This is one of those stories that becomes increasingly baffling the more its circumstances are re-examined. Elements of it will satisfy conventional UFO theorists, psycho-social explainers and even conspiracy buffs, but, 32 years later, the Bermudez family is still without final answers as to why 54year-old Arcesio Bermudez, a father and uncle, died after an encounter with an unexplained flying object seen by multiple witnesses.

On 5 July 1969, the Bermudez family saw a strange light outside their farm near Anolaima, Colombia. The father, Arcesio Bermudez (left, from his death certificate), followed the light down a hill on foot. He came back frightened, saying he had seen a little man in the light. Soon afterwards, he became ill and was driven to a Bogota hospital, where he died a week later. Unaware of the alleged UFO link, the doctors at the autopsy thought the cause of death was due to a low body temperature and food poisoning.

The curious death of Arcesio Bermudez entered the UFO canon when it was retold in classics such as John A Keel's Operation Trojan Horse and Jacques Vallee's Confrontations1. The incident was investigated in 1969 by America's Aerial Phenomena Research Organisation (APRO), who sent a team to Colombia to interview witnesses and the coroners.

These were the basic claims that I had read before two Colombian friends and I visited Anolaima on 7 October 2000. I had checked the press archives at the central library in Bogota and found the story appeared first in El Tiempo, the leading Colombian daily, on 16 July 1969. Thirteen people had seen the unexplained light; the article gave details of six witnesses and named the farm as 'Tocarema', though it did not give a precise location. The sighting was on 4 July not 5 July, and the article treated the report as a genuinely mysterious event. The death of Arcesio was not immediately linked to a UFO.

Anolaima is a small town high in the Andes, two hours' drive from Bogota. Once you leave the capital, the road becomes little more than a trail in parts. We asked a man who was repairing the road for directions to Tocarema. He replied that Tocarema was the name of the whole district, and our hearts sank as we looked on the broad vista of hills and mountain peaks. Still optimistic, we decided to ask at a nearby farm, which - luckily - was owned by a member of the Bermudez family.

The tenant, a cheerful lady, knew nearly all the people mentioned in the El Tiempo article and had heard the story from them many times. The light had come very close to the farm; and Arcesio Bermudez had chased and shot at it. People were still seeing platillos voladores (flying saucers) in the area. She gave us directions to Tocarema and to Luis Caravajal, named in the article as one of the witnesses.

It was easy to locate Tocarema, a single-storey, colonial-style building. It looked new and smart, and we were later to find out why. It stands near the edge of a very steep slope and is surrounded by tall trees; any low-level aerial object approaching the farm would have to have been highly manoeuvrable. Unfortunately, the owner was away and the caretaker - who had been in the post for 14 years - knew nothing of the story other than details supplied by a Colombian TV crew who had called at the farm in the mid-1990s.

We located the nearby farm of Luis Caravajal and found him home. A man in his early 50s, he was reluctant to be interviewed, speaking to us from the other side of a high metal gate. His comments were contradictory and he denied having been at Tocarema on that tragic occasion. His wife had been there, but he had been on a bus at the time. He did not believe in UFOs or the supernatural and could tell us nothing about any strange phenomena in Anolaima. Arcesio Bermudez had shone a torch at the light, he said, not fired a gun. He agreed to pass on our contact details to his wife, but she did not call us.

Leaving Senor Caravajal, we returned to the road outside Tocarema and took some refreshment at a roadside kiosk. Several customers had heard of UFO sightings; one - a fit, active 70-year-old named Primitivo Moneada - provided an entirely new perspective on the story. He had lived in Anolaima all his life and knew Tocarerria's history. It had been built in the 1930s, he said, and owned by an American and by a local doctor before being bought by the Bennudez family, who were important local people (Arcesio's brother had been a district governor).

Primitivo (above) explained the local interpretation of the light seen in 1969. To the people of Anolaima, the light was regarded as a guacha or 'spirit light'. It returned to the lane outside Tocarema the week after Arcesio Bermudez died. Traditions in Anolaima maintained that the farm stood on the site of the temple of an indigenous chief. He had built an altar of skulls and buried his treasure there; the light was seen as a sign of buried gold. Once the Bermudez family had moved out in 1969, Primitivo and other locals moved in and begun searching for the treasure. Unfortunately, only a few coins turned up despite days of digging and tunnelling which had undermined and damaged the building.

Like many other cultures throughout the world, Colombia has a rich tradition of strange lights. They are interpreted as ghosts, treasure lights, or warnings of death2. Finally, in a truly folkloric touch, Primitivo mentioned the strange behaviour of rabbits in the area before and after the sighting. They strayed onto roads around Tocarema and blocked traffic, but none of them could be caught. This peculiar phenomenon was one of the strange omens associated with the site. At this point it seemed as if the Anolaima incident was dissolving into a traditional Colombian ghost story. Although leading UFO writers had labelled it a UFO case, locals saw it as part of their country's rich ghostlore of phantom lights.

Three weeks later, back in the UK, I delivered a paper on Colombian spirit beliefs at a folklore conference in Edinburgh and mentioned the Anolaima stories. At the end of my talk, I was approached by an archaeologist with a strong interest in fortean topics. He asked me: "Who was the first person said to have been abducted by aliens?" Betty and Barney Hill, I ventured. Then, on second thoughts, I suggested the notorious tale of the Brazilian farmer Antonio Villas-Boas, allegedly kidnapped in 1957. "No," he said, “it was Bugs Bunny!" A 1940s Bugs Bunny cartoon featured the rabbit being whisked off by a flying saucer, and there are a few other links between rabbits and UFOs in modem folklore3.

