Friendship in Strange Places: A Mysterious Chilean UFO Story

It was 1984, someplace near the Southern coast of Chile, and a mysterious distress signal had just buzzed across the receiver of ham radio operator Octavio Ortiz. A business agent who operated a small 27-megacycle CB station in his pastime, Ortiz, who went by the ham operator’s handle Lucero or “bright star,” was mystified by what he was hearing, as it seemed to have to do with a bright celestial object of an entirely different kind.

The captain of a ship called the Mitilus II had been sending these strange messages Otriz had intercepted, which pertained to an object in the sky it had been following… or perhaps, had been followed by. The Mitilius II was tasked under the Department of Oceanography for the nearby University of Chile, and had been in an approach for the Mitague lighthouse when a strange, bright object had appeared in the sky, then slowly began to descend. By the time Ortiz had come across the messages from Alberto, this strange object was now hovering directly over the distressed captain’s ship.

What followed was a series of events typical in ufology; malfunction and damage to a variety of the electronic equipment on board the ship, in addition to strange physical effects like hair loss to the ship’s crewmembers. But perhaps strangest of all was the fact that this strange object, whatever it may have been, marked the arrival of a strange and clandestine exchange Ortiz and his family would begin having with an organization known as “the Friendship,” which claimed to be the literal occupants of these odd UFO craft seen around Chile at the time.

According to researcher Josep Guijarro, the captain of the Mitilus II had not been the only witness to this event. An adjacent ship bound for the lighthouse nearby had also witnessed these events unfolding, in addition to reporting a strange “burst” of radio activity at the time. “An incredibly powerful radio station broke into the communications underway,” Guijarro wrote of the incident, “(Then) the VU meter's needles jumped past the +30 mark, and a tense silence followed. The object disappeared soon after.”

Alberto, the captain of the Mitlius II, would later tell Octavio Ortiz he had been hired by “some gringos,” who took him to an island and, “outfitted his ship with strange equipment.” His meeting with these individuals, who later professed they were associated with UFO objects being seen in the area, had begun shortly after Alberto had caved to economic pressures and headed south to take up a life of piracy and smuggling. It was during this time that he met Ernesto de la Fuente, who introduced him to these “gringos” who promised to ease his financial burdens, if he would assist them with the illicit importation of supplies they needed brought to them. This group allegedly called themselves The Friendship.

According to Alberto, the members of this organization were tall, Nordic in appearance, and though somewhat oblivious to the cultural and global happenings in the world at large, were very gifted in the realms of the sciences. With time, Alberto, during his ham radio discussions with Octavio, would even introduce Ariel over the airwaves, who claimed to be one of these mysterious “friends,” who referred to themselves variously as “angels of the lord,” and more simply, “not of this world.”

Octavio’s wife would begin to join him in their ham operations, in an effort to learn more about this mysterious “Friendship,” whose appearances would strangely begin with a tremendous radio signal each time the conversations would begin. The events would eventually culminate in the physical appearance of a large, unidentified object in the sky, visible from Octavio’s home, and accompanied by “Ariel’s” strange messages on their radio; the Ortiz family suspected that Ariel had actually been on board this strange aircraft.

So who were these mysterious “gringos” known as The Friendship,” which Octavio Ortiz and his wife, along with Alberto of the Mitilus II and a handful of others had shared clandestine contact with? Had the entire affair been an incredibly elaborate hoax, or was there indeed some truth to the matters at hand; namely, would there be evidence here of some kind of human presence behind the UFO mystery, or could it be asserted that there had indeed been something otherworldly about the mysterious Friendship and their operations?