The history of UAP in Greece begins shortly after the summer of 1946, with mass sightings of Ghost Rockets taking place at the northern regions. The peak was during the opening days of September, when 12 of them were sighted by both Greek and British army officials in the vicinity.
This provoked official reactionary statements from the then-Minister of Foreign Affairs, Stefanos Stefanopoulos, as well as from the then-Prime Minister himself, Konstantinos Tsaldaris, who confirmed to his media representatives that unknown "missiles" had indeed been sighted over Greece. The Minister of Foreign Affairs went further, announcing to the Reuters Agency that he had tasked the authorities to investigate the origin of the mysterious objects. The results of that program have yet to be publicized. Even though we will probably never know the results of that program, we see that the issue was recognized as being real by the highest forms of local authority.
This political reaction sparked the curious spirit of the people, who would keep witnessing flights of the strange objects until the term “Flying Saucer” would enter the norm.
At the time, during the worldwide 1954 wave, even though UAP increased all over the country, it seemed to have become particularly attracted to the East Aegean islands, and especially to the island of Lesvos. There, on October 10th, 1954, a father and son were out for hunting when they saw a Cigar-shaped object moving horizontally before separating in two, after which the two objects appeared to move vertically at a steady distance to each other, until they were lost in the horizon. The date is important, as that same day, no less than 11 cases of landings were reported in France, Belgium, Germany and Lebanon.
With such frequent occurrence, naturally more and more people with a science background became involved in the research.
By the time of the 1964 wave in the US, when efforts were being made to conquer the moon, and with many theories on the existence of extraterrestrial life being put forward, Greece too has experienced an increase in awareness of that aspect of the phenomenon, especially with the visit of Arthur Clark and Verner von Brown in the 16th Astronautical Conference that took place in the city of Athens.
In the face of a time when the scientific community was largely opposed to the postulations of the phenomenon, the academic physician and electronic warfare researcher Pavlos Santorinis of the University of Athens, was revealed to have been part of a secret committee to investigate the Ghost Rockets in Greece. Despite the fact that during a radio interview back in the 40s he had suggested that the Ghost Rockets were a foreign country's display of power, now in the 60s, in two subsequent radio interviews, he instead suggested that the answer to the phenomenon is extraterrestrial life, and that the Flying Saucers were alien craft that monitor our planet. This change of heart reminds us of J. Allen Hynek, who changed from skeptic to supporter.
All this progress resulted in the formation of the organized research effort "Department of Extraterrestrial Studies" in 1969, headed by leading Greek investigator, George Balanos, and was equipped with potent instruments and even had its own offices!
This consolidation effort happened at a time when the subject was a hot topic, as the 70s saw the largest public expression of interest towards it. First was with Balanos's book, "Flying Saucers: Intruders?" which was published in 1972, then with the formation of the PEEAF Group of our friend and member of UAPcheck, Stavros Hatzopoulos, in 1973.
In the midst of all these movements, a very notable incident took place 17.000 feet above the city of Volos in 1977, when an A-7 military jet was intercepted by a glowing metallic disk which remained on the jet’s tail for a total of eight minutes, despite the rigorous maneuvers of the concerned pilot, before accelerating to its front and begin to execute impossible maneuvers, before finally accelerating out of sight, leaving him mesmerized.
When the then-Minister of Defense, Evaggelos Averof, was notified of the contact incident, he off the record declared to other leading government and military officials: "I once doubted the existence of UFOs. Not anymore".
As if that wasn’t enough, the following year, in 1978 Eric von Daniken came to Athens to speak on the subject. People swarmed the gathering, there were so many of them that he had to repeat his speech, twice, in order to satisfy the demand. Despite of if we agree with him or not, this just shows the degree to which the Greek public opinion had become aware of the phenomenon by the end of 1978.
Indeed, such was the interest, and so many were the sightings, that in September of that year, five pages were dedicated to the Greek side of the phenomenon in the “Ideal’s UFO Magazine” in the US.
The decade closed with the creation of the first Greek magazine that dealt with the subject: "UFO - Iptamenoi Diskoi" (“UFO - Flying Saucers”), in 1979.
And then…. nothing! Silence! For the most part of the subsequent decade of the 80s, the phenomenon largely subsided. Sightings are reduced, contact is infrequent, and a great silence is felt as UAP fades in the background. Until the summer of 1989, near the close of that decade, when in late August, about a dozen lights would be seen standing still in the sky over a large swathe of land and sea, from the Evia to the Nafplio regions, which is an 11.000km2 area stretching east and west of Athens.
About a year later, on September 2nd, 1990, another dozen lights will be sighted, but this time in a straight formation and flying all around the country, until, while flying above the city of Atalante that is north of Athens, one of them malfunctions! It becomes red, emits smoke and starts losing altitude, eventually making a forced landing on top of a nearby hill, setting the entire slope on fire. Other lights came down with it, and circled around it. The closest eyewitnesses were ~700 meters away at the time, and described the objects as circular and being the size of tractors. They went closer, and said they saw "shadows" going in and out of them. About five hours later, the objects all took off and left.
The following morning, locals that went to the site noticed that even though the area was burned, it was moist and sticky. They found some metal and foam fragments that were taken by the police, and there were also spherical depressions in the ground in a circular formation. The Air Force, which was on the site within an hour after the objects had departed, said that the landed object… was a satellite. This marked the most widely known and witnessed incident of Greek UFOlogy.
Alas, in the 20s and with the entrance of the internet into our daily lives, the phenomenon would be largely impacted negatively, as hoaxes and misinformation had obtained a faster medium to reach the public. Nevertheless, legitimate UAP persisted, and in August 7, 2002, another landing took place, this time a controlled one, on a field in the outskirts of the village of Prinos, in the Trikala region of central Greece.
This time a circular bright metallic object of 10 meters diameter touched ground and left a series of small depressions in the ground that altered among circular, square and triangular shapes, and arranged in a spiral, like a circle with an opening or a capital G. The eyewitnesses, who were on the field when the landing happened, said they hid behind their vehicle and watched as a door opened and three short beings emerged from the object along with a drill-like instrument that they were carrying. They took up dirt with it and returned to their craft, which then took off. The witnesses identified the creatures as "Maimounia", which is a folk term for the Leprechaun. Sadly, even though there was much more to be found in that case, the witnesses went quiet. They were silenced, and the entire incident was… rather disturbing.
Ten years later, the most recent wave of UAP in Greece was during the worldwide 2012 wave, with reports coming to us on an almost daily basis.
Many of those reports featured large numbers of UFOs, from as few as four to as many as twenty, often flying in formation.
It has been more than ten years since this last wave, so we are keeping our eyes open, now more than ever, expecting the next wave or big case to happen anytime now.
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This article is the first part of Orestis Lazanakis' presentation of the Greek UAP scene to EuroUfo.net and UAP Check members on June 26, 2024. A video recording of the spoken talk with more illustrations is available on EuroUfo YouTube channel.
