Within Soria UFOs
Did the Medinaceli Abduction Story Hold Up?
The Julio F.
On this page
- The reported encounter narrative
- How the story spread
- Fraud claims and sceptical doubts
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Introduction
The Medinaceli abduction story did not hold up as a strong UFO case. It remains important in Soria’s UFO history because it became one of Spain’s best-known alleged abduction narratives, but its evidential base is fragile: a single witness, memories recovered largely through hypnosis, no confirmed physical trace at the claimed landing site, and later accusations that the case was shaped or promoted as a fraud. The alleged event was placed near Medinaceli, in Soria, on 5 February 1978, when a Madrid hunter known as Julio F. said he and his dog Mus were taken aboard a craft after a strange early-morning drive. The story spread through Spanish UFO magazines, books and later radio retellings, but the strongest later reporting weakened rather than strengthened the claim.[Academia+2El Ojo Critico]academia.eduOpen source on academia.edu.
What Julio F. said happened near Medinaceli
The core narrative begins before dawn on 5 February 1978. Julio F., described in later English-language summaries as a 30-year-old Spanish family businessman, reportedly left by car with his dog Mus to go hare hunting near Casavieja, west of Madrid. Instead, according to the account, he inexplicably took a route towards Soria, stopped at Hostal 113 near Algora, and encountered an unusually tall, fair waiter wearing gloves and apparently a wig. Later checks reported in both sceptical and pro-UFO retellings said the hostal was not open at that hour and that no such employee worked there.[Avalon Library+2Avalon Library]avalonlibrary.netAvalon LibraryAvalon Library
After passing Medinaceli, Julio said he felt compelled to continue to a particular place. His conscious memory was said to stop there, and the rest of the story emerged through more than a year of hypnotic regression. In the version summarised by Spanish UFO historian Antonio Ribera and repeated in later accounts, the car stopped, the lights failed, and two tall humanoid figures approached. They were said to communicate telepathically, guide Julio and Mus to a large disc-shaped craft, take them inside through a lift-like mechanism, and examine both the hunter and the dog.[Academia]academia.eduOpen source on academia.edu.
The details are what made the story memorable. Julio’s account included the smell of pine or ozone, a vast circular room, a craft sometimes described as more than 150 metres across, telepathic reassurance, questions about ordinary life on Earth, an examination of the dog, and missing time of roughly three hours. For believers, that made the case feel unusually complete: it seemed to contain the standard ingredients of an abduction report, from vehicle interference to medical examination and memory loss. For sceptics, the same completeness became one of the warning signs, because so much of the most dramatic material depended on hypnosis rather than independent evidence.[Academia]academia.eduOpen source on academia.edu.
How the story became bigger than one Soria sighting
The Medinaceli case matters because it moved from private testimony into national UFO culture. It was first publicised in 1979 by Enrique de Vicente in the magazine Contactos extraterrestres, in an article about being examined aboard a UFO. It then gained a larger afterlife through Antonio Ribera’s book Secuestrados por extraterrestres, where the Julio F. chapter helped frame the case as a major Spanish abduction narrative.[El Ojo Critico]elojocritico.infoEl Ojo Critico JULIO F. HISTORIA DE UN FRAUDE UFOLÓGICO – El Ojo CriticoEl Ojo Critico JULIO F. HISTORIA DE UN FRAUDE UFOLÓGICO – El Ojo Critico
That publishing history explains why the case is still attached to Soria even though it lacks the kind of official footing found in the province’s stronger Barahona radar-and-pilot episode. Spain’s Ministry of Defence UFO archive lists declassified “strange phenomena” files from the Air Force, while press reporting on Barahona describes military radar detections and pilot observations over Soria in September 1968. The Julio F. case belongs to a different category: not a military file centred on radar or pilots, but a privately investigated abduction story that became famous through UFO media.[Biblioteca Virtual Defensa]bibliotecavirtual.defensa.gob.esBiblioteca Virtual Defensa Listado de títulosBiblioteca Virtual Defensa Listado de títulos
Its fame also came from theatre. A social history of Spanish UFO culture notes that Julio F. later gave testimony at a UFO event while remaining anonymous, speaking from a separate cabin with the room darkened. That setting helped turn the witness into a mysterious figure and gave the story a public mythology beyond the original claim.[Academia]academia.eduOpen source on academia.edu.
