While cruising down a rocky and isolated patch of Peruvian road a pair of men had a disturbing — and almost fatal (at least for the creature in question) — run-in with a bizarre beings that can only be described as an extraterrestrial x-mas tree
Peru has long been a hotbed of anomalous activity and enigmatic entities — which involve everything from UFOs to unknown animals to ancient archeological enigmas — but one of the most bizarre accounts to have ever emerged from this primordial and ethereal land is unquestionably this eyewitness report of a small (and what at first appeared to be cycloptic) shrub-like critter.
On August 31, 1965, both the Lima newspaper “La Prensa” as well as Buenos Aires’ “La Cronica,” published accounts of an odd encounter involving two anonymous men — who were later identified as Antonio Chavez Bedoya and Julio L. de Romana — and their disturbing run-in with can only be described as an extraterrestrial x-mas tree.
According to La Prensa and La Cronica Matutina, sometime in the evening on August 29, de Romana and Bedoya were cruising down a desolate stretch of the Pan-American motorway in southern Peru, approximately 12-miles away from Arequipa, when they saw one of the most extraordinary entities ever to have been reported in either the annals of ufology or cryptozoology (or botany for that matter) standing in the middle of the road.
Needless to say the men swerved to avoid hitting the creature, then stopped to get a better look at its bizarre physiognomy. Bedoya and de Romana later described what they almost ran into as a blackish “strange being; a Martian,” which “resembled a shrub.”
The pair went on to detail that the ebony entity stood just over 31-inches in height and — perhaps due to chromatism — had a single golden eye nestled on what passed for its “head.” The thing’s body also seemed to be orbited by what resembled “gold and silver strips” akin to tinsel.
The initial observation that this creature had only a single eye was quickly overturned, however, when the astounded eyewitnesses noticed that this arboreal anomaly bore “other smaller [also gilded] eyes located all along its body.” This trait which would inevitably lead to further Christmas tree comparisons.
Much like the GARGANTUAN GLOBULOUS, renowned British ufologist and editor of the Flying Saucer Review, Gordon Creighton, revealed this encounter to the world at large through his chapter “Humanoids in South America” in Charles Bowen’s essential 1967 exposé on alien beings: “The Humanoids.”
Unlike the Gargantuan Globulous, which managed to disappear in a swirl of dust on dry land, this being’s ostensible mode of transportation would make itself abundantly clear when, mere seconds after spotting the shrub, the eyewitnesses spied a flying saucer soaring over their vehicle. The same (or identical) craft would also be seen flying low to the ground by additional eyewitnesses some 12-miles away from the initial observation.
Unfortunately the official account of this intriguing incident ends there. The men reasonably assumed that the presence of this UFO meant that the presumably chlorophyll filled monstrosity was likely an alien from OUT OF THIS WORLD, but we have no idea whether or not this presumably intergalactic intruder ever boarded the UFO, or if it, in fact, had anything to do with it at all.
Once can only assume that the terrified duo — who were surely pumped full of adrenaline following their near miss of the tiny tree monster — became so overwhelmed by the appearance of the flying saucer that they beat a hasty retreat, as any reasonable person might have done, but even that is nothing more than wild speculation.
What we are left with are a lot of absorbing questions and not a hell of a lot more. The first questions that come to mind are: “What is it? Where did it come from? Was this multi-eyed monstrosity a genuine extraterrestrial or simply a terrestrial HYBRID BEAST — not unlike Florida’s animal/plant synthesis known as the MOSS MAN — that just happened to bear witness to a UFO along with it’s human counterparts?”
Sadly this is the first and last report of this arborical alien and it seems very unlikely that this creature, whatever it may be, will raise its many golden eyes again in the company of man.
© Copyright Rob Morphy 2002 — 2015
Rob Morphy is an artist / journalist / filmmaker / designer / crypto historian / podcaster / co-founder of American Monsters and Cryptopia.