The Venezuelan UFO Wave
The account
In late 1954, Venezuela was supposedly the scene of dozens of landings, with small hairy beings seen in several towns.
What investigators found
Newspapers of the time did record many reports, but most were never seriously investigated; waves like this tend to grow through press coverage itself.
The story
The year 1954 is remembered as the peak of the UFO phenomenon in Venezuela. In the last months of the year, newspapers carried reports from Carora, Valencia, San Carlos and the Caracas area, describing lights in the sky, landed objects and, in several cases, encounters with small hairy beings. The Petare case, in which two delivery men said they fought one of these creatures, was the most famous.
The Venezuelan wave coincided with the great French wave of the same autumn and with worldwide interest in flying saucers. For skeptics, the pattern is familiar: one high-profile case triggers others, the press amplifies them and the public starts reading any light as a spacecraft. None of the episodes left physical evidence accepted by scientists.