The creature that outran its pursuers — fields near Lisbon, September 1680
THINK ABOUTIT UFO|UAP|ENTITY ENCOUNTER REPORT
1680: The Lisbon Hairy Creature | A Speed-Defying Entity Encounter
Three tongues of flame drop from the sky over Lisbon’s fields, repeated three times, followed by a black, thunder-voiced cloud descending to the ground — and from it emerges a huge, hair-covered figure with a multi-colored tail, moving so fast it circles its pursuers, appearing behind them and in front of them within seconds, before a storm kills over eighty people in the surrounding farmland.
Date: September 17, 1680
Sighting Time: 11:30 a.m.
Day/Night: Day
Location: Fields near Lisbon, Portugal
Urban or Rural: Rural farmland adjacent to the city
No. of Entity(‘s): One
Entity Type: Large hair-covered humanoid/creature figure
Entity Description: A huge figure entirely covered in hair, possessing a large multi-colored tail described as white, blue, and red; capable of running at speeds that allowed it to circle pursuing witnesses and appear alternately behind and in front of them within seconds
Hynek Classification: CE-I with entity presence (CE-I|ENTITY) — a close encounter without physical craft interaction beyond the descending cloud-mass
Duration: Not precisely recorded — the creature was pursued for some period before eluding its pursuers entirely
No. of Object(s): One large black cloud-like mass, plus three separate tongues of flame
Description of the Object(s): A large, black, cloud-like mass that descended toward the ground while emitting a loud thunder-like sound; separately, three tongues of flame shot down into the fields, repeated three times, with a powerful lightning strike causing fires in parts of the city
Shape of Object(s): Cloud-like mass; flame tongues
Size of Object(s): Described as large
Color of Object(s): Black (cloud mass); fiery (flame tongues)
Distance to Object(s): Not recorded
Height & Speed: The cloud mass descended toward the ground; the emergent creature moved fast enough to outrun and circle multiple pursuers
Number of Witnesses: Numerous — described as “numerous witnesses” who heard the report and “several locals” who attempted to chase the creature
Special Features/Characteristics: The creature’s speed allowed it to seemingly teleport or circle around stunned pursuers, appearing behind and in front of them within seconds; a powerful storm following the event destroyed many farms and houses and killed over eighty people in the surrounding area
Case Status: Unexplained
Source: Chris Aubeck, Return to Magonia, quoting Don Julio Alberto de la Hinojosa
Summary/Description: Numerous witnesses heard a loud report from the sky and saw three tongues of flame shoot down into the fields near Lisbon, repeated three times. A powerful lightning strike hit parts of the city, causing fires. Around the same time, in nearby fields, a large black cloud-like mass descended toward the ground while emitting a loud thunder-like sound. From the cloud emerged a huge, hair-covered figure that ran swiftly across the fields. Several locals attempted to chase the creature, but it was too fast, running circles around the stunned pursuers and seeming to appear behind them and then in front of them within seconds. Witnesses who saw it closely described a huge multi-colored tail — white, blue, and red. Soon after the creature’s appearance, a powerful storm destroyed many farms and houses in the area, killing over eighty people.
Related Cases: Not Applicable
Detailed Report
This account is preserved through Chris Aubeck’s modern compilation Return to Magonia, which cites Don Julio Alberto de la Hinojosa as the original source — a chain of custody that places at least one, and likely more, layers of transmission between the 1680 event and its modern published form. The account combines three distinct phenomenological elements within a short window: a repeated flame-tongue event with associated lightning and fire damage, a separate descending black cloud-mass accompanied by thunder-like sound, and an emergent hair-covered creature of extraordinary speed — followed by a lethal storm. Whether these represent a single connected sequence of events or several distinct phenomena later woven into one narrative by retelling is not resolvable from the surviving account alone.
The creature’s described locomotion — fast enough to circle multiple adult pursuers and appear to switch positions from behind to in front of them within a matter of seconds — describes behavior substantially beyond ordinary human or animal athletic capability, more consistent with either extreme exaggeration in retelling or a genuinely anomalous account of non-human movement. The specific detail of a multi-colored (white, blue, red) tail is unusual and specific enough that it reads as an attempt to convey an actually observed feature rather than a generic monster description drawn from established folklore templates of the period.
RESEARCHER’S NOTES
The Lisbon Hairy Creature — Portugal 1680 and an Encounter That Outran Its Pursuers
- Source chain assessment: The account reaches this archive through a modern secondary compilation citing an intermediate historical source (Don Julio Alberto de la Hinojosa); no contemporary 1680-era primary document has been independently verified, which is a meaningful limitation for a case of this dramatic content.
- Pattern context / comparative cases: The pairing of an aerial/atmospheric event (descending cloud, flame tongues) with an emergent physical entity is a recurring structural pattern across this archive’s entity-encounter entries, though the specific superhuman-speed circling behavior described here is distinctive and not closely paralleled elsewhere in the immediate surrounding record.
- Classification issues / corrections: The described speed and circling behavior substantially exceeds any plausible mundane animal or human explanation, and this archive does not attempt to resolve that discrepancy — the account is presented as reported rather than rationalized into a more conventional creature sighting.
- Geographic or historical context: The subsequent storm’s death toll (over eighty people) is presented in the source as a consequence following the sighting, embedding the entity account within a broader narrative of genuine, severe weather-related destruction in the Lisbon area — a detail that lends the account real-world stakes distinct from the entity portion of the narrative.
The Lisbon hairy creature of 1680 stands out for the specificity of its described physical behavior — not a glimpse or a shadow but a sustained pursuit account describing genuinely superhuman speed and evasion — embedded within an equally dramatic account of severe atmospheric destruction, though the layered secondary sourcing means this remains one of the harder-to-verify entries in the late 17th-century record.
“It was able to seemingly appear behind them and then in front of them in a matter of seconds.”
