When Buddy dropped me off shortly after midnight the next evening, I made my way to the front desk. Alexandro Jean was sitting behind the counter watching a small TV. He stood when I approached.
“I’ve stopped by to hear your story,” I announced.
Alexandro smiled and showed me to two chairs near a large window that faced the street. “Could I get you some coffee, tea, or a soft drink?” he asked as I pulled out my notebook.
“No. I really don’t need anything. I just want to hear your story.”
“You are all business, Doctor. So I will keep to business.” He sat down, pulled a coffee table closer, and propped up his feet. “I hope you do not mind,” he said, pointing to his feet. I shook my head and he began.
“I will start at the beginning. I did not always live in Belize City, but in a rural village about sixty miles from here. I left for Belize City when I was about twenty. My encounter occurred the summer I was eighteen. There were four of us, my friends and me. We grew up together. Albert was with me. He was my cousin. There was my best friend, Javier, and his brother, Jean. There was an abandoned Maya city near our village. It was small and the government never restored it. I think there have been archaeologists working there the last couple of years, but when I was a boy, it was deserted. We often left the village and went there with our alcohol. We could get drunk and no one would stop us. Our mothers and grandmothers did not like us to drink. If they caught us with alcohol, they would beat us.” He paused and laughed about his remembrance.
“Are you telling me you were drunk when you had your encounter?” I asked.
“No. I was not drunk. We went there to drink, but we had not had anything to drink when we saw the space men.”
“Can you tell me exactly what happened?”
“The first thing I remember was the smell. When we approached the site, there was a strange, unfamiliar odor. Jean pointed it out immediately and we all agreed he was right. It was a strange smell. Nothing familiar to us, and as we were discussing what it might be, we came out of the tree canopy into the plaza. That’s when we saw the craft. It was setting in the middle of the plaza.”
“Can you describe it?” I asked.
“It was a long, dull, dark metallic craft. It looked like a tank and at first, we thought it was a tank, but then we saw the space men. They were dressed in gray suits that matched the craft. They were tall and thin and had light hair. They did not wear headgear like modern astronauts. That’s what confused us at first. To tell you the truth, my first thought was that they were Americans and we had stumbled upon some secret operation by the American military. When you live in this part of the world, we always hear rumors about American soldiers carrying out secret missions. I don’t know how much is truth or fiction or a combination of the two.” He paused when the phone rang and excused himself. I heard him call for security, who appeared almost immediately. He directed him to take ice to the lady who had rented the penthouse on the top floor.
“Sorry for the interruption,” he said as he returned to the chair next to me. “We have guests who never sleep.”
“You were saying that when you first saw the space men, you thought they were U.S. military,” I said, reminding him of his stopping-off point.
“Yes. Part of it was the color of their hair and part was the uniforms. They wore very strange uniforms. They were two-piece. The shirt was like a tunic that came down over the waistband of the pants. The pants were tucked into boots. The strangest part about their uniforms was that when they moved about, the colors changed to match their environment. When they were close to their craft, the uniforms were dark gray to match the craft. If they were near trees, their uniforms became green and blended into the jungle. When they climbed the temple, they were the color of the stone. My cousin, Albert, said it was a military secret, and they wore uniforms to make them invisible to the enemy. We decided that only U.S. soldiers would know how to do that, so we all agreed that this explanation sounded logical.”
Alexandro paused as two inebriated men entered the hotel. They had their arms around each other to steady themselves. When they saw us, they called out to Alexandro and offered him a drink. Immediately, Alexandro moved to the desk and called security. When a short, muscular man dressed in a navy blue uniform with an insignia on the shoulder and a policeman-style hat appeared, the two doubled over in laughter, steadied themselves, and saluted him. The security officer moved forward, took their room key, and ushered them toward the hallway. “Jack will take care of them. They’re harmless. They have been with us for two weeks. They are opening a hamburger franchise here in Belize, and every night they go out and get drunk. And every night, I call Jack and he puts them to bed.” I heard him give directions to Jack in Kriol, a dialect that is spoken throughout the country, and then turned to me again.
“So when did you decide that the men you were observing at the ancient site were not from the USA?” I asked.
“The four of us remained hidden and watched the scene unfolding before us. Alberto suggested we should leave and go get the village men, but Javier thought we should stay and watch. Jean agreed. I did, too, so we stayed. At first, they seemed to be checking their craft. They walked around it, occasionally stopping and recording something in a glowing tablet they carried. After a few minutes they walked toward the temple, but they did not climb the stairs; they walked through the stairs. We were all struck speechless. We could not believe what we had seen. We knew that underneath the temple was a cave. The four of us had found the entrance when we were boys, but we couldn’t walk through the stairs. They were solid stone, but they walked through them like they were not there.” He paused momentarily, got up, and returned with two bottles of Coca-Cola. Just as he started to sit down, two men leaned against the large hotel window in front of where we were sitting. He walked to the window and pounded on the glass. The unsuspecting men jumped as though they had been shot out of a cannon. They turned and looked at Alexandro, and let out a volley of curse words in English and Kriol before they moved on. “Sorry, Doctor. That is the reason I must work all night. I must protect the hotel from drunks. I sleep in the mornings and begin again at noon.”
