The Lights of Alto Piura
The account
Strange lights supposedly appear so often over Chulucanas, in northern Peru, that one local has spent years filming them.
What investigators found
The recordings show night lights with no distance reference; satellites, planes, drones and bright stars or planets explain most footage of this kind.
The story
In 2020, with Peru under a pandemic lockdown, videos of lights in the sky over Chulucanas, in the Alto Piura region, spread on social media and reached radio station RPP. Local investigator Iván Iza Nanfaro, who has followed the phenomenon for years, told the station the stories behind his recordings, made on nights in the region.
The town came to be remembered as one of the sighting hotspots of northern Peru, alongside better known places such as Chilca. The footage, however, shows points of light with no scale and no measured trajectory. With people spending more time at home during lockdown, reports of satellites, drones and planets mistaken for spacecraft rose all over the world.