletier reports that:
The experience has been so intimate and so manifestly sacred that none of them ever thinks of revealing it, or even the smallest part of it, to anyone else. It is obviously a favor to be kept for themselves. Of that they are absolutely and instinctively persuaded.
The next day they still could not explain their reactions to the apparitions: “I don’t know what is happening to me,” said one of the little girls. “I cannot speak, nor play, not sing, and I haven’t the strength to do anything.”
The angel appeared one more time, in the fall of 1916, in the cave at Cabeso. He gave the children Communion. Analyzing the power that prompted the young witnesses to imitate the actions of this “angels” and to repeat his prayers slavishly, Pelletier offers this perceptive remark:
This power is so intense that it absorbs and almost completely annihilates them. It practically deprives them of the use of their bodily senses… their bodies are subject to a mysterious, depressing force that prostrates them.
His remark could apply to the entire spectrum of close encounters with UFOs.
The Impact of Fatima
What were the sequels to the Fatima story? The lives of many people who attended the “miracles” were deeply changed. Some were cured of a variety of diseases.
At my mother’s request, I went once more to Cova da Iria in August at the time of the apparitions, writes engineer Mario Godinho. Once more I came back discouraged and disappointed. But that time, something extraordinary happened. My mother, who had had a large tumor in one of her eyes for many years, was cured. The doctors who had attended her said they could not explain such a cure.
This is just one among hundreds of such testimonies. At the time of the final miracle, many people were driven out of their senses, even those who saw it from a distance of several miles and were not in the company of other witnesses who might have influenced them. A child of twelve, named Albano Barros, for example, who was in a field near Minde, eight miles from Fatima, was so struck when he saw the disk of light falling toward the earth that he does not remember what followed: “I cannot even remember whether I took the sheep home, whether I ran, or what I did.” Others were so afflicted that, like farmer Manuel Francisco, they went home weeping. Another witness, a lady who now lives in the United States, near Albany, added this comment, “Even today, whenever there is lightning, I remember it, and I am afraid.” A prominent lawyer, Mr. Mendes, stated in an interview with John Haffert in 1960:
What I saw at Fatima could not help but affect the interior life and I am sure that all who saw the miracle, or even heard about it, cannot fail to be impressed by its greatness…. I still remember it today as vividly as at the moment it happened, and I feel myself to be dominated by that extraordinary event.
Another witness reports: “I always keep thinking about the sign.” An extremely interesting series of testimonies came from witnesses who were not at Cova da Iria, but miles away from the crowd. I have already mentioned the observation made by Albano Barros in Minde. A woman named Mrs. Guilhermina Lopes da Silva, who lived in Leiria no less than sixteen miles from the site of the miracle, could not go to the place appointed for the apparition, but she looked toward the mountain at noon and saw “a great red flash” in the sky. The brilliance was such that it was seen thirty miles away (at San Pedro de Muel, by Portuguese writer Afonso Vieira, his wife, and his mother-in-law).
The phenomenon, it seems, could not be photographed directly with the emulsions and shutter speeds commonly aviable at the time. (One picture often produced by the newspapers and alleged to show the miracle is in fact a photograph of an eclipse of the sun that has nothing to do with it.) There are many pictures of the crowd during the “miracle,” however, and the actual brightness of the disk is an unresolved question. Two witnesses looked at it with binoculars and reported seeing a ladder and two beings. The edges of the disk, according to all descriptions, were sharp. And it was definitely not blinding, although pictures of the crowd show many witnesses shading their eyes. But others report that the phenomenon darkened the sun to such an extent that at one point they could see the moon and the stars.
Another remote witness was a schoolboy who was so impressed by what he saw that he subsequently became a priest. An American Catholic writer named John Haffert interviewed him in 1960. At the time of the miracle the schoolboy was with his brother and other children in the village of Alburitel, nine miles away from the Cova da Iria, and here is what he experienced:
I looked fixedly at the sun which seemed pale and did not hurt my eyes. Looking like a ball of snow, revolving on itself, it suddenly seemed to come down in a zig-zag, menacing the earth. Terrified, I ran and hid myself among the people, who were weeping and expecting the end of the world at any moment. It was a crowd which had gathered outside our local village school and we had all left classes and run into the streets because of the cries and surprised shouts of men and women who were in the street in front of the school when the miracle began.
There was an unbeliever there who had spent the morning mocking the “simpletons” who had gone off to Fatima just to see an ordinary girl. He now seemed paralyzed, his eyes fixed on the sun. He began to tremble from head to foot, and lifting up his arms, fell on his knees in the mud, crying out to God.
But meanwhile the people continued to cry out and to weep, asking God to pardon their sins. We all ran to the two chapels in the village, which were soon filled to overflowing. During those long moments of the solar prodigy, objects around us turned all colors of the rainbow…. When the people realized that the danger was over, there was an explosion of joy.
Two of the three children at Fatima died young, as the Lady had predicted, but Lucia lived secluded in a convent to an advanced age.