Mendoza entity encounter — September 1, 1968

Juan Carlos Peccinetti and Fernando José Villegas, employees of Mendoza's casino, reported that their old car stopped on Calle Neuquén while they were returning home before dawn. The local account places the event at 3:42 a.m. on August 31,1968; the imported catalogue gives September 1. The car had already been experiencing electrical trouble, so the stoppage cannot simply be treated as a demonstrated UFO effect. They described three short, bald, large-headed figures approaching them, with two more near a hovering lens-shaped object in a vacant lot. The figures wore gray or bluish overalls. In their account, messages seemed to sound inside their heads, a tool marked the car, and a round screen showed a waterfall, a destructive explosion and a dried landscape. They also alleged small punctures to their fingers. The beings reportedly returned up the object's light beam before it departed; the men ran to a military guard post. Roberto Banchs interviewed them soon afterward and later assembled competing testimony, medical observations and press reports. Reported marks and punctures were examined, but radiation measurements were normal. Police and judicial accounts advanced a practical-joke explanation, including ordinary means of producing the marks and display. A 2023 Los Andes retrospective adds an important later development: journalist Miguel Títiro recalled Peccinetti directly describing the UFO story to him as a joke. That attributed admission belongs alongside the original narrative. The imported three-being count is also incomplete relative to the fuller five-figure story. The encounter plate represents the claim, prominently labeled with its hoax context, rather than presenting an established extraterrestrial event.