1956: Unknown Date UFO|UAP & Entity Sightings Archive

Not every 1956 case came with a calendar date attached. This page collects the year’s undated accounts — sightings and encounters that witnesses, investigators or secondary sources placed in 1956 without specifying a month or day. The evidentiary range here is wide: at one end, two French gendarmes with a documented watch failure and first-generation investigative sourcing; at the other, retrospective accounts published decades later with anonymous witnesses and no corroboration. Each entry carries its Source Status so the reader can calibrate accordingly.

The Barre-des-Cévennes gendarme case — the one with paralysis, heat effect, a watch that never ran properly again, and human-like figures circling a landed object — is the anchor of the page. Everything else varies from moderately documented to fragmentary. The Nashville cylinder case has its own standalone; the remaining accounts are preserved as documented.

Date: 1956
Location: Thornton, Colorado
Time: Unknown
Summary: A witness recalled, in what she described as a dream-like state, finding herself walking to school when at a street corner she was enveloped in a blue light. She was then surrounded by human-looking beings who asked if she wished to visit their home. She was taken aboard a vehicle, seated in a molded bucket-like seat, and transported to an unknown location where she was led down a ramp into a corral-type fenced area with giant flowers of every kind and color around the perimeter and a large swing set in the center. Eventually she was told it was time to go home, was taken back up the ramp, and found herself at the same corner with the blue light, which then snapped off.
Source: CAUS (Citizens Against UFO Secrecy)

Source Status: Retrospective account. Witness unnamed. Dream-like framing is noted in the report.

Date: 1956
Location: Mexico City, Federal District, Mexico
Time: 7:00 a.m.
Summary: Juan Maturano reported encountering a golden glowing being in his room with large, caring eyes. As he approached it, the being vanished in plain sight. He reported involvement in other encounters.
Source: Juan Maturano, Tulipán de Diamantes

Source Status: Self-published or limited-circulation source. Single witness. Maturano is the author of the cited work, making this a self-reported account.

Date: 1956
Location: Nashville, Tennessee
Summary: 1956: Cylinder-Shaped UFO Seen in Nashville — Full Report

Date: 1956
Location: Mount Lassen, California
Time: Late afternoon
Summary: Ralph B. Fields and a companion identified only as Joe went to the mountain to search for guano. On the third day they found a cave near the summit. The deeper they went the more the cave appeared artificially cut — smooth floor, shaped walls and ceiling resembling a tunnel. Three men of normal appearance, approximately 50 years of age, wearing jeans and flannel shirts with unusually thick-soled shoes, confronted them and asked what they were doing. Two more joined them. The witnesses were invited deeper into the cave, where they found a device resembling a toboggan with a seat and control panel that emitted a buzzing sound. The group flew off at high speed. Encountering another craft, the first group acted nervously and stopped — whereupon the crew of the second craft, carrying pencil-like weapons, shot and killed the first group. The new group approached the witnesses, asked if they were “surface people,” and told them they had been lucky to be rescued before they became “horlocks.” The witnesses were flown back to the surface and warned not to return.
Source: Jim Keith, Underground Alien Bases

Source Status: Jim Keith’s Underground Alien Bases is a fringe conspiracy publication. No corroboration for this account exists outside this source. Fields is named but no independent record of him or the encounter has been located. Filed as documented.

Date: 1956
Location: Fort Bragg, North Carolina
Time: Evening
Summary: A witness recalled being driven with his parents through Fort Bragg military property when they were stopped by military police. The road was blocked; jeeps and armed personnel were everywhere. While his father was backing the car, his mother pointed out several small gray figures with large heads standing next to a nearby helicopter, surrounded by soldiers. The figures did not appear to be prisoners. The family drove away quickly and, according to the witness, never discussed the encounter afterward.
Source: North Carolina MUFON

Source Status: Retrospective account; witness unnamed. MUFON is a credentialed investigative organization but the report is single-witness and retrospective. The incident is consistent with the genre of military-base entity encounter reports from the period.

