Ancient Aliens - Destination Chile

Episode Date: September 3, 2026

Chile boasts the highest number of annual UFO sightings of any nation on Earth. Now, incredible new footage of a strange craft–captured by a Navy helicopter–has even the Chilean government asking if alien visitors are drawn to this part of the world. Is there a connection to the more than 5,000 ancient geoglyphs found into Chile’s Atacama Desert’See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Chile is home to Earth's oldest and most mysterious desert. We have huge, giant figures carved into the desert. On the ground, a gigantic stone plate, really gigantic. It has ancient traditions of visitors from the sky. Our ancestors used to tell stories about beings who came from outer space. And it is considered a hotbed of modern UFO reports. Chile has one of the highest rates of UFO sightings in the world. You got two hotspots and they're separated.

It's probably very large because this is 35 miles away. I've never seen anything like this in my life. Now that the Chilean government is openly examining UFOs, could they uncover an extraterrestrial presence that has been interacting with our planet for thousands of years? Extraterrestrial visitation to Chile never ended. That's one of the most amazing things I've ever seen in my life. It is truly amazing.

And these are the cases where I think there's really something to the ancient astronaut theory. I do too. There is a doorway in the universe. Beyond it is the promise of truth. It demands we question everything we have ever been taught. The evidence is all around us. The future is right before our eyes. We are not alone.

We have never been alone. The Otacama Desert, Chile, 2013. An autonomous rover traverses the barren landscape, carrying out a two-week NASA-funded mission to collect soil samples from below the surface of the parched desert floor. This region of Chile is the driest place on the planet. Some parts have not experienced rainfall for sensitive.

for centuries, making it one of the few locations on Earth that mimics conditions on Mars. Michael Master's Ph.D. is a professor of anthropology at Montana Technical University. Because the out of common desert is so similar to the landscape seen on Mars, it's a very useful research tool for astrobiologists. I was interested in studying how life exists in such difficult environments and how it relates to the Mars landscape. On February 28th, 2019, the results of the mission are finally published. While surveying this seemingly lifeless terrain, the rover discovered evidence of microbial life thriving just below the surface.

The microbial life in the Atacama is very unique, and life has existed where it really shouldn't be. Seth Shostak is a senior astronomer at SETI Institute. Anybody who's been to the Otacama Desert of Chile knows that it's pretty unusual. There's some very old life forms there. You don't find so easily in other parts of the world. Scientists believe that future subsoil sampling on Mars could reveal similar and perhaps even identical microbes. Is it possible that there is life in the Otocama Desert that matches life on a planet 140 million miles from Earth. As far as ancient astronaut theorists are concerned,

the desert soil contains evidence of a more profound extraterrestrial connection. David Childress is the author of Ancient Technology in Peru and Bolivia. We have figures that have been carved into the desert, similar to what we see in Nazca in Peru, and they're huge giant figures to be seen from the sky. The NASCAR lines in Peru lie just 500 miles north of the Atacama Desert. They are the most famous geoglyphs on Earth, with over 1,100 glyphs spread across 155 square miles. But few people are aware that Chile's Atacama Desert is home to nearly five times as many geoglyphs as NASCA.

with more than 5,000 covering an area of 90,000 square miles. Michael Bradbury is an image analyst. The Otacama Desert has one of the most, if not, the most harsh environments on the planet. So for civilizations years ago, these glyphs that were engraved into the ground, you know that was not an easy task. Georgiosuclos is an ancient astronaut theorist.

There is no way that anyone would go through this effort unless something very compelling and something very real happened to our ancestors. And so I think it's time that we pay closer attention to what our ancestors really try to describe. Of the thousands of geoglyphs in Chile, one towers above the rest, the Atacama Giant measures 390 feet, 30 feet longer than a football field. It sits on an ancient hillside, known as Cerro Unitas. Victor Hidalgo is the host of Antistamedia Noce. When you walk by this, you cannot really see the shape.

