Dionisio Llanca Abduction (1973)

The night on Ruta 3

Dionisio Llanca was a 25-year-old truck driver travelling south on Ruta Nacional 3 from Bahía Blanca toward Río Gallegos. Accounts agree that he stopped on the road in the late evening or early morning of late October 1973 to change a flat tire. Reports differ on the exact night: the English Wikipedia article gives the night of 27 October, while the Argentine press pieces consulted give 28 October. The location is usually given as roughly 20 km out of Bahía Blanca.

His account, as told in later interviews, is that a bright light approached or moved near his truck. He then saw three figures. Sources differ on the next stage. One version has him paralysed by the light and subjected to medical-style testing by the beings; another does not mention paralysis. In every version he lost a substantial stretch of time. He was found hours later roughly 9 to 15 km from the stop, depending on the source, and was taken to a hospital.

Hospital staff at the Municipal Hospital in Bahía Blanca admitted him around 30 October. According to the 2020 Crónica article, police initially treated him as drunk, a head injury was noted, and he was disoriented and unable to explain where he had been. He remained in hospital for several days.

Investigation and hypnosis

The case entered the UFO literature through the Argentine researcher Fabio Zerpa, who investigated it and published it in El Reino Subterráneo. Over the following weeks Llanca was put under hypnosis, which the accounts say produced detailed recollections: a voice speaking Spanish from a screen or radio-like device, an injection to the head, cables running from the craft, and a stay of roughly 45 minutes inside it.

The method is the weakest link. Hypnosis-recovered memory is widely regarded as unreliable, and the sources do not agree on who conducted the sessions, how many there were, or when they happened. The C5N article reports that the sessions included sodium pentothal ("truth serum") under a medical team led by a well-known ufologist; Crónica reports that the pentothal use was alleged years later by journalist Sergio Prieta and is not documented as to who administered it or when. Neither article gives primary records. A blackout that Crónica reports as coinciding with the event in Bahía Blanca is also presented without independent verification.

Case for and against

The case is strengthened in the eyes of its supporters by the fact that Llanca was found injured, disoriented and confused, which is not explained by the hypnosis narrative alone. The medical record of a head blow and his initial inability to account for his movements is the most concrete element, and it is independent of the UFO framing.

The skeptical reading is that a tired or unwell driver had a traumatic episode on a dark road, lost time, and then, under hypnosis and high-pressure questioning, elaborated a narrative that fitted the UFO-abduction template. Crónica records that some believed the account was a hallucination, and that Llanca himself later said he had been "defamed and used." No skeptical investigator is named in the sources read for this entry.

Because the sources conflict on distance, date and symptoms, and because the central recovered-memory material rests on hypnosis and disputed drug use, the case is best classed as contested. It is a human-interest case about the treatment of a witness at least as much as it is a physical-evidence case.

Later life and status

After the 1973 press attention and the hypnosis sessions, Llanca withdrew from public view. Journalist Sergio Prieta contacted him in 2013, and La Nueva Provincia ran the story on 8 December of that year. In 2021 the Café Ufológico Rosario reportedly located him after a roughly two-year search. He appeared in a YouTube special with the presenter Lorena Sciarratta, where he described a light near high-voltage lines and three beings lifting him, before losing consciousness after a prick on his hand. He had reportedly lived in anonymity in Patagonia, changing location to avoid attention.

C5N reports that Llanca died in May 2024. Subsequent coverage has shifted from the question of whether his story is true to the question of how he was treated by those who took it up, with alleged abuse and torture over the period of the investigation raised by Sciarratta. Documentaries on the case have been announced, including one by Leandro Bartoletti. The case remains unresolved and is often cited in Argentine ufology as a cautionary example of recovering memory under hypnosis.