People have been claiming to have come into close contact with aliens for decades.
Whether it’s wild stories of people being snatched from their beds by nosy aliens or tales of being transported back to an extraterrestrial planet for a long weekend, there have been plenty of unbelievable claims made.
Usually those stories come with little to no proof and it’s pretty hard to be convinced that anyone has actually experienced anything more than perhaps a vivid dream.
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However, one man is now saying that he witnessed a UFO crash and he still has “a piece of the wreck to prove it”.
Jose Padilla is an 87-year-old man from Los Angeles who was just nine when he claims to have seen a spacecraft crash land in his father’s ranch.
The apparent incident occurred in San Antonio, New Mexico, with the house being just 12.4 miles away from the site where the US government tested the first atomic bomb in 1945.
Speaking to CBS News Los Angeles, Padilla said: “I was drinking my chocolate milk when like a lightning showed up. It knocked me to the ground.”
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He recalled that, around a month later, he was horse riding with a friend when they heard another boom and Padilla assumed it was from another bomb test.
Intrigued, the pair went off to have a closer look at the explosion site.
From there, Padilla says he saw smoke coming from an “avocado-shaped” aircraft and witnessed aliens escaping.
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He continued: “All of a sudden, three, I would say, kids got out of it. They were kind of sashying and running around in circles.”
When asked by the interviewer if he was scared of the extraterrestrial visitors, Padilla disagreed, saying: “No, Sir. They crashed in my father's ranch and they needed help.”
Padilla and his friend watched on as the US military cleaned up the wreck site and during one of their breaks, he took his opportunity to steal a part of the UFO.
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He said: “There was like a little dial. I took the part and hid it in my garage.”
Frontier Analysis is a chemical testing lab based in Ohio that has analyzed the piece of wreckage and they have revealed that the components were made of an amalgum of aluminum, silicon and copper.
However, it’s not great news for Padilla as they have said that this elemental ratio is terrestrial.
Still, all hope is not lost - the experts have also noted that an extraterrestrial source cannot be ruled out.