Triclops of Badaja Grande

 The Triclops of Badaja Grande

By Cole Herrold

What can be said of the reported visitors to our Earth that hasn't been said before. Extraterrestrials are nowadays almost entirely uniform to about four kinds: Greys, Nordics, Reptilians, and Mantids. While encounters with these kinds of ETs are interesting to a degree, they are completely boring compared to those entities that were reported 30, 40, 50, and 60 years ago. The space parade was incredible, and each encounter was entirely different from the famous cases like the Pascagoula Abductors, Hopkinsville Goblins, and Flatwoods Monster to those cases that flew under the radar or later became cult favorites like the Venezuelan Hairy Dwarves, the Space Penguins of Tuscumbia, and the Casa Blanca Entities they were all weird wild and different from the fifty shades of Greys that seem to plague UFO literature anymore. One of perhaps the greatest resources for weird alien encounters is Charles Bowen's The Humanoids. It was in this book that I came into awareness of some of the most unique cases ever written, mostly because the description of the aliens seen was something so different that it entirely encapsulates the account.

It was on either July 27 or 28, 1962 (some sources differ on the exact date) that 17-year-old Ricardo Mieres, a student of the Colegio Nacional de Parana, was driving his motorcycle (some sources state car, but due to the upcoming events, I tend to lean towards motorcycle) in Badaja Grande, Argentina and had only gotten about a little over 3 miles from the nearby city of Parana when suddenly for apparently no reason the motor suddenly stalled, and he was forced to the side of the road. On the side of the road, there was plenty of wilderness, and the only building close was a cement plant. The stranded motorist attempted to get the engine going again but, seeing that he was unable to, proceeded to sit and wait patiently on his bike until some passing motorist could come and give him a helping hand.

As he waited on the side of the road, he looked out towards where the cement plant was and saw that there was some bizarre movement that seemed to be coming his way. Thinking that perhaps someone had seen him struggling with the motorcycle, possibly from over at the plant that they had come to be a good Samaritan and help him in his time of need. As the figure approached, though, Mieres soon started to realize that whatever was coming towards him was clearly not human.

The entity that appeared to come from near the cement plant was something that could only be described as out of this world. The creature had a large watermelon-shaped head and was covered in long whitish hair on its humanoid form, yet while this creature stood like a man and was extremely tall, that was not its most unnerving feature. As the creature seemed to come closer, Mieres noticed that the creature bore in the center of its head that the eyes were not the usual bilateral symmetry that we were so familiar with but instead had three large unblinking eyes that stared intently at him as the entity approached the vehicle. The creature continued to stare with its still unblinking eyes as the man watched the creature get right next to him.

Why Mieres did nothing was never reported but what the creature proceeded to do was. The creature, now inches away from Mieres, reached out with its long fur-covered arms and reached towards Mieres neck. Mieres dreaded the worst, thinking the creature would strangle him, but the creature proceeded in grabbing the muffler (a kind of scarf) from around his neck and, in a robotic fashion, make a U-turn and head once more back the direction that it came. Mieres watched in disbelief as the creature continued its mechanical movements back the way it came muffler in hand and watched as it was a white speck on the horizon.

As soon as the creature was out of sight, Mieres's motorcycle sprung back to life. Mieres looked back at the area before ultimately leaving to head back; there was nothing around to indicate that something anomalous had occurred except that in the sandy soil, there were several footprints from the creature. Mieres, however, wanted some further validation to his encounter, and so driving back as fast as possible, he returned to Parana and, in the "Plaza de Mayo," gathered several of his friends and planned an expedition back up to the location to search for clues.

The group saddled up on motorcycles returned to the scene where there still preserved in the soft sandy soil was the set of footprints. Also, further down the road left carelessly was the muffler that had so either intrigued or infuriated the creature to the point of removing it from the teenager. During this timespan, others not necessarily connected with the search claimed to see a large flying object in the vicinity of the Badaja Grande, yet the Triclops was never seen or at least reported in that area ever again.

This case, while mentioned in books like the Humanoids, Passport to Magonia, and Space Oddities: Our Strange Attempts to Explain the Universe, there has never been an official investigation into the sighting from a Ufological organization, at least from what can be gathered from the sources that are available in America. There's a vagueness to this case that makes it frustrating to research because there apparently, outside of the original newspaper articles and the snippets that appeared in books, nothing has been done with this case leading, of course, to a lot of unanswered questions. One of the biggest unanswered questions to me is whether this creature is actually an extraterrestrial visitor.

I've made the argument before that two unknowns do not always mean a connection. A UFO and a bigfoot seen in the same area not interacting does not mean they are connected in the same way; if you see an elk and a UFO in the same way, you wouldn't naturally assume they're connected. With this case, it smacks of this similar flirtatious connection; the Triclops was not seen in direct connection with a UFO but was seen in an area where UFOs had been seen regularly, so people felt that they were connected. This is similar to other cases like the original Loveland Frog sightings in the 50s, where they were not seen in conjunction with a UFO but got lumped in with the ET movement. The Vegetable Man and Grafton Monster are some others where the idea of them being creatures from another world was placed upon them without any real direct connection to the phenomenon.

With all that said, the Triclops does have either some anomalous qualities or does have some technology that went unreported or even unnoticed. The fact that this creature appeared after Mieres motorcycle stalled and then as soon as it left, the bike started up again is similar to what is supposed to happen when people have encounters with UFOs or robots from extraterrestrial crafts. This bizarreness is doubled when one takes into notion the way the creature walked, which was described as robotic. When one thinks of a flesh and blood organism robotic, or mechanical is far from how one would describe such a creature.

This entity is bizarre because of how brief of an encounter it is but the thing that fascinates me most is the creature's decision to take the muffler. Extraterrestrials are often claimed to take soil samples, water samples, blood samples, and other things from Earth, so it would not be out of the norm for this to be a case of that except that the muffler was then found further down the road. Another type of entity known for taking human possessions are the infamous faerie folk. These entities have long oral traditions of asking for tedious objects or taking them for no clear reason as if it's a kind of game. Some researchers feel that such cases of entities or creatures taking human objects could be examples of modern faerie interactions during the Mothman flap; a MIB took Mary Hyre's pen after she said he could have it, and the entity proceeded in behaving giddily afterward. A similar case is the Millville Insanity Bird, where the colossal entity asked for a garbage can and, when denied, proceeded to attack the property owner. Maybe this entity is another example of this kind of phenomenon.

Whatever the Triclops of Badaja Grande was, it was never seen again. Yet, it stands out as just one of the countless unique cases that go unmentioned from a part of the world that is teeming with bizarre creatures and UFO reports. The creature's description, while vague, is startling as it's not often that we see entities with three sets of eyes or of any feature for that matter; typically, things, even from a Fortean standpoint, tend to be symmetrical, so this is completely mind-boggling. This case, while short and vague, is just the tip of the iceberg to an area of research that has gone almost totally unnoticed by those interested in the subject and one that has so many possibilities because of the overall vagueness with oddly specific points that it has tons of potential interest in every area of Fortean research.

Quick Facts:

Species/Potential Species: Mammal? / Extraterrestrial Mammal/ Robot/ Android/ Cyborg

Location: Badaja Grande, Argentina

Sighted: July 27 or 28, 1962

Works Cited:

The Humanoids By Charles Bowen

Passport to Magonia By Jacques Vallee

Space Oddities: Our Strange Attempts to Explain the Universe by S. D. Tucker

La Razon, Buenos Aires, July 29, 1962