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- Like Mount Shasta in California, Mount Moncayo in northern
Spain has a legend of strange caverns underground, complete with glittering
cities. And some of these tales have much in common with contemporary reports
of alien abduction.
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- Mount Moncayo is on the border of the Spanish provinces
of Castilla and Aragon, located about 100 kilometers (60 miles) west of
Zaragoza and 200 kilometers (120 miles) northeast of Madrid. The mountain
is 2,332 meters (7,695 feet) high and looms over the nearby city of Soria.
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- The people of Soria have many stories about strange disappearances
on the mountain. One of these took place in the early Nineteenth Century,
after the Napoleonic wars (my date of 1815 is a guesstimate--J.T.), and
it involved a shepherd in his 20s named Gregorio Murillo.
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- Murillo "following some stray of his flock, penetrated
into the mouth of one of those caves whose entrances are covered by thick
growths of bushes and whose outlets no man has ever seen."
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- "Going on along that cavern, he had come at last
to vast subterranean galleries lighted by a fitful, fantastic splendour
shed from the phosphorescence in the rocks, which there were great boulders
of quartz crystallized into a thousand strange fantastic forms. (my emphasis--
J.T.) The floor, the vaulted ceiling and the walls of those immense halls,
the work of nature, seemed variegated like the richest marble; but the
veins which crossed them were of gold and silver, and among those shining
veins, as if encrusted in the rock, were seen jewels, a multitude of precious
stones of all colors and sizes."
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- "No noise of the outer world reached the depth of
that weird cavern; the only perceptible sounds were, at intervals, the
prolonged and pitiful groans of the air which blew through that enchanted
labyrinth, a vague roar of subterranean fires furious in their prison (my
emphasis--J.T.), and murmurs of running water which flowed on not knowing
whither they went."
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- "The shepherd, alone and lost in that immensity,
wandered I know not how many hours without finding any outlet, until at
last he chanced upon the source of a spring whose murmur he had heard."
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- "This broke from the ground like a miraculous fountain,
a leap of foam-covered water that fell in an exquisite cascade, singing
a silver song as it slipped away through the crannies in the rocks."
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- "About him grew plants he had never seen, some with
wide thick leaves, and others delicate and long like floating ribbons.
Half hidden in that humid foliage were running about a number of estraordinary
creatures, some of them manlike, some reptilian, or both at once (my emphasis--J.T.)"
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- "There, darting in all directions, running across
the floor in the form of repugnant, hunchbacked dwarves (aliens?) scrambling
up the walls, running along...So there they were keeping stored up in heaps
all manner of rare and precious things. There were jewels of inestimable
worth; chains and necklaces of peals and exquisite gems, golden jars of
classic form, full of rubies; chiseled cups; armor richly wrought; coins
with images and superscriptions that it is no longer possible to recognize
or decipher...And all glittered together, flashing out such vivid sparks
of light and color that it seemed as if the whole hoard were on fire."
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- Immediately Murillo dipped his hands into the mounds
of jewels, gasping as the cool stones trickled past his fingers. And then
he paused, the short hairs on the back of his neck bristling. He experienced
a sudden sense of dread, of a lurking doom that was growing closer and
closer.
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- All at once, he heard the pealing of the bell in the
monastery of Nuestra Senora del Moncayo. "On hearing the bell, which
was ringing the Ave Maria, the shepherd fell to his knees, calling on the
Mother of our Lord Jesus Christ."
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- "And instantly, without knowing the means nor the
way, he found himself on the outside of the mountain, near the road that
leads to the village, thrown out on a footpath and overwhelmed by a great
bewilderment as if he had just been startled out of a dream." (my
emphasis--J.T.)
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- Disoriented, Murillo stumbled back down the mountain
road to Soria. "When he came back to the village, he was as pale as
death; he had surprised the secret of the gnomes; he had breathed their
poisonous atmosphere, and he paid for his rashness with his life. But before
he died he related marvelous things."
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- It's a shame the townspeople did not keep more accurate
contemporary records of this strange incident. I wonder--did he die of
"breathing their poisonous air?" Or did the shepherd die of radiation
sickness brought on by his exposure to those strange giant crystals in
the heart of Mount Moncayo? (See Romantic Legends of Spain by Gustavo Adolfo
Becqer, Thomas Y. Crowell & Co., New York, N.Y. 1909, pages 199 to
202.)
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