This has been designed constructed, you know, to be seen from above. And like at Nozka seems to be a signal to the sky gods and those who are flying above the desert. So who are they signaling? It would seem to be extraterrestrials. William Henry is an author and investigative mythologist. The Atacama giant who has these lines coming out of the top of his head. We have to ask the question. Are these the beings that the geoclip makers were trying to communicate with? Could the figures depicted in the Atacama and at Nazca represent extraterrestrial visitors as ancient astronaut theorists contend.

And if so, could both the NASCAR lines and the Atacama glyphs serve a larger, more interconnected purpose, having been made long before any national borders existed? Ancient astronaut theorists say, yes, and suggest they could mark an ancient flight path. So when you look at all of these glyphs in Peru and Chile, and the vast desert spaces and all of the UFO activity there. Is it possible that Chile is really this UFO avenue? Is it possible that Chile is this flight path for extraterrestrials?

An alien alley? Bill Burns, PhD, is the co-author of The Day After Roswell. It's interesting when you look at the NASCAR lines and the Atacomage Geoglyphs together. These are symbols that are best observed from the sky and they explode in numbers as you move south to the Atacama. Could this suggest that these symbols were some sort of aerial guide guiding ancient aliens on their way into Chile? And if so, this is exactly how the runway lights work on modern airports. For ancient astronaut theorists, what makes the Atacama Geoglyphs even more compelling? is the fact that Chile also boasts the highest number of reported UFO sightings in the world.

George Nouri is the host of Coast to Coast AM. For some reason, Chile has one of the highest rates of UFO sightings in the world. Nobody really understands why, but it seems to be in a region that there's a cluster of UFO sightings. Nick Pope is a former member of the British Ministry of Defense. Chile is such a vast country. It encompasses a wide range of different climates. There are jungles, there are deserts, there are forests. There's huge biodiversity too.

And diversity in human populations. There are modern first world cities and indigenous peoples. If we're being visited, everything that you would want to see on planet Earth is there in one nation. Could there be a link between Chile's high number of UFO reports and the ancient geoglyphs found in the Otacama Desert? Incredibly, the Chilean government itself has suggested a connection between the country's ancient and modern mysteries. San Clemente Chile, 2008. Chile's National Tourism Board establishes a designated UFO trail, a 19-mile route through one of the United States. the most infamous UFO hotspots in the country.

And it leads to an enigmatic site known as El-Enlodriado. This megalithic platform was constructed from 233 volcanic blocks, each weighing upwards of 10 tons. Now the Enladriado is a plateau, about 800 meters in diameter. It is not a place of easy access. You have to go and horseback for a pletrily for a plateau, for a couple days in order to get there, there is the belief that it was related to UFO landing.

Eric von Danikin is the author of Chariots of the Gods. Also on the ground are gigantic stone plates, really gigantic, and it might very well be that El Andrilado was something like a space port of the extraterrestes. Is there both ancient and modern evidence that Chile has. has been visited by extraterrestrials for thousands of years.

And if so, why? Perhaps further clues can be found by examining an indigenous tribe that once existed in the southernmost reaches of their country and their mysterious rituals. Tierra del Fuego, Chile, 1919. German missionary turned anthropologist Martin Goussende arrives in Chile's southernmost outpost, just 200 miles north of Antarctica.

He is met by native islanders known as the Selknam. But by the time of Gucende's arrival, the once thriving tribe had been almost completely wiped out. Nicholas Beresane is the author of Cosmopolitan philosophy of the alien agenda. The Selknam people or owner were precolumbian people, which live in very extreme southern Chile in Argentina in the Patagonia.

And when English came to this country, they committed genocide. And today the Selgernam are extinct. Something else that happens to them is that many of them were taking back to Europe to be displayed in what was called human zoos. So unfortunately, it was a genocide. It was a genocide against this tribe.