This seemed to fix the Anolaima story as a modem myth - Western ufologists over-laying their interpretations on those of a different culture. However, this comfortable interpretation left me uneasy: folk tales do not kill people. What had happened to Arcesio Bermudez? I was determined to trace a member of the Bermudez's immediate family to learn their version of the events, and on a subsequent visit to Colombia, in July 2001, I managed to trace Gustavo Bermudez,Arcesio's nephew.

He was initially reluctant to be interviewed and it took several attempts to arrange a meeting at his office in Bogota, but he was soon very forthcoming and shared a number of previously unpublished details about the case. I learned more of Arcesio, whose identity documents Gustavo preserves. He also produced a second press report from the time, which detailed the work undertaken by APRO, one of the first of a number of UFO investigation groups which looked into the case in 1969. The article reproduced sketches made by members of the family who still stand by their statements4.

My first question to Senor Bermudez was whether the press coverage had been accurate. In part, he replied. Around 35 people had been at Tocarema on Friday, 4 July, a holiday period. Everyone had seen the light, and one of the children had shone a torch at it.

Accompanied by the farm's night watchman, Arcesio Bermudez had followed the light down the slope. It stopped about 200 metres (219 yards) away, near a plantation. Coming closer to the light, he thought he saw a figure within the light itself. Family members told the press, the following week, that the figure resembled the cartoon images of astronauts which had appeared in the Sunday press two days after the sighting5.

On catching up with the light, Arcesio had shone a torch at it; he certainly had not fired a gun, Gustavo insisted. The light immediately seemed to react, increasing in brightness, then rising vertically and shooting off at high speed and vanishing over the hill. Gustavo Bermudez also confirmed the facts of his uncle's death. Soon after seeing the light, Arcesio had returned to the farmhouse and complained of being cold and feeling unwell. His condition worsened, and eventually Arcesio was taken to a Bogota hospital, two hours' drive away.

At this point, Gustavo was able to put me in touch with Dr Alfred Rodriguez from Varranquiera on the Atlantic coast, who reviewed the records from the emergency room where Arcesio was taken. Dr Rodriguez speaks good English and, in a telephone conversation with me, explained that there were strange elements to the death - the low body temperature and dark bleeding from the rectum. Arcesio was vomiting, and his low temperature did not respond to any physical measures such as warm blankets and warm fluids. Dehydration and hypothermia contributed to his death.

Dr Rodriguez's subsequent attempts to access the records have met with bureaucratic obstacles; it seems the medical authorities are not keen for the matter to be re-examined. But the most peculiar feature, in his opinion, was the low body temperature. Death from hypothermia is unusual in Colombia in July; however, readers of Fortean Times may recall an earlier article linking low body temperatures with alleged 'UFO deaths' in the USA, in the 1960s6.

I asked Senor Bermudez about the spirit light beliefs. He was dismissive of the guacha ideas of locals people; the light was not a spiritual or ethereal manifestation, he believed, but had a physical existence of some kind, one which reacted to the presence of observers.

He told me that since 1969, members of the Bermudez family have met with members of Colombian UFO groups, but are not involved in any group. Members of the Bermudez family have also been interviewed by investigators from Spain and the USA, including individuals claiming a remit from NASA. The Bermudez family have, since, been the victim of hoaxers posing as UFO investigators, one of the most suspicious being a seemingly well-informed Frenchman whose identity and credentials turned out to be entirely false.

While they may have been victims of hoaxers, bona fide researchers have accepted their testimony as completely genuine. I have found no reason to doubt their honesty nor noted anything from the area which could provide an explanation, and neither has any other researcher. Though the history of UFOs is riddled with hoaxing, people do not, as a rule, launch hoaxes based around the bodies of recently deceased family members.

But there is a further, astonishing, detail which I had heard in Anolaima months before and dismissed as a malicious rumour. It has never been publicised, though it is potentially one of the most sensational facts of the entire case. Five years after his death, Arcesio Bermudez's grave, in the main cemetery in Bogota, was opened for reburial of his remains (it being normal practice in Colombia to rebury remains in an ossuary after five years). Gustavo Bermudez confirmed it: the grave was empty. Senor Bermudez's body had disappeared and is still missing. Only rumours exist as to where it may have been taken; some say the USA, but the family suspects it was taken to France.

On re-examination, not only does the Anolaima ”UFO death” appear as inexplicable as it was in 1969, but Arcesio Bermudez has gained a further posthumous distinction. He must be the first UFO witness to have been abducted after death.

A Military test?

One explanation for the Anolaima incident involves a secret US military test, although there is no direct evidence.

In 1969, diplomatic relations with a number of Latin American countries were uneasy, but the world's attention was focused on the first Moon landing - a clear demonstration of the technical might of the USA. A contemporary press report shows that there was at least one US attempt to convince Columbians of an alien presence at this time. El Tiempo reported that 'Brother John', a tall man of North American appearance described as a 'mystic vegetarian', was wandering the streets of Cali. He told crowds that he had been sent from the Moon to spread the gospel of space beings and to speak with animals. His next destination was Brazil. (El Tiempo, 8 July 1969.) He sounds more like a spaced-out hippy than a space emissary and if the Anolaima incident was part of some covert operation, it appears to have been unsuccessful. Not only did the locals fail to interpret the light within a ufological framework but it is now linked to grave robbing! Hardly a successful exercise in "winning hearts and minds".