Argentina’s annual Alien Festival kicks off at international UFO site

CAPILLA DEL MONTE, Argentina — Residents in this town are positive intelligent aliens from another galaxy are living among them.

So positive, the town of 16,000 holds an annual Alien Festival that draws tens of thousands of visitors — from Earth, that is. This year's event kicked off Friday and runs through Feb. 14, Valentine's Day for those in love with extraterrestrials.

There is an alien costume contest, a parade of Star Wars characters, a laser contest and special effects simulating aliens’ arrival on Earth. There are workshops with regional speakers renowned in the UFO community on how aliens contact humankind​, among other topics.

“I came all the way from France to see the intra-terrestrial city of ERKS, which is buried under this town,” said Monique Rasset, a yoga professor who has traveled to Capilla del Monte for 10 years.

According to local lore, ERKS is an underground city built by “intelligent lights” from another dimension who can communicate with humans.

Some tourists who make their way to the town, about 500 miles northwest of the Argentine capital of Buenos Aires, come mainly for the spectacle, with or without real aliens.

“I loved the Star Wars show and costumes last year, so we decided to come back to the festival this year,” said Gabriela Amorosi, who traveled 18 hours by bus from her southern Argentine city of Bahia Blanca.

To prepare for the festival, tourists and residents get into the mystical mood by meditating in parks, Zen temples and “silence zones” that have energy fields. Tourism agencies organize sky-gazing events to watch for mysterious lights.

Many of the estimated 30,000 visitors — mostly from Latin America, the USA, France, Germany and Japan — will scale the 6,500-foot high Uritorco hill on the outskirts of town in search of energy fields and doors to other dimensions.

“The historical reason why people are curious about UFOs in Capilla del Monte dates back to 1986, when a giant circular footprint of burned grass was found at the slope of (the Uritorco) hill,” explained Alejandro Barbosa, the town's tourism secretary.

Local researchers collected testimonies from residents who claimed they had seen a spaceship with fluorescent lights that left a long trail.

The town's resident alien scholar said she believes UFOs are lured here. “UFO existence may be the result of electromagnetic conditions and telluric forces at the epicenter of the (Uritorco) hill,” said Luz Mary López Espitia, a Colombian who is director of the Capilla del Monte Center on UFO investigation.

Espitia has studied the topic for 20 years and organizes international conferences on aliens.

Espitia said she has seen UFOs often: “lights that behave in an intelligent way.” These are “lights of different sizes, shapes and colors, at different times of the day and night, and at different times of the year,” she said.

UFOs are a regular topic of conversation not only here, but throughout Argentina. National and local media often relay information on mysterious disc-shaped objects seen flying in the sky. “In Capilla del Monte, the majority of people see UFOs. It’s very common,” said Mario Tizon, a photographer. “I have seen UFOs in the countryside since I (was) a child.”

Tizon showed USA TODAY photos he took on Jan. 31, 2014, of supposed UFOs in the neighboring town of Cuchi Corral.

The Argentine government took the alleged sightings seriously enough to fund a Commission for the Study of Aerospace Phenomena under the Air Force in 2011. It conducted a scientific investigation of reported UFO sightings, collecting information from engineers, IT experts, radar technicians and meteorologists.

In December, it released a 12-page report that analyzed 10 UFO sightings from November 2014 through November 2015. Its conclusion: The alleged UFOs could be stars, satellites or planets.

That finding has not shaken alien researcher Espitia's conviction that other-worldly life is among us. “We are just observers. … They know much more about us," she said.

Some true believers resent the annual festival for making light of a serious subject. “The festival is a joke that contributes to denigrating the UFO topic,” complained Fabio Zerpa, an Uruguayan UFO researcher and parapsychologist based in Argentina. He has published dozens of books on aliens.

“It’s a good thing that this very delicate and important topic has made Capilla del Monte a spiritual capital in the world," he said. Still, "the festival is a great cultural mistake that takes advantage of a phenomenon.”