Before the tribe's tragic and complete annihilation, Gucende took a remarkable series of photos of these people. In 2015, his work was finally published in The Lost Tribes of Tierra del Fuego, documenting the Selknam's unique ceremonies and rituals. The creator gods of the Selknam actually descended from the sky and gave knowledge to the local population. These pictures were taken in black and white, but in real life, the entire body is covered in bright red and white,

and it is signifying the fire of heaven according to the traditions. So you have to wonder what it means the fire of heaven that descended from the sky. Now, you combine this with the representations of the elongated skulls and the very strong. strange-looking costumes that they have, and right there, you have a connection to exterrestrial visitation. Erica Lukes is the host of UFO Classified.

They were definitely communicating with other worlds, with mythological creatures and things, and so there very well could have been a component of them having had extraterrestrial encounters and now trying to communicate and continue that communication. Could the clothing, body paint, and rituals of the Selknam people have been inspired by the interaction with extraterrestrial visitors? They dressed in all kinds of strange costumes. They had very specific rituals that tied them to the land and to the stars. When you look at some of these strange costumes with strange antennas coming out of the side of their head, You have to wonder, are they imitating extraterrestrials with their costumes?

As far as ancient astronaut theorists are concerned, compelling evidence exists that alien visitation occurred in this part of the world, not only in the distant past, but continues even today. Santiago, Chile, August 17, 1985. Sabado Igante, the longest running variety show in television history. interrupts its scheduled broadcast with an urgent report. At about 2 p.m. or something like that, Zavagente cuts the transmissions, take the cameras outside to the parking spot,

and they spot this incredible object in the sky, clear blue sky. We're talking about a silver-looking object. I was just a child in that moment, but I can't remember what my dad told about that. And he said that it was, astonishing because it was very quiet light in the sky and it was there I think 40 or 50 minutes and it didn't move. The Santiago UFO as it became known was seen from Antofagasta to Concepcion

a distance of about 1,200 miles or almost half of the country's coastline. I was perhaps 10 years old at the time that we saw it. And you could hear on the radio, you know, broadcasts from the Navy telling you that they have not been able to identify, they don't know what it was. It was one of those cases that really make you wonder. Could it have been extraterrestrial? Yes, it could have been. Ancient astronaut theorist point out that this mass siting was reported along what could be

a specific flight path that has been documented since antiquity. A route marked by Peru's Nazca Lines. the geoglyphs of the Atacama, the megalithic platform of El-in-Ladriado, and reaching as far south as Tierra del Fuego, the homeland of the Sulknam people. The indications are that the Sioux activity has been going on in Chile for centuries, if not thousands of years.

Two, three, or maybe five centuries ago, our ancestors just to tell stories about beings who came from outer space and who came to give us information. It seems to me that

Erich von Denikens' core theory is preserved and kind of confirmed. The Santiago UFO incident is only the tip of a massive iceberg of well-documented reports regarding

inexplicable aerial phenomena observed in Chile. But if these sightings represent otherworldly encounters, do extraterrestrials have a special interest in this area that some now call Alien Alley? Pampa Yuskama, Chile, April 25th, 1977, 4.15 a.m., Corporal Armando Valdez patrols the northern desert with a seven-man military unit. their lookout bursts into camp. He has just witnessed two bright violet lights descend from the sky and land

500 yards away. Corporal Valdez was the leader of this patrol and he approached these objects. What happened next is shrouded in confusion and mystery. His men saw him almost disappear

into the light. He recalls getting disoriented, confused, perhaps passing out. And next thing he knew, he reappeared again. But the strange thing was that he had five days growth of beard and his watch showed a date five days into the future. Had he somehow been gone five days and yet to all the rest of the people in the patrol it was just perceived as a few minutes? Immediately following the incident Corporal Valdez returned to his men on the verge of collapse and uttered an ominous phrase.

You don't know who we are or where we come from, but we will be back soon. Based on the growing number of reports since this mysterious encounter, many believe that they were true to their word. There are so many UFO sightings in Chile. It's a hotbed of UFO activity. And even just in the last eight years, there have been some significant UFO sightings that the Chilean government has actually admitted to.