Date: 1956
Location: Pantano del Pintado, Sevilla, Spain
Time: Evening
Summary: An 18-year-old witness observed a brilliant metallic cigar-shaped object hovering about 10 metres above a pond approximately 40 metres from his position. The object produced visible wave disturbances on the water surface below it. After approximately 20 minutes of stationary hovering it silently ascended, emitting a plume of smoke from behind as it departed. The witness subsequently reported the development of apparent precognitive abilities, including a foreknowledge of his mother’s death several days before it occurred. He attributed a subsequent decline in these abilities to heavy smoking.
Source: Joaquin Mateos Nogales; Manuel Filpo Cabaña

Date: 1956
Location: Near Bakhchisaray, Crimea, Ukraine (then USSR)
Time: Evening
Summary: Several military personnel hiking in a forested area found a cave and entered it. Inside they experienced disorientation and a sense of time displacement. An unexplained light emanated from within the cave. Frightened, they left. Outside they encountered a woman in ordinary dress who entered the cave and emerged moments later in entirely different clothing — in less time than any change of clothing could take. She could not be found after a brief search. Separately, at a cave near the Uspenskiy Monastery in the same area, tourist guide Viktor Sikilinda later reported observing a normal-appearing red-haired woman walk directly through solid rock at a cave entrance and vanish.
Source: Anton Anfalov, Ukraine

Source Status: Anton Anfalov is a Ukrainian UFO researcher. Two separate incidents combined in the source account. No dates or military unit identification given for the first incident. The Sikilinda observation is separately reported with a named witness but no date.

Date: 1956 (?)
Location: Ridgecrest, California
Time: Night
Summary: An 8-year-old girl recalled being taken from her home at night by several short gray humanoids wearing dark blue jackets with a diagonal sash and an emblem resembling a coiled snake within an irregular border. She was taken to a large top-shaped landed object and then to an underground facility where several nude children were visible in glass chambers, apparently asleep. She escaped briefly through a ventilation shaft and emerged in a desert environment, but was caught by a tall dark-haired woman in a dark purple uniform with insignia, who attempted to force her into an empty glass chamber. A taller gray entity intervened; after the witness resisted, she was returned home.
Source: William F. Hamilton, UFO Universe, Summer 1992

Source Status: Date uncertain — marked as ‘1956?’ in the original source. Witness unnamed. Account published 36 or more years after the event in a popular UFO magazine. William F. Hamilton is a California UFO researcher. The underground facility and glass chamber elements are common in abduction literature of the period.

Date: 1956
Location: Valença, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Time: Night
Summary: Vera Lucia was awakened by bright lights outside her window. She observed what appeared to be a person with a flashlight in an alleyway, then experienced a memory gap. Under subsequent hypnotic regression she recalled lying paralyzed in bed while two beings floated into the room — identical in appearance, with Oriental features, dark olive skin and black hair, wearing tight phosphorescent silvery suits. The male figure performed experiments on her body using a luminous wand while the female stood back. Both then disappeared into a luminous bluish portal. Other witnesses in the area reportedly observed a large bright light hovering over nearby woods the same night. Lucia subsequently reported developing healing abilities.
Source: Painel Ovni

Source Status: Painel Ovni is a Brazilian UFO publication. Hypnotic regression accounts require particular caution regarding memory reliability. The corroborating lights over nearby woods are mentioned but not independently documented in available summaries.

Date: 1956
Location: La Napoule, Alpes-Maritimes, France
Time: Night
Summary: A truck driver was in his bedroom when several beings floated into the room. They appeared Japanese in facial features but with more elongated eyes. One held him in an arm lock while an unknown force was exerted on the witness. No verbal or other exchange occurred. The beings then jumped out the window and floated into the night. Moments later the witness heard a violent explosion outside followed by a powerful wind sound.
Source: LDLN No. 317; Denys Breysse

Source Status: LDLN (Lumières dans la Nuit) is a French UFO periodical of standing; Breysse was an active French investigator. Single witness; no physical evidence noted.

Date: 1956
Location: Pont-Saint-Esprit, Provence, France
Time: Night
Summary: Louis Turi, then 7 years old, was awakened by something touching his foot and reached down expecting his kitten. He saw five small monkey-like creatures surrounding his bed, approximately 3.5 feet tall with deep black almond-shaped eyes. He became frightened and paralyzed and hid under the blankets. In later adult life, under hypnotic regression, Turi recalled that one of the creatures pulled the blanket from his head and brought its face to within two inches of his, apparently scrutinizing him.
Source: Shawn Atlanti, San Diego (source uncertain)

Source Status: Source citation is unclear — ‘Shawn Atlanti, San Diego?’ suggests the compiler was uncertain of the source. Louis Turi subsequently became a public figure in the astrology/psychic space; his retrospective childhood account under hypnosis requires standard caution.

