Alien Island

10/20/2023

Urban legends have a way of taking on lives of their own. So it was in Chile in the mid-1980s, when a group of ham radio operators intercepted messages from witnesses who claimed to have seen and interacted with a collective of benevolent, highly advanced extraterrestrials (members of a Pleiadian “congregation” known as “Friendship”) on a remote island off the nation’s far southern coast. But where was the definitive proof of this? The radio messages were about the only available “evidence,” and attempts by investigators to visit Friendship Island always fell through. What’s more, as all of this was unfolding, the nation was in the grips of the authoritarian dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, a ruling junta known for creating an atmosphere of suspicion and paranoia and frequently spreading