In 2012, the Chilean Air Force documented five lights forming strange geometric patterns in the night sky. And then in 2015, eight mysterious orbs flew in an oval formation above Santiago. Just recently in 2019, In 2019, several bright red objects were seen streaking over the skies of southern Chile. Chile is a place where there's a tremendous amount of UFO activity, and fortunately, the Chilean government is totally above board on these sightings.

We see an extraordinary range of cases in Chile, from close encounters through to pilot in encounters with UFOs. Why have UFO sightings persisted in Chile in such abundance for hundreds, if not thousands, of years, as ancient astronaut theorists believe? I think the reason why Chile, to this day, is considered a hot spot of UFO activity, is because Chile features one of the biggest

uninhabited geographical locations on Earth. The northern part is desolate desert, an insolent desert that's virtually unpopulated. And the southern part of Chile is fjords and glaciers. It's also hardly populated down there too. There are all kinds of hiding spots, vacant places on the map where absolutely no one goes. It's an ideal place to hide.

It's an ideal place for an underground base. base? Even highly advanced extraterrestrial civilizations will have resource needs. With Chile, one wonders if it isn't copper. They have the biggest reserves anywhere on the planet. There are also vast supplies of lithium and staggering amounts of natural resources too. It is not surprising to me that this whole strip that's present-day Chile that just goes 3,000, miles straight, that this would be a hotbed of UFOs because that area of the planet is huge with raw materials and resources. So if any extraterrestrials would arrive on planet Earth, that area of the planet would be blinking under instruments with, hey, come here, check out this area of the planet. Have extraterrestrials mined this region's vast deposits of natural resources since antiquity,

or more recently, tapped into energy generated from Chilean power plants? Perhaps definitive answers are just over the horizon. With more and more unidentified flying objects invading the country's airspace every year, unlike the United States, the Chilean government is actively and openly searching for answers. Santiago Chile, 1990. After a 17-year rule, Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet steps down, ushering in a period of reform across the country. With a new spirit of government transparency and social freedom, the media, as well as military personnel, begin to openly investigate Chile's unrivaled UFO phenomena. Now, when it came to UFOs,

This is not something new in Chile. In Chile, we have had sightings long before Pinochet. So after Pinochet, when the democracy comes back, the military forces were making an effort to change the public opinion about them. Following the country's newfound openness to UFO sightings, control tower personnel observed a flurry of mysterious aerial activity in Chilean airspace.

Unidentified objects were flying Danish dangerously close to Chilean aircraft. I do believe it's all right to know exactly what we are seeing, what our military is seeing all over the world. Several notorious near-miss incidents elevated Chile's UFO activity from harmless curiosity to an issue of national security. As a result, in 1997, the Chilean government instituted the Committee of Studies of Anomalous Aerial Phenomena, or SIFA.

SIFARR started as a result of pilot sightings. Pilots, navigators, radar operators, were reporting UFOs. Some of these objects came dangerously close to aircraft. The Chilean government decided to act. So this is unique. It's government, it's military, and, importantly, it's the scientific community as well, all working together with one common aim. Find out what these sightings are.

Who's responsible? What's going on? Instead of secrecy and cover-ups and conspiracies, we have an atmosphere of openness where people are almost encouraged to come forward and report. The default position of CFAR after their investigations is to publish. Release the case files. Tell the people what you've discovered.

This is astonishing and refreshing. CIFA insists that governments around the world should take a similar approach to accelerate our understanding of these aerial anomalies and reveal their true origin. We have more good documented video evidence out of Chile than almost any other nation I can think of. On March 13, 2012, the Chilean government unveiled footage of a curious event caught on camera above the prestigious El Bosque Air Force Base in Santiago.

