The Mystery of the Belmez Faces

One of the Belmez Faces
Photo courtesy of Cesar Tort

On August 23, 1971, something strange happened in Belmez de la Moraleda, Spain. A woman named Maria Gomez Pereira says she noticed a marking on her kitchen floor that looked like a human face. She told her husband about the face and he made the decision to dig up the floor and replace it with new concrete. This worked for about a week before the face reappeared. It was then that the family sanctioned the help of the local City Council. More faces appeared of both genders and many sizes.

The City Council of Belmez conducted an investigation, and once again the floor was removed. A pit filled with human bones was found some eight or nine feet below the kitchen. The bones were removed and buried elsewhere, the earth was replaced and another floor was laid. Within a matter of weeks, the faces reappeared. Stories suggest that the images could appear while a person was watching and their expressions would change when someone tried to wash them away. Some of them would stay for a short time. Others stayed longer.

There are claims that audio recordings captured whispering voices and people crying out in the kitchen. However, these sounds were never heard in the room without a recording device. It has also been reported that the faces changed according to Maria Gomez Pereira’s mood. This is suggestive of a psychokinetic phenomenon, rather than a haunting as the pit of bones suggest. Either explanation requires belief in the paranormal, so it's either that or assume the faces are a hoax or hysteria.

The faces that appeared (there are plenty of photos of them available on the internet) do look suspiciously like drawings. In other words, they do not look like images of human faces; they look like an artist’s facsimile. If a haunting or other paranormal phenomenon were to reveal itself in this way, why would the Belmez faces look so fake? Wouldn’t it be more likely that the faces would look real? There have supposedly been studies on the faces that show they weren’t painted on and are “in” the concrete. I can't vouch for the veracity of that study.

The Belmez Faces continued to appear, however they formed, for about a year. There is no evidence of paranormal activity and no one has admitted to a hoax, so the truth is anyone's guess.

Sources

The Belmez Faces, retrieved 11/12/09, discoverychannel.co.usk/paranormal/most-haunted/belmes_faces/index.shtml

The Faces of Belmez, retrieved 11/12/09, thecobrasnose.com/xxghost/belmez.html

The Rendlesham Forest UFO Sightings

Map of the Rendlesham Incident

In 1980, the United States Air Force was using the Bentwaters and Woodbridge Royal Air Force bases. That year, one of the biggest UFO incidents in history took place in the Rendlesham Forest, outside of the Woodbridge RAF base. This incident is known as the "Rendlesham Forest Incident" or the "British Roswell." The incident was well documented, but the question is, does the credible evidence involved in this case point to a UFO or a series of coincidental events that made one heck of a story?

On December 25, 1980, suspicious lights in the sky were seen by USAF security at the Woodbridge RAF base. A few hours later, more lights were seen in the Rendlesham Forest, near ground level, sweeping through the trees. There were also hundreds of civilian reports of meteors and strange lights in the sky. There were meteor showers that night and part of a Russian rocket was visible in the night sky in the area upon reentry. This explained the strange lights everyone was seeing elsewhere, but what about the lights in Rendlesham Forest?

Security at the base was given permission to enter Rendlesham Forest in pursuit of the strange lights. It was initially presumed that a plane had gone down in the forest. It had to be checked out. Base security and local law enforcement went out to find the source of the lights in the early morning of December 26. All of those who responded reported seeing red, blue and yellow lights. Some even spoke of a yellow mist. One of the reports indicated that at least one of the investigators from the base saw a cone-shaped aircraft made out of metal. On it were blue and red lights. It was surrounded by yellow mist. His earliest statement and drawing of what he saw show a great distance between himself and the object. He would later describe a close encounter with this craft, but that was not part of his initial report and is less credible.

When Rendlesham Forest was no longer under the cover of night, investigators found a location that some believed might have acted as a landing zone for the source of the mysterious lights. They found three "depressions" in the ground that proponents of the alien aircraft theory say are landing marks. The truth is the police concluded that the marks could have been made by animals. Lieutenant Colonel Halt, who went out days later, reserved judgment.

During the early morning of December 28, 1980, Lt. Col. Halt went into the Rendlesham Forest with the men who had investigated the lights. He was equipped with a Geiger counter and an audio recording device. They brought the device to the area with the depressions. Many sources will tell you that Halt recorded an abnormal amount of radiation at the site. The truth is, his audio recording shows that the highest count he got was .07 or 7/10ths - background radiation. They saw more lights that night. These lights mimicked the lights seen two nights earlier, but they did not find the source. If they had gone further towards the lights, more than five miles, they may have found that the source of the light was a lighthouse.

There is a lighthouse more than five miles outside of Rendlesham Forest. Skeptics believe this is the "UFO" seen in Rendlesham Forest in December of 1980. It is quite possible. The lighthouse does boast a sweeping yellow light that could have caused a yellow mist effect in the forest. It also has a blinking red light on top. It does not completely explain everything in the reports written after those two nights and mornings, but these things are rarely buttoned up so neatly.

Sources

The Halt Memo, retrieved 4/3/11, ianredpath.com/ufo/appendix.htm

Dunning, Brian, The Rendlesham Forest UFO, retrieved 4/3/11, skeptoid.com/episodes/4135