“So tell me, what did you do when the strange men disappeared inside the stairs?” I asked.
“We decided to go to our secret entrance and sneak into the cave. We wanted to see what they were doing. We had never told anyone about the cave and for some reason it felt like they were invading our private property. Javier was particularly upset. There were artifacts in the cave and he was afraid they would steal them. So we crept toward the entrance, staying hidden by the foliage until we could conceal ourselves behind some scattered remains of other buildings. That’s when they reappeared. We heard them talking but their language was unfamiliar. It was not English. We speak English like the Americans.”
“Did they have any of the artifacts?” I asked.
“No, but it seemed to us that they were looking for something.”
“How many men entered the temple walls?”
“There were four.”
“Were you closer to them at this point?”
“Yes. We could see their faces. They looked normal except they had unusually high foreheads. I think it was because they were going bald because their hair was set back on their head and was thin. We knew these men were not from the USA. They were foreigners. I think it was Alberto who suggested they came from the stars. These were no ordinary humans. As we were coming to that conclusion, they moved to the west. We decided to follow. Behind the main plaza temple, there is a small mountain. It was actually another temple but it was totally overgrown with trees and grass. We watched as they walked through the mountain. We were totally shocked. At this point, Javier decided he was going aboard the craft that was setting in the plaza. He ran toward the craft. We followed. But just as we entered the edge of the plaza, the strange men reappeared out of nowhere. Like a puff of smoke.”
“Do you mean they had the ability to appe
ar and disappear?”
“They must have. They just appeared.”
“Did they see you?”
“At this point, yes.”
“Did they attempt to communicate with you?”
“No. They disappeared again and it was less than a minute when the craft moved upward and within seconds it was gone. We watched it climb above the trees. It stopped briefly overhead as though examining us, and then they were gone. Zip, zip, zip. Gone.” He made a zigzag motion with his hand illustrating the craft’s movement.
“You said you felt as though they were examining you? Were there windows or anything distinctive about the craft?”
“No windows. We saw no lights, but it was the late afternoon. The sun was still bright. It was just a feeling. They hovered above us. I assumed they were watching us.”
“Did you stay at the site for your drinking party?”
“Jean said it was a sign. We should give up drinking.”
“What kind of a sign?”
“A sign from God. He said they could be angels.”
“Did you agree?”
“No. They came from the stars and they returned to the stars. I think we scared them as much as they scared us.”
“Have you had any other experiences with Star Men?” I asked.
“I have seen UFOs several times. I saw the one last night. Did you see it?” I nodded. “But I have never seen anything like we saw that day.”
“Can you tell me anything else about the experience?”
“It was so powerful that we never went back there again. We never found a different drinking place, either. In fact, we never had a drinking party after that. Maybe they were angels,” he said laughing. “They sure made us give up our drinking ways.”
A day later, I checked out of Alexandro’s hotel and moved to Belmopan. As I was leaving, he stopped me in the lobby. “Be careful in your travels. It is a dangerous world out there, and don’t let anyone ever say that you are not a curious woman. You are very curious.” He reached out and embraced me, kissing me on my cheek. “Come back anytime, Doctor. We can spend another night together. The next time, I give you the penthouse suite at no extra charge.”
“What was that all about?” Buddy asked as I joined him in the van.
“It was about men who walk through mountains,” I replied.
The next time I returned to Belize, I stopped at the hotel and inquired about Alexandro Jean. He had moved to Belmopan. The hours at the hotel had taken a toll on his family life and his wife had given him an ultimatum: either he leave, or she leaves. The clerk did not have a forwarding address, so I was never able to reconnect with Alexandro. But I have not forgotten the man who told me about men from the stars who walked through mountains and made him and his friends give up their drinking ways.
Chapter 5
An Endangered Species
There is a natural cave in Belize near San Ignacio in the Cayo District. It is not only a popular tourist destination but also an archaeological site. Inside the cave are six and one-half kilometers (4 miles) of passageways along a resurging stream. Scientists estimate that there are an additional six kilometers (3.7 miles) of passageways as shown by traces at sinking streams. Evidence suggests that the first kilometer (.6 miles) of the cave was used by Maya. Archaeologists have discovered pottery shards dating to 200 CE along with the remains of twenty-eight humans.
Buddy and I stopped for fruit at a vendor stand on our journey through the Cayo District. On that trip we met a local farmer named Gabriel, who spent an hour under the shade of a palm tree telling us about the blue-skinned space giants with enormous skulls. This was not the first time I had heard of blue-skinned aliens.
In this chapter, Gabriel tells his story of blue-skinned men.
