Voltana, Spain
Date: June 1905
Time: daytime
Five times since the first day of June, a woman robed in white, with long clinging draperies has flown over this town in northern Spain, and the people of that entire district of the Pyrenees are in a state of religious fervor and excitement, expecting each day to hear the blast of a bugle---or the call of a voice from the sky. The astounding message of the fifth flight of the woman over the town has just been received at Barbasto, together with the statement that scores of persons standing on the mountainside, scores in the streets of the town, and many from their home and their fields knelt where they were and watched the flight. The woman---or whatever it was---came from the northwest each time---from the direction of giant Mt. Perdu---one of the highest peaks of the Pyrenees---and disappeared to the southwest among the peaks of the Sierra de Guara. There was no sign of any balloon or wings or other appliances; it was as if a woman garbed as an angel but without wings, floated over the town, slowly, unhurriedly---and three of the five times a strong wind blowing either from the south or the southwest. Investigations by an English mining expert in that region have shown that over 240 persons have seen---or claim to have seen---the mystic figure, ---to them the symbol of some great happening upon earth, float from north---evidently from some place on the southern summit of Mt. Perdu, come straight south over the village and disappear over the wooded crest of Tertuso---a low peak south of the town in the Sierra de Guara. The figure appeared to be a woman wearing a long flowing white dress. On Friday June 16, at 1500 herdsmen from the hills north of town came running in terror toward Voltana, announcing that they had seen the woman in the sky to the northwest approaching leisurely and only a few hundred feet above the ground. Almost before the herdsmen and mule drivers, panic stricken, reached the town, the figure appeared above the trees and the hills to the north an floated gracefully southwards turning southeast over the town and disappeared. The second appearance threw the entire district into a frenzy of excitement. Wild, weird tales were told of the woman and her appearance. Some vowed that she carried a flaming sword in her hands, others that they saw her lips move in prayer, and some vowed that she carried close to her breast the form of an infant. Many of those who swear that they saw additional phenomena are known to have remained with their faces to the ground during the four or five minutes occupied by the passage of the figure over the town. One woman who saw the figure from the window of her cottage vows that she heard the sweetest song of the entire world, while the figure was passing by. Three days later---on the Sabbath just before the darkness came---the figure passed over the town again. Fifteen persons saw it but among them were two Jesuit missionaries, who made a careful observation of the figure, but, despite this, could add nothing to what already was known. On Tuesday morning, June 20, shortly after 0700A the figure again passed over the town, this time nearly a mile in the air and in the teeth of a high gale that was blowing from the southeast, off the Mediterranean, and this time the figure was seen plainly by at least two Englishmen, Ben Carniff and Ralph Allison, who were on a walking tour of the country. Carniff carried a pair of small field glasses, which he used to watch the movements of the figure. He admits that he was so astounded that he forgot his glasses until the figure had passed over him and was moving southwest but he says that through the glass it had every appearance of a woman’s figure, and that he observed her feet, which seemed to be clad in some soft sole-less sandal, protruding from the flowing draperies when they shifted in the wind. The fourth appearance climaxed the excitement. The frightened people, who declared, made predictions of every kind or most of them did, that the woman had to come to warn the town of some great calamity, which they believe impended.
Source: Encounters with Flying Humanoids, by Ken Gerhard
