It was October 21, 1963, half past nine in the evening, and the 72-year-old rancher Antonio Moreno, along with his 63-year-old wife Teresa, went to bed early. Of course, they were not very happy when a young impressionable worker tore them out of the realm of sleep: the guy, most likely, was upset because of some trifle that would calmly wait until tomorrow.
- Senor Moreno! Senor Moreno, wake up!
Antonio Moreno rolled over and blinked to adjust his eyes to the darkness. Finally he made out in the bedroom doorway the familiar figure of his assistant, who worked for his ranch for hire.
- What? Moreno muttered. - What happened?
“There seems to be an accident on the railway,” said the young man.
- Crash? - asked Señora Moreno, throwing a robe over her nightgown. But I am very light asleep, and the railway is only half a kilometer away. I would probably hear the noise if there really was an accident.
“But some strange light is burning over the tracks and the workers are doing something there,” the guy insisted. - You can see for yourself: look out the bedroom window - this light can be seen even from here.
The Moreno spouses did so - and were very surprised to see a dazzling light over a group of people who seemed to be examining the railroad tracks.
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- What a bright light! - exclaimed Senora Moreno, squinting, as if looking at the sparks of electric welding. - Antonio, what are these people doing there?
“This is something strange,” Moreno frowned. - Why would someone need to inspect the rails at night?
Rancho Moreno was located in Argentina, in the province of Cordoba. This area was not so isolated from the outside world that a brigade of railroad workers needed to repair tracks after a working day.
- This light is moving! shouted the young assistant. - He moved on the rails at least five meters.
- Do not shout! Moreno put a finger to his lips. “Senora Moreno's sister and her children are sleeping in the next room. You shouldn't wake them up for such trifles. Most likely, this is a searchlight on some kind of railway platform.
“I'm burning with curiosity,” Señora Moreno said, and took the flashlight that was always near her bed. - I'll go for a walk and at the same time see what these people are doing.
Moreno was indignant, but then shrugged his shoulders: if his wife decided to do something, it is absolutely useless to argue with her.
Senora did not have time to go far. At the sound of the gate closing, the people on the tracks immediately noticed the farmhouse. And the very next moment, an object, similar to a plate about seven meters in diameter, began to dive at Senora Moreno. The frightened woman rushed to the ranch screaming, and all the household watched in horror as the flaming disk hovered over the treetops and sent a bright beam of light towards the house.
Senora Moreno gasped with surprise and fear, and when the beam penetrated the window and stopped on her, she felt tingling all over her body. One of her sister's children woke up screaming as a beam slid over his body.
- We were attacked by monsters from space! the young worker shouted.
“Help my sister hide the children in a place where this light will not reach them,” interrupted Señora Moreno. - We need to sit still.
Looking out of the window, Antonio Moreno was very frightened: four more objects slid towards the saucer, which fired at his house with its strange rays of light. However, of all the new disks, only one participated in the attack on his ranch - the other three remained hanging in the air, not flying closer than 500 meters. They were all alike: about seven meters in diameter, bordered around the edges by brightly lit square openings that looked like windows.
The besieged hid behind a sofa and armchairs - away from the windows. Whenever any of the children or adults began to move, a tingling beam of light quickly covered him with its spot.
- What do these things want from us? Moreno asked himself. - Why did they need us? And what are these people in sparkling suits doing on the railroad?
Señora Moreno managed to look out the window again and saw that one of the disks released a reddish-purple beam, and the rest continued to throw beams of white light. "The house has turned into a real oven," the Moreno spouses will later tell the Argentine magazine Clarim.
- They're trying to get us out of the house! cried Señora Moreno's sister in hysterics. - They want to expel us from here like animals!
- They won't do anything! We will not budge! Señora Moreno cut her off firmly.
For 40 minutes, the besieged house stood firmly under the pressure of the mysterious plates. Finally, the young worker noticed that the "people" on the railroad began to climb onto the disc, which illuminated the tracks during their inspection rounds. After a few seconds, the terrible rays of light disappeared and the plates that surrounded the house began to slowly move away.
As the discs flew away, Moreno's three guard dogs became worried and howled, barked and growled.
- And where were these dogs before? - Moreno was surprised. - And why were they silent like fish?
When the correspondents came to Moreno to interview, all the family members still hadn't recovered. They told reporters that "after the disappearance of these strange flying machines, a thick smoke hung over the trees for several minutes, like a fog that smelled of gray."
A reporter for Clarim magazine told readers that even four days after the event, Moreno's house still smelled of sulfur. The October issues of Tribuna (Rio de Janeiro) and La Nacion (Buenos Aires) published a detailed account of Moreno's 60 minutes of horror.
And although the story of the plates floating in the air, which in turn sent sharp poisonous rays of light, reminded more of fantastic fiction than reality, Moreno's story did not remain without confirmation from other eyewitnesses.
Señor Francisco Tropuano told the Agence France-Presse that at ten o'clock in the evening he was only one and a half kilometers from the Moreno ranch and saw six saucers flying across the sky, one after another. Although Tropuano only recently learned about the history of the ranch from the newspapers, before that he shared his observations with friends and neighbors.