“When I was a boy, I always heard rumors and stories of space giants. I grew up in the Cayo District where Barton Creek Cave is located. It is a complex cave with hundreds of passageways where, over time, different visitors and inhabitants, including the Maya and the space giants, lived. My grandfather told me that in his youth, he saw the giants just outside the town of San Ignacio. That would have been in the 1880s, I believe.” He paused as a car drove up with a family of eight children who bounded out of the car and proceeded to touch every single piece of fruit on his stand. When his customers left, he returned to the shade of the tree and began again. “My grandfather said everyone was afraid of the giants from the stars. They stole women and sometimes little girls.”
“Did he ever describe them to you?”
“He said they were twice the size of normal men; some were taller. They had heads four times that of a regular adult man and feet several times bigger than men.”
“Have you ever gone into the cave?”
“Many times when I was a boy. My friends and I were always looking for something we could sell to the archaeologists who sometimes visited Belize.”
“Did you ever find anything unusual that might confirm the story about the space giants?”
“My friend and I once found a strange skull. It was big and heavy. It took both of us to carry it. Now I know it was probably the greatest find of all times in this area, but when I was a boy, I just hoped to sell it to an archaeologist or a museum. We found it in a grave in one of the passageways. Part of it was sticking above the ground and we decided to dig it up. The space giants had a strange method of burial. They buried their dead in a square grave with the bodies sitting upright. When we discovered the grave, only the top of the skull was poking out. We carried the skull back to the village. My grandfather was upset. He said that it belonged to the space giants and if they discovered we had stolen it, they would kill us and all of our families.”
“What did the skull look like?”
“It was huge. Not the skull of a Maya. It was the skull of the giants my grandfather had seen. The skull resembled that of a human except it had sockets on the side of the skull as well as the front. The eyes wrapped around the side of the head. My grandfather said we must return the skull to the cave, but when we went back to bury it, there was no evidence of the grave. We searched for hours but couldn’t find it.”
“What did you do?”
“We took the skull back to the village and reported to my grandfather. I read the fear on his face, but he said nothing. That afternoon, we took the skull into the forest and buried it for safekeeping. That made my grandfather happier. Months later, we heard of a wise man up near the Guatemalan border who knew of such things. We made the journey and took the skull to him. He said it was a space giant, but from the blue kind.”
“The blue kind? What does that mean?”
“The blue kind were the blue-skinned giants of the old stories told thousands of years ago. The blue-skinned giants were different because they had eyes in the front of their head and in the sides.”
“What did the wise man tell you about the blue-skinned giants?”
“He said they were diminishing in number and that they were becoming extinct. That is the reason they stole women. They were trying to preserve their race.”
“Did they ever return the women?” I asked.
“There was one very old story that my grandfather told me. He said his grandfather told him. One woman actually escaped and returned to Earth with a blue boy. When the boy grew up he fought for his mother’s people. He became a great warrior, but he had other powers, too. They said he could move mountains. He made valleys so the people could farm.”
“Do you believe that story?”
“When I look upon the beautiful valleys, I think of the blue boy,” he said. “I believe it is true.”
“Where is the skull now?” I asked.
“When my grandfather and I arrived in the village, rumors of our mission preceded us. Our presence brought a number of curious onlookers. There was an archaeologist and a number of local men who came around to see the skull. It just happened that among the onlookers was a man in the village who had lost his daughter many years earlier, m
aybe fifty years or so. The villagers blamed the blue giants on her disappearance. He had eleven sons who went in search of the giants in an effort to rescue their sister. Six of them died in the pursuit. He was a man in pain who had never gotten over his loss.”
“How did the sons die?”
“Not sure. Stories say they were thrown over cliffs by the giants. One was nailed through the heart to a tree. Several different stories.”
“What happened to the skull?”
“The man who lost his daughter was so angry when he saw the skull that he drew his machete and broke it into hundreds of pieces. There was an archaeologist present. He wrestled with him, but the man was so filled with anger, nothing could stop him. So the skull was gone, and my hopes of fame and fortune disappeared.”
“What else can you tell me about the event?”
“They say the blue giants returned one more time to the village. This time, the man who had lost his daughter was ready for them. He was a powerful conjurer, and when they appeared he placed a curse on the giants. The wise ones believe his curse was so powerful that it ended the visits of the giants. Some say they died off, for they were never seen again. They no longer travel the universe in search of women and little girls.”
Another car pulled up and stopped. Gabriel stood and shook my hand. A broad smile crossed his face. “I tell you the truth, Señora. You can do with my story what you like. He moved forward and kissed me on the cheek. He smelled of sweat and overripe bananas. I kissed his cheek in return. “Travel safe, daughter,” he said as he turned and walked to his fruit stand. When I climbed in the van, I looked in his direction one more time. He waved to me.
I never saw Gabriel again even though I looked for him on my return trips to Belize. One thing is for sure: I will never forget him. He held in his hands evidence that giants from space existed and once walked the planet Earth. Not only that, they were giants of the blue kind.
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