Date: 1956
Location: Krasnoyarsk, Eastern Siberia, Russia (then USSR)
Time: Night
Summary: Seven-year-old Irina Nikolayevna was in bed ill when she awoke and saw four humanoid figures with disproportionately long arms standing near her bed, dressed in light clothing with indistinct facial features. They communicated telepathically, asking her to approach. She refused. The figures then transformed, developing dark brown coloring and growing to approximately 3 metres, their heads appearing dog-like. In this form they began pulling her toward them; she grabbed her sleeping mother’s hand and screamed for her to hold on. The entities retreated and disappeared. The visitations reportedly continued for several consecutive nights, leaving the girl unable to sleep until 4 or 5 a.m. She subsequently lost weight; doctors found damage in her lungs. Strange burns appeared on her body in the mornings and disappeared by noon, occasionally lasting 24 hours.
Source: Nadezhda Golovkova, ‘NITs ENIO’ research center, Rostov-on-Don; Cross of Centaurs newspaper, No. 3, 1999

Source Status: Published 43 years after the event in a Russian regional newspaper. Mother as corroborating witness is implied but not named. Physical effects (lung damage, burns) are described but no medical records are cited.

Date: 1956
Location: Fort Erie, Ontario, Canada
Time: Various
Summary: A male witness recalled that as a young boy he was visited on several occasions in his bedroom at night by men dressed in black who took him from his room while his parents slept, performed tests on his spinal cord, warned him never to speak of them, and eventually stopped the visits. He reported retaining peculiar scars on his back.
Source: NUFORC (National UFO Reporting Center)

Source Status: Retrospective anonymous account. NUFORC collects self-reported sightings without independent investigation. No corroboration.

Date: Beginning of 1956
Location: Barre-des-Cévennes, Lozère, France
Time: 1:00 a.m.
Summary: Two gendarmes, M. Simon and M. Barboule, were returning from duty and pushing their bicycles up a hill when they heard a noise that rapidly became deafening. A round black disc-shaped mass appeared approximately 50 yards away, a few yards above the ground — about 35 feet in diameter and 4 feet thick, with a row of pipe-like openings along its underside emitting short reddish flames and radiating intense heat. A strong hot wind from the object pushed the two men against a nearby barn. The object landed in a flat field 50 yards from them. The red flame openings cooled and darkened. After about a minute an opaque ivory-white dome lit up on top, and from its base dazzling multi-colored rays — yellow, green and blue — were emitted in all directions. A luminous ball-like object emerged from the rays, detached, and made two slow circuits around a nearby hilltop called Castelai before returning and disappearing into the craft. During this flight, the gendarmes observed four human-like silhouettes walking slowly around the perimeter of the landed craft, apparently inspecting it; when the luminous ball returned, the figures vanished. The dome and light rays then extinguished, the hot wind and deafening noise resumed, and the object rose vertically and disappeared. Throughout the observation both men felt paralyzed; M. Simon placed his hand on his revolver holster but could not draw the weapon. Afterward, M. Barboule’s watch never ran properly again.
Source: J. Tyrode, LDLN No. 116  [Full Report] 

Source Status: LDLN (Lumières dans la Nuit) is the most substantial French-language UFO investigative periodical of the period. Two named law enforcement witnesses. Physical effects: heat blast, paralysis, permanent watch damage. The two-gendarme witness structure and LDLN sourcing place this among the more reliably documented undated cases in the 1956 record. CE-II classification: physical effects on witnesses (paralysis, watch failure) and on the immediate environment (heat, wind, ground effect).

Date: 1956
Location: Laguna Cartagena, Puerto Rico
Time: Unknown
Summary: Independent witnesses observed a bright silvery metallic disc-shaped object with multicolored lights around its edge and a translucent dome on top hovering briefly above them. Several standing man-like figures were visible inside the dome.
Source: Jorge Martin, Alien Update

Date: 1956
Location: Near Strathalbyn, South Australia
Time: Unknown
Summary: Two days after observing a low-level craft over the area, a witness received a visit at home from an entity described as tall with long blond hair and feminine features. It communicated by telepathy and stated it was from Mars.
Source: Mark Moravec, Psiufo Phenomena

Source Status: Contactee-tradition account. Witness unnamed. Filed as documented.

