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The ikal of the Tzotzils flies through the air. Sometimes he steals women, and the women so taken are remarkably prolific, and may bear a child once a week, or once a month, or even daily. The offspring are black, and they learn the art of flying inside their father's cave. Brian Stross's Indian informants reported that a flurry of ikals was sighted "about twenty years ago" — which would take us back to 1947, the year of the sighting by pilot Kenneth Arnold over Mt. Rainier, in Washington, which gave birth to the term flying saucer. It was a very significant period in UFO history. Beyond Reason In the past twenty years, UFO reports have been studied by serious persons who have tried to place them within the framework of space science, modern physics, psychology, or the history of superstition. Superficially, the most appealing of the theories proposed is the extraterrestrial theory which would regard the UFOs as probes from another planet. Yet it falls short of explaining the phenomena in their historical development. Present-day saucers cannot be evaluated without reference to the 1897 airship or to earlier sighting of similar objects. Then, too, the theory of simple visitation must be compared with the assumption that the visitors know far more physics than we do — so much more, in fact, that an interpretation in terms of physical concepts known to us is bound to end in failure and contradiction. A second major flaw in all the theories proposed so far is found in the description of the entities and their behavior. As we will see below, any theory can account for some of these reports, but only at the expense of arbitrary rejection of a much larger group. To put it bluntly, the UFO phenomenon does not give evidence of being extraterrestrial at all. Instead it appears to be inter-dimensional and to manipulate physical realities outside of our own space-time continuum. October 12, 1963. Between Monte Maiz and Isla Verde, in Argentina, Eugenio Douglas drove his truck loaded with coal through the hard rain. Dawn was coming. Suddenly, Douglas saw a bright spot on the road ahead, like the headlights of an approaching vehicle, except that it was a single, blinding light. To avoid a collision, Douglas slowed down. The light became so intense he had to lower his head and move to the side. He stopped the truck and got out. The light had disappeared. Through the rain, Eugenio Douglas could now see a circular metallic craft, about thirty-five feet high. An opening became visible, making a second area of light, less intense, and three figures appeared. They looked like men, but they were wearing strange headdresses with things like antennae attached. They were over twelve feet tall. There was nothing repulsive about the entities, said Douglas, but he was terribly scared. As soon as he was seen by the figures, a ray of red light flashed to the spot where he stood and burned him. Grabbing a revolver, he fired at the three entities and ran off toward Monte Maiz. But the burning red light followed him as far as the village, where it interfered with the street lights, turning them violet and green. Douglas could smell a pungent gas. The beauty and dramatic character of that scene is impressive. In a screen illustration of the UFO saga this is probably the sighting that would best carry its total meaning. Douglas ran to the nearest house and shouted for help. Ribas, the owner, had died the previous night, but his family, gathered around the body, reported that at the same time they heard Douglas's call the candles in the room and the electric lights in the house turned green, and the same strange smell was noticed. They rushed to open the door: there was Douglas in the pouring rain, his overcoat over his head and a gun in his hand. The street lights had changed color. It must have been one of the most visually fantastic scenes in the rich archives of ufology. Eugenio Douglas was taken to the police station, where the burns on his face and hands were clearly seen. The police, it turned out, had recieved a number of calls about the lights' color change, but they had attributed the change to irregularities in the local power plant — which, however, would