Sky People (12 page)

“The bed was comfortable, the hotel quiet, but I’m still tired.”

“I called your room last night, but there was no answer. You must have been tired. There was a lot of activity at the hotel last night.”

“What kind of activity?”

“Several of the guests and hotel workers saw a UFO.”

“Did you see it?” I asked. He nodded.

While I was chastising myself silently for not answering the phone, Mateo continued: “It was an incredible display. It hung in the air above the hotel for maybe two or three minutes and then disappeared to the west. One of the hotel workers was outside
taking a cigarette break when the object appeared overhead. He rushed inside and told the crowd at the bar. Within seconds, everyone was outside.”

“I can’t believe I missed it. I was tired. I had been up all night when you picked me up yesterday morning. A friend took me into the Copán Ruinas at night. You arrived just as I was returning from the site.”

“There were reports of a UFO sighting the night before,” Mateo said. He paused and took a sip of his coffee. “Do you remember when I asked if you had seen a UFO in Copán?” I nodded. “It looked like the same craft that was described on the TV about the sighting the night before.”

“Can you describe it?” I asked.

“It was circular, but like a brightly lighted wheel. It hovered over the hotel. I would say it covered the whole building. Probably about fifteen meters (50 feet) in circumference. It was like a floating city. At one point it tipped slightly and witnesses claimed they saw human forms inside a translucent area on one side of the craft. I did not see that. Individual blue lights circled the entire craft.”

“Did you see windows?”

“Windows, I’m not sure. There was a translucent area that covered about three parts of the craft. But I am not sure they were windows. Maybe indentations. I could see light through them. All of the blue lights gave off an unearthly blue glow. The lights changed as the rotation increased and turned to orange. The lights turned red when it moved away to the east.” A young, Maya waiter approached and took our order. When he left the room, Mateo added coffee to my half-empty cup and announced, “That young man saw the UFO last night. He told me he was taken on board the craft.” I set down my cup and looked in the direction to which the waiter had disappeared.

“Really?” I asked. Mateo nodded and smiled. “This is astonishing! When I was in Copán, I went into the ancient city at night. I saw a UFO. It was like a rotating wheel. At first, I thought I was dreaming. It was about the same size as you describe.
I remember looking at my companion and he seemed to be in a trance. I pinched myself and looked at the craft again, and that’s when I realized that I was fully awake and that I had had an encounter.” I paused, waiting for some kind of response, but there was none. “Please say something,” I said.

“I believe you,” he said. “I’ve had similar experiences at Copán.”

“Perhaps I should ask you to tell me about your experiences,” I replied.

“We have several days, Doctora. As we get to know each other, I will tell you many things.”

“Do you think the waiter would talk to me about his encounter?”

“I will ask.” I watched as the young waiter wheeled a cart to our table and carefully placed our dome-covered plates in front of us. In the middle of the table, he placed a bowl with oranges, bananas, and mangoes and replaced the pot of coffee with a fresh one.

“Eduardo, the Doctora would like to hear about your encounter with the UFO.” The young waiter glanced at me and immediately looked away. “Please sit down and tell us what happened to you,” Mateo said. The waiter looked nervously toward the kitchen. “Don’t worry. I will tell Hernando I asked you to join us.” Mateo reached over and pulled out the chair next to him. “Sit. Have you had your breakfast?” Mateo asked. Eduardo nodded and rubbed his hands on his pants anxiously. “Good.” He picked up the freshly squeezed orange juice in front of his plate and set it before Eduardo. “Please, tell the Doctora what you told me earlier this morning. Take your time.”

“Last night, I was walking home from the hotel. I live about two kilometers (1 1/4 miles) from here.”

“What time was it?” I asked.

“It was late. I worked until the bar closed. Then I washed all the glasses and cleaned up after the guests.”

“Eduardo lives with his mother and on the nights when the hotel is not too busy, he stays here,” Mateo explained. “There is
a room that the management has set aside for him, but when the hotel is full, they rent the room and he has to go home to his mother’s house. Last night was such a night.”

“Where did you see the UFO?” I asked.

