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On the night spanning October first and second, nineteen seventy-two, an ordinary Mexican man had an encounter with the extraordinary just outside Mexico City. Some 45 years later Enrique Mercado would tell his story to a pair of paranormal interviewers for a small Mexican YouTube channel. The story begins with Enrique standing on the roof of his house stargazing. He recalled the brightest star in the sky that night was Sirius and he had fixated on that bright bluish star when he felt a presence behind him. Enrique turned around to find a man in a uniform standing with him on the roof. He was puzzled at how the man got there because there was only a small rickety – and noisy – staircase that led to the roof. The man was taller than average height, physically fit and was light skinned. Enrique would describe his uniform as being like that of a Mexican wrestler’s. The shirt and pants were tight and had no buttons or zippers. The stranger was also wearing black boots. Enrique was puzzled and asked the man why he was there and what he wanted. The man asked Enrique if he wanted to go with him and after a brief conversation, Enrique agreed.
Enrique and the strange visitor climbed down off the roof and met up with another being dressed like the first one and a little shorter. The three of them went to a clearing and the taller being handed Enrique a belt. With the press of a button on the belt, they all began to levitate and were heading for a metallic saucer-shaped craft hovering in the sky. The craft measured about 360 feet across and 75 feet in height and was part of a fleet of 12 spaceships. Enrique was quick to explain that there was no beam of light and no noise associated with this experience, just a levitation that took them up to the underside of this floating flying saucer. A door opened on the side and bottom of the vehicle and the three entered. Enrique described the interior as being simple and streamlined, and not like the interior of an airplane. One of the beings instructed Enrique to sit in a sort of armchair and this chair had a kind of magnetic attraction to his body. Then, one of the people on the craft touched a console and the craft began to move. Enrique could see the earth from a sort of window and within seconds they were facing the illuminated daylight side of the earth. Enrique noted that there was an amber glow outside the window, and he suspected that the amber glow was coming off the ship. They then started to move rapidly away from earth. Enrique told the interviewers that he had mixed feelings about seeing his own home world vanish in the distance.
When they were in full flight Enrique was allowed to get out of his chair and was taken to a room. There, he and the beings he came on board with went through a sort of disinfecting and decontamination process which used what seemed like a combination of water vapor and light. After the decontamination process, Enrique was given a uniform like what his hosts were wearing. He noticed that there were men and women aboard the ship, and they wore different colored uniforms according to rank. After Enrique was suited up, he was given a tour of the interior of the craft. He was first taken to an exercise room that looked very much like a gym on earth with equipment such as treadmills. From here, Enrique went to a room where there was a large galactic map that looked like it was made from a sort of gelatinous plastic material that he was not familiar with. On this gigantic gelatinous screen there were little round orbs that represented either star systems or inhabited planets. When Enrique asked where they came from on the map, one of his hosts pointed to a small green marble-looking ball in the gelatinous screen. The being showing him around asked Enrique if he had any other questions at which point Enrique asked if he could see the earth’s moon. He was led to a woman sitting at a console and the woman told him to press a disc into the surface of the console. Enrique then experienced some sort of augmented reality similar to the holo-deck on “Star Trek” where he could see the dust and rocks on the moon’s surface but was quick to point out to interviewers that he did not see a – quote – “gringo landing site” even though his trip in this flying saucer allegedly took place between the Apollo 16 and Apollo 17 landings on the moon. After this demonstration, Enrique was shown more detailed representations of the planets of earth’s solar system including 2 unknown planets beyond Pluto and 2 very large asteroids orbiting the sun as if they were planets. They then walked into another room and there was a handful of people enjoying the same experience Enrique had enjoyed with the moon, but they were in 
the Brazilian jungle and walking near a large waterfall with birds and flowering plants all around. Enrique had many questions about this technology and his host told him that if he wanted to learn more then he could stay with them longer and be instructed in their ways. Enrique asked if they were in contact with other civilizations on other planets and his host replied that there were many other species from other worlds that have been visiting their home planet for quite some time. These species differed in robustness, but they were all humanoid. There were no species that were like what in the UFO lore would be termed “reptilians” or “greys.” Enrique’s host also said that his own civilization was trying to make earth ready for contact with them. At that point, the extraterrestrial told Enrique that it was time to return him home and that they had been in space for over two hours, which would put the time a little past midnight. And that was the first of two times that Enrique would be taken about their spaceship.
The second encounter lasted 28 hours, and in the pulp Mexican UFO magazines of the 1970s these are the famous 28 hours of Enrique Mercado. In this experience, Enrique was taken to a little room that looked like a movie theater with a few rows of seats facing a screen. He was invited to sit down to watch a holographic show of earth’s history – earth’s true history – that had been unaltered and unfiltered. For an unspecified amount of time Enrique sat there and absorbed it all. At the end of the session Enrique was told that twelve species from other worlds have been in contact with earth, 
but only in very superficial ways, more like observers rather than influencers. Again, with a similarity to the television show “Star Trek,” there is a sort of galactic Prime Directive that prohibits overt interference in worlds not ready to make contact with their space brothers. It was emphasized to Enrique again that all the beings that this specific civilization had come into contact with had so far been humanoid. Researchers on many planets were trying to figure out why these different species looked so similar and came up with a hypothesis that there was once a mother planet or mother civilization that all these far-flung species evolved from. Enrique’s host told him that it was perhaps the biggest mystery in the universe and scientists on multiple worlds were trying to solve this great origin mystery. After being escorted out of the little movie theater, Enrique was taken through other parts of the ship. He noticed that there were smaller beings walking around that he had not noticed before. These were not children but robots, it was explained to him. Enrique was then taken to a kind of mess hall where he was served food. He was given 6 cookies that looked like marshmallows but tasted like wine. To drink, he was served a beverage made of some vegetable extracts that had a small amount of alcohol in it. The utensils used were of a lightweight and translucent stone, almost like a type of glass. His hosts explained to Enrique that the material is a kind of rock paper that is harvested on their world and is similar to quartz. A few hours after this dinner, Enrique was returned to his house and after a few days it got out among the neighbors that this humble Mexican laborer had this extraordinary set of experiences.
Enrique drew much attention from investigators in the following months. He explained to researchers that he would not be going onboard these crafts ever again even though he has been invited because these trips and the notoriety surrounding them have made his wife angry. Although not wanting to seek the spotlight for privacy reasons and because he has not felt worthy of the public spotlight, Enrique Mercado has appeared at UFO events throughout his life, but these appearances have been few and far between. He is notorious because of the articles written about him in Mexico’s popular UFO magazines and newsletters from the 1970s to the 1990s, but Enrique rarely grants interviews. He has not profited from this experience in any measurable way, and Enrique’s wife has said on numerous occasions that she had wished that these experiences had never happened to her husband. Skeptics who doubt Enrique Mercado’s off-world experiences are left with the question of why he would make up these stories that have only complicated his life and have not led to any financial gain. So, given all this, were Enrique’s stories based on fact or were they purely made-up nonsense? You decide.
REFERENCES
Thanks to Yohanan Díaz Vargas of Insólita Experiencia.