Date: 1956
Location: Atacama region, Argentina (near Mount Macon, above 20,000 ft)
Time: Unknown
Summary: Residents of a sparsely inhabited Andean area reported the presence of giant beings on the snowy slopes of Mount Macon. Huge tracks were found in the snow. A large cigar-shaped craft had been reported over the region approximately a year prior, said to have either landed in the Cordillera or crashed against a peak. In the same area large numbers of dead condors and eagles were found, many nests destroyed and partially consumed.
Source: Charles Bowen, The Humanoids

Source Status: The Atacama Desert lies primarily in Chile; the Argentine border region near Mount Macon is the Puna de Atacama. Geographic ambiguity in the original source noted. The Humanoids (Bowen, 1969) is a respected early compilation of humanoid encounter cases, though some entries lack primary-source verification. Cryptid/giant beings report with no direct craft component in the primary observation.

Date: 1956
Location: Aveley, Essex, England
Time: 12:15 a.m.
Summary: A teenage witness was awakened by a flashing orange-yellow light in the corner of his ceiling. He went to the window and observed, approximately 100 yards away, a dark hovering object with multicolored rotating lights around it and orange-yellow lights rotating in the opposite direction underneath. Several oval windows emitted a yellow-white glow. Through the windows the witness could see several human-like figures in dark diver-suits moving around casually inside. Gas-like blue flames were apparently being emitted toward the ground from the object’s base.
Source: Norman Oliver, BUFORA Journal, Vol. 8, No. 1

Source Status: BUFORA (British UFO Research Association) Journal is a credentialed UK investigative publication. Single unnamed witness (identified as a teenager at the time). Good structural detail in the description.

Date: 1956
Location: Paraibuna, São Paulo, Brazil
Time: 4:40 p.m.
Summary: Metal worker A. Rossi was fishing when he was approached by two beings and found himself paralyzed. They were tall and bald with no apparent sex organs and only two fingers on each hand and two toes on each foot. Communicating telepathically they invited him aboard a vessel hovering above the ground, shaped roughly like a sentry box, about 100 feet wide and 30 feet high. He was given a fruit-juice-like liquid. The vessel departed to another world where houses are round, people subsist on fruit juices, and reproduction occurs by a form of eye contact. After approximately 18 hours, Rossi was returned to the riverbank.
Source: J. Escobar Faria; Richard Hall

Date: 1956
Location: Roodepoort, Transvaal, South Africa
Time: Night
Summary: A witness alone in his bedroom was suddenly paralyzed and taken from his room by several beings with large heads and no hair. He was medically examined on a table. The beings told him they were from the Pleiades star cluster and reportedly implanted something that activated psychic abilities.
Source: Jenny Randles, Abduction

Source Status: Jenny Randles is a credentialed UK UFO researcher and author. Single unnamed witness. Retrospective account.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

One Anchor Case and a Wide Range of Sourcing Behind It

The Barre-des-Cévennes gendarme case is the documentary anchor of this page. Two named law enforcement officers, a first-generation LDLN investigative source, physical effects on witnesses (paralysis, watch permanently damaged), a heat-and-wind ground effect consistent with a real energetic event, and a detailed account including the luminous satellite object and four circling silhouettes. It is a CE-II case and among the most structurally sound undated cases in the 1956 record. The Nashville cylinder case has its own standalone. Beyond those two, this page collects a wide range of secondary-sourced entity and contact accounts from eleven countries — ranging from the moderately documented (Aveley Essex, BUFORA; Sevilla Spain, Mateos Nogales) to the fragmentary (NUFORC anonymous retrospectives, single fringe-publication entries). Each carries its Source Status for that reason.

Geographically, the undated 1956 accounts span Siberia, South Africa, Australia, Brazil, France, Spain, Ireland, Ukraine, Japan, Canada and the United States — the same international spread as the dated months, which reflects both the global nature of the 1956 sighting wave and the uneven documentation practices of the period. Undated does not mean unimportant; it means no calendar pin was recorded or survived.

M. Simon put his hand on his revolver holster, but could not remove it. M. Barboule’s watch never ran properly again.

Gendarmes M. Simon and M. Barboule, Barre-des-Cévennes, Lozère, France, beginning of 1956 — J. Tyrode, LDLN No. 116