Crowds were gathered to celebrate the change of Chilean Air Force Command in 2010, recording fighter jets performing acrobatic maneuvers overhead. After investigating the footage, CFA concluded that the jets were not alone. Alejandro Rojas is the editor of Open Minds. The El Bosque was one that Cepaah was very excited about. And when they slowed down the videos, you could see these objects zipping by at incredible speeds. Since the objects in the El Bosque footage only reveal themselves for a brief moment, definitive answers remain elusive to investigators.

But just a few years later, the Chilean government would release uneaseless. more incredible video. November 11, 2014. Just outside of Santiago, Chilean Navy officers aboard an Airbus Cougar helicopter are testing an infrared Fleer high-definition camera. Suddenly, the camera captures a strange object flying alongside them at an altitude of 4,500 feet. After tracking it for several minutes, they witness what if they witness what if they appears to be some sort of discharge coming from the craft.

The Cougar case was a military helicopter back in 2014 that produced footage in an infrared camera. And we're talking about military equipment. We're talking about millions of dollars in equipment. Travis Taylor, PhD, is an astrophysicist. It's nine minutes long that they have continuous infrared footage of this phenomenon. That's really unprecedented. And if this phenomenon is going on for nine minutes, we can do analysis on it.

UFO researchers consider this to be one of the most baffling incidents ever recorded. Could a deeper analysis of the footage provide undeniable proof that what the Chilean naval officers caught on camera was, in fact, an alien aircraft? Los Angeles, California, November 25th, 2019. For more than a decade, image analysis Michael Bradbury has examined videos of alleged UFOs, looking for any signs that they could be something other than man-made aircraft. Intrigued by the recently released video shot from a Chilean Navy helicopter, he has invited astrophysicist Dr. Travis Taylor to join him and lend his expert opinion in examining the footage.

The Chilean helicopter video is really intriguing and fascinating because you have this vehicle or phenomena, whatever it is, and then it starts releasing some type of material behind it. So we absolutely need to understand what this phenomena is. I'm not going into it with a belief that it is or isn't something. No. So let's apply our knowledge to it and see what we can come up with. Everything I look at I look at open-mindedly, you know,

from a standpoint of we could be seeing something. something special here. And then again, it could be possible bird or a bug. That's always an option inside the atmosphere of planet Earth. It's just the way it is. So this is from the helicopter, not far from San Diego. Not far. November of 2014.

Okay. There's the object. And it's only visible in infrared format. And that's really intriguing. The high-diff video, it's like it's not even there. Two ground radar didn't see it. The radar on the helicopter could not pick it up. So super unique circumstances here.

circumstances here. You got two hot spots and they're separated. You know, that's intriguing. It's probably very large because this is 35 miles away. And how do we know for sure it's 35 miles away? Based off of the captain that was flying the helicopter. That was his estimate. I've never seen anything like this in my life.

What I've done here is taking the basic infrared and I just kind of flipped it and adjusted it a little better for clarity purposes. You can clearly see the shape of the vehicle or whatever the thing is. It's peanut shaped. Why is it peanut shaped? The pilot, his description was it had a flat body with these two, like, bright lenses or something. You know, it kind of does look like two jet engines if you're looking at it from the back.

But the motion on it looks like it's moving side to side, and the aspect ratio doesn't change on the circles. It's not going into the page, as it should be. There's no other structure. That's the thing. No. You would see. We've got wings, a nose cone.

You wouldn't just see the engine. You can look at an aircraft with an infrared camera and you see the structure because it's hot. You got sun shining on it. You know, the engine, just the mechanics of it, make it hot. That's what I'm looking for here is reflectivity off of the physical structure.

And there's nothing. That kind of throws that idea out. Now this one is really interesting. This is adjusted, not altered. Sure, I got it. So you've got black is hot here. Green is ambient temperature, I'm assuming. then white is cold.

Correct. So here's the thing. There's clearly a field of cold air around this thing. That's baffling. That's baffling. This thing, it's hot and then instantly. Instantly cold. It's cold.