“I first saw it when it was hovering over the hotel. I was delivering drinks to the tables and taking orders for the bartender when José [another waiter] came in and said there was a UFO outside. The bar was emptied in seconds.” He looked at Mateo. “You were there. You know what happened.” Mateo nodded.

“Yes, but the señora does not know. So please tell her your story.”

“After work, I started home. It was a very clear night. Suddenly I saw the craft come from the west. It was a large orange thing, shaped like a bicycle wheel. It moved around and around. I think it hypnotized me. I thought at first it was headed away from the city, but instead, it stopped and hovered over my mama’s house. I was afraid for Mama. I ran toward the house and just as I came around the bend in the road, I saw it and it saw me.” He paused and took a drink of the orange juice. Mateo laid a comforting hand on his shoulder.

“You are doing fine. Please continue,” Mateo said reassuringly.

“A bright blue light came down from the bottom of the craft. It was a beautiful sight and I felt very happy. I knew I had nothing to fear from the visitors. It was a strange feeling. When I left the hotel I was very tired. I no longer felt tired. I felt alert, as though I had slept for hours. They told me to be calm.”

“How did they tell you? Did they speak to you?” I asked interrupting him.

“I heard their voices. I am not sure. But it was not long before I became afraid again. It was when the blue light changed to a white light, I got frightened. I couldn’t move. I was paralyzed. That’s when I felt my feet leave the ground, and although I struggled kicking my feet and swinging my arms, a powerful force pulled me upward and I could do nothing.”

“Were you aware that the light was coming from a UFO?” I asked.

“Not at first. When I saw the blue light, I thought it was a ‘Jesus miracle.’”

“A ‘Jesus miracle’?” I asked.

“Yes. There have been many ‘Jesus miracles’. Many people have had them in our village,” he said. I looked at Mateo for an explanation of a Jesus miracle.

“‘Jesus miracles’ have been occurring as a result of the fundamentalist religious movement in the area. Pentecostal preachers have moved into the area. Lately, to the chagrin of the local Catholic priest, a group of homegrown evangelists have begun converting the local people to an evangelical type of Christianity. They are the copycat healers that are like the TV evangelists in the USA. They talk about ‘Jesus miracles.’ They say they can heal with their hands. The people are superstitious and uneducated, and they want to believe that God can work miracles and healings.”

“But I thought most people were Catholic,” I responded.

“That was before the evangelical groups began reaching out to the people. They have food giveaways and dinners. The people go to eat and listen to the evangelicals who fill their heads with a different kind of Christianity, like the ‘Jesus miracles’. To you and me, it sounds absurd, but to the people of these villages who are both religious and uneducated, this new religion has become a tremendous influence on their lives. In some cases, it has provided comfort and, some say, miracles. It is cheaper to be a Pentecostal than a Catholic. They no longer have to pay for the different ceremonial events. They only have to pay money to the preachers when they have it.”

“So tell me, Eduardo, what happened after the light changed to white?” I asked.

“I was taken on board their craft. They showed me around and told me that they loved the Maya people. I was chosen because of my Maya heritage. They said that the knowledge from the stars has always been hidden in the Maya hieroglyphs but they have never been deciphered correctly. So, they have decided to choose a Maya man to teach the knowledge to the world.”

“Do you think you are that man?” Mateo asked.

“They said I was the messenger. They said the earth is changing and that a new world will come soon. They said there will be wars and Earth shaking. People will starve because the Earth will burn. We are living in the fourth world, but a fifth world is coming. It is too late to stop it. I am supposed to tell the people to get ready. The four horsemen will come first. They will ride on white, red, black, and yellow horses, symbolizing the four corners of the world and the colors of the people of the world. When these horsemen appear, the fourth world will end and the fifth world will begin.”

I looked at Mateo. I was not sure if he was thinking the same thing that I was, but it seemed that Eduardo had confused biblical revelations with alien beings.

“Did the aliens tell you about the four horsemen?” I asked.

“Yes. And other things,” Eduardo replied.

“What kind of things?”

“I don’t remember. My head is fuzzy. I don’t want anyone to know about this. When I tried to explain it to Mama, she said I was cursed and that the Pentecostals had filled my head with nonsense. She said the Pentecostals were the devils and not the Sky Men.”

“Can you describe the Sky Men?” I asked.

