Re: Close Enounters
Sorry if anyone thinks I'm making this up 'cos I'm not and thought others might like to hear about it.
In 1982 I was based at a place called Annaba in Algeria for about 8 months then, when the project finished, my Dutch colleague and me drove our vehicle and much of our equipment back to our former base at Tiaret, not far from Oran.
The route was across the Atlas Mountains but somehow we took a wrong turning and ended up high in the mountains driving on dirt tracks with terrifying 1000 foot drops at the side of us.
We came across a cliff face riddled with inhabited caves and then a village so we stopped for a break to check the truck, get water and maybe some petrol because we were down to our last jerrycan.
The place was deserted but when we turned off the engine we saw faces at the strange, round, house windows - which had no glass - then people came out.
Every single one of them had red hair!
We tried conversing with them - Johann in French, Dutch and German and me in English and Arabic but they didn't know any of those languages so we used signs and pointed!
It turned out that they had a hand-pumped petrol point and we were able to top-up there but there seemed to be very little else there, except the people, who were all about the same sturdy-but-squat height and build - and all red-haired!
Johann had a Polaroid Camera and wanted to take pictures of the view, which was incredible, but then he turned his camera onto the people and took a picture.
The photo came out of the front on those cameras and when it started to form, several villagers stood by watching.
As they saw their image appearing on the photo everything changed!
They backed-off and started shouting at us then went for stones!
We got out of there as the truck was pelted by rocks and stones and didn't stop until we got several miles away.
When we got to Tiaret we asked the area Government agent that was at Tiaret about this at our camp and he said that nobody in the whole of Algeria knows their language and the government leaves them alone.
All of them that have ever been encountered have red hair and the same squat appearance, unlike any other tribe in Algeria.
A red-haired child was found once, dead beside a mountain road - victim of a truck hit-and-run by all accounts.
The autopsy apparently discovered that his heart was twice normal size but not diseased or malformed in any way and perfectly functioning until his unfortunate death.
He also had what appeared to be 38 teeth forming.
Maybe these people are a throwback and maybe they are just a lost tribe of North Africa but I don't know but the caves we saw
were occupied and other caves have been explored in Algeria that I've been told about and some of the remote ones have strange wall paintings depicting red-haired humans in the company of other, very tall "humanoids". stevmk2