And in nature, that's not how things work. No. There is a different temperature bubble around the vehicle than there is around normal vehicles. Exactly. Which suggests some type of field, whatever that means. Could be electrical, magnetic, gravitational. We just don't know what it is, but there is some sort of clear anomaly in some sort of field around this craft.

The most amazing thing from a scientific standpoint is some sort of low pressure or cold area immediately around whatever this phenomena is. And from a physics standpoint, we can't really explain what's causing that. So when does it start releasing the particulates? It does at about five minutes into the video. Right there. Now that's really interesting. So it's very hot, right? It's saturated black.

Very hot. So again, in high depth, you can't see it. That means it's a temperature plume. It's not necessarily a particulate plume. Like if you spray out jet fuel from the back of a plane, it starts cooling off almost immediately. You need to get ice crystals in it. Absolutely, because it's affected by the atmosphere. This thing stays hot.

And it holds its shape, which in itself is highly unusual. It doesn't follow standard. fluid mechanics. You can try to debunk this as just an earthly vehicle all you want to, but I've never seen any earthly vehicle that is explained this way. What on earth could this thing be? The video analysis suggests to Travis that this aircraft possesses technology that is more advanced than anything that can be found on Earth. Michael completes the analysis using a variety of metrics. This is converted up a red, full gamma reduction. And you've still got two hot spots.

Clearly you got two hot spots on it in your peanut shape and they're separated. You know, that's intriguing. It looks like a diamond shape around. Looks like a diamond at times. Clear in some formats, but not visible to the naked eye. It could be like two hexagons or two diamonds, whatever it ends up being.

Finally, Michael has one more thing to show Travis that he feels makes this footage even more extraordinary. There's a good look at it right there. That is, that's insane. In 2017, the Chilean government released astonishing footage of a UFO caught on infrared camera near Santiago. After new analysis, astrophysicist Travis Taylor has concluded that this strange aerial object possesses capabilities that are not consistent with any known human technology. But as far as image analysis Michael Bradbury is concerned, perhaps, Perhaps most incredible of all is an image that appears not in the video, but etched into the desert floor.

There is a glyph on the ground that was found in the desert that has two diamond-shaped like objects with a plume coming out behind it that has a line in the center of it. No kidding. Yeah. That is very intriguing. And you see that same structure that was seen by the Chilean Navy, they match nearly perfectly. Just like the phenomena caught by this Chilean helicopter, like the diamond things we were seeing on the infrared. That's a phenomenon right now we're seeing

with our own eyes and we've seen that somebody else saw it somehow. How old is the glyph? Several hundred if not thousands of years old. So that's really exciting. It's no coincidence that that was found in the same geographical part of the world. That's one of the most amazing things I've ever seen in my own. It is truly amazing. And these are the cases where I think there's really something to the ancient astronaut theory. I do too. Just because thousands of years ago people did not have video cameras doesn't mean these things did not exist.

These diamond-shaped wedges have the exact same trail as we can see in the UFO video. So is there a connection? And in my opinion, as far as Chile is concerned, there is a connection between modern UFOs and ancient craft. Could the striking similarity between an ancient geoglyph and the craft captured on an infrared camera provide compelling evidence that extraterrestrials have been present on Earth for thousands of years? And if so, has an alien flight path been positively identified in South America? There are UFO reports from the modern industrialized cities, and there are reports from the indigenous peoples.

Now, when two completely different groups see and report the same thing, this tells me they're reporting something tangible and real. What is really interesting is the connection between the contemporary UFOs and the mythological UFOs. I think that aliens are visiting us and they are hidden from our eyes because they are waiting for our existential development. Is it possible that the vast desert landscape stretching through Chile and Peru is an extraterrestrial outpost on Earth? Do the incredible sightings, curious rituals and strange geoglyphes, tell a story of ongoing alien visitation? Perhaps as more incredible footage continues to surface, it will be revealed that our alien ancestors

have been among us all along.