“They are smaller than me.” He held up his arm to about four feet. “They were dressed in white suits and wore masks.”

“What do you mean that they wore masks?”

“They had helmets, like motorcycle helmets, on their heads but their face was like a mask with large goggles. They hid their faces so I don’t know what they look like. If I knew, I might be afraid of them even more.”

“Were you afraid of them?”

“Yes.”

“Eduardo, have you been going to the Church of God in the village?” Mateo asked.

“Yes.”

“Have they told you anything about UFOs?”

“We have UFOs over the village many times. The padre said they were from the Devil. They are here to fool us.”

“Is this the first time you have been taken by the aliens?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“Can you tell me anything about the spacecraft?” I asked.

“There were two. The big one was round like a bicycle tire. It was hollow on the inside. It rotated. The smaller one was a circular craft. It came out of the big one.” He picked up my empty coffee cup and placed it upside down on the saucer. “It looked a lot like that,” he said.

“How many aliens were onboard the craft?” I asked.

“I saw four small men and one tall man who was different from the small ones. I think there were more.” Mateo spoke to him in a Mayan dialect and Eduardo responded. “There were passageways that led to other rooms. The inside area of the craft was as big as the lobby of this hotel and the tall one floated around the room like he had wheels on his feet. He was bony with thin white hair. He never smiled or frowned. He never looked at me. He was busy with some instruments. I don’t know what he was doing.”

“Is there anything else that you remember about your abduction?” I asked.

“They said they would return and that they would come for me. My mother thinks the Devil has cursed me. I do not want the villagers to think I am cursed or possessed by the Devil.”

“You are not possessed by the Devil,” Mateo said, laying his hand on the young man’s shoulder. “And, I can assure you that the UFOs are visitors from another planet. They are not devils. So do not worry. The padre at the Church of God is wrong. Do not listen to him. Go back to the Catholic Church, son. Father Pablo will help you.” Eduardo looked at him uncomfortably.

“I am ashamed to look at Father Pablo,” Eduardo responded.

“I will take you to see the Father. You will see that you have nothing to fear. You know that Father Pablo is a good man. He will take care of you.”

“It will make my mother happy.” For the first time, I saw Eduardo relax. “Shall we take him to Father Pablo, Doctora?” Mateo asked.

“Absolutely.” I put the orange from my breakfast order in my purse and walked out with Mateo.

On our way to the van, Mateo stopped at the desk and left a message for his brother, Hernando. “Tell him we are taking Eduardo to Father Pablo. He will be back in a couple of hours.”

W
e walked to the parking lot. As I waited to climb inside, I looked back at the hotel. The UFO must have been a spectacular sight hovering over the hotel. I made a mental note that I would stay awake that night in case it returned. Even better, perhaps I could talk Mateo into taking shifts with me
.

T
he astronomy practiced by indigenous people in the Americas is impossible to summarize, as each language and cultural group had such diverse traditions and legends. Certainly, the Anasazi of Chaco Canyon, the Pueblo of New Mexico, and the Chumash of California (all located in the USA), the Inca of Peru, and the Maya in Mesoamerica, among others, all demonstrated an inordinate knowledge of the stars and had in their possessions star maps
.

When Columbus set forth on his voyage, the common belief of the day was that the Earth was flat; the Maya knew it was round. They were also aware of the planets Venus, Uranus, and Neptune long before Western astronomers
.

In this chapter you will meet a Maya elder who told me about the star map that guided his people to Guatemala
.

I met him through my driver. He was reportedly a longstanding friend who happily shared his knowledge with the youth of his village. He was a small man, lean and fit. He was dressed in worn jeans, a tattered black t-shirt, sandals, and a broad-brimmed straw hat. His hands were gnarled and scarred from what appeared to be a combination of arthritis and hard work. He was missing his thumb on his left hand. He was a respected and honored man whose station in life was not based on material possessions but from the knowledge he passed on from one generation to another. He told me he had never owned a weapon, only a machete. He said if the police or the military ever stopped him, he wanted to appear harmless. He met with me and my driver over
coffee at a small, out-of-the-way, outdoor family cafe selected by the driver and owned by his cousin, Salvador, who had converted the terrace of his personal residence into an outdoor restaurant.