Why hypnosis is central to the dispute
The case cannot be assessed fairly without dealing with hypnosis. The strongest narrative details were not ordinary, continuous memories given immediately after the event. El Ojo Crítico’s sceptical dossier states that Julio’s conscious recollection stopped after the Hostal 113 episode and that the rest was recovered through sessions involving José Luis Jordán Peña, Ana Mozo, Maite Pérez Álvarez and psychiatrist-hypnologist Jesús Durán. Timothy Good’s later English-language synopsis also says the story emerged from more than a year of hypnotic regressions.[El Ojo Critico]elojocritico.infoEl Ojo Critico JULIO F. HISTORIA DE UN FRAUDE UFOLÓGICO – El Ojo CriticoEl Ojo Critico JULIO F. HISTORIA DE UN FRAUDE UFOLÓGICO – El Ojo Critico
That matters because hypnosis can increase confidence without reliably increasing accuracy. The British Psychological Society’s discussion of recovered memory warns that hypnosis can make memory more confident and less reliable, while forensic memory research has repeatedly shown that detailed, emotional and confidently held memories can still be distorted or false.[Circumcision Information Resource Pages]cirp.orgOpen source on cirp.org.
This does not prove Julio was lying. It does mean that hypnotically recovered scenes cannot be treated like a black-box recording of an event. A fair reading is that the hypnosis made the story richer, more dramatic and more culturally powerful, while also making it harder to separate memory, suggestion, expectation and later interpretation.
The fraud claim and the Jordán Peña problem
The most damaging part of the later dispute is the connection with José Luis Jordán Peña. He was not merely one more investigator; he is widely associated with the Ummo affair, one of Spain’s most notorious UFO hoaxes. Later summaries of Ummo state that Jordán Peña admitted in the early 1990s that he had created or instigated the elaborate Ummo deception, and El Ojo Crítico argues that his early role in the Julio F. case cannot be treated as a minor detail.[Atlas Obscura+2Strange Magazine]atlasobscura.comAtlas Obscura Castles of Valderas in AlcorcónAtlas Obscura Castles of Valderas in Alcorcón
According to the sceptical reconstruction, Julio’s brother Manuel F., an UFO enthusiast, first brought the story to Jordán Peña after attending one of his talks. The same account says the first hypnosis sessions were carried out by Jordán Peña himself. That creates an obvious credibility problem: if a leading figure in a major Spanish UFO fraud was also involved at the start of this abduction case, later readers have reason to ask whether the story was investigated, shaped, embellished or staged under his influence.[El Ojo Critico]elojocritico.infoEl Ojo Critico JULIO F. HISTORIA DE UN FRAUDE UFOLÓGICO – El Ojo CriticoEl Ojo Critico JULIO F. HISTORIA DE UN FRAUDE UFOLÓGICO – El Ojo Critico
El Ojo Crítico goes further, presenting the case as a UFO fraud rather than merely a weakly evidenced report. That is a strong accusation, and it should be handled carefully. The publicly available material does not provide a simple courtroom-style proof that every element was deliberately invented by Julio himself. The safer conclusion is that the case is deeply compromised: the chain of investigation is tainted by a controversial figure, the dramatic content was recovered under hypnosis, and the independent checks reported by investigators did not confirm key physical or circumstantial details.[El Ojo Critico]elojocritico.infoEl Ojo Critico
The checks that weakened the story
The most useful doubts are not abstract scepticism; they concern specific claims in the story. The Hostal 113 episode is one example. Julio’s account included a pre-dawn stop, a strange waiter and a peculiar atmosphere. Later checks reported by José Antonio Campaña, as summarised in El Ojo Crítico, found that the establishment did not open before 8:00 on Sundays and had no employee matching Julio’s description. Timothy Good’s pro-UFO-friendly summary also acknowledges that subsequent checks found the hostal was not open at the claimed time and that no matching waiter worked there.[El Ojo Critico]elojocritico.infoEl Ojo Critico
The alleged landing site is another problem. Investigators reportedly found no anomalous marks or traces that would indicate the presence of a huge object at the supposed encounter location. That absence does not disprove every possible experience Julio may have had, but it seriously weakens the claim that a massive craft physically landed or hovered there in the way the narrative describes.[El Ojo Critico]elojocritico.infoEl Ojo Critico JULIO F. HISTORIA DE UN FRAUDE UFOLÓGICO – El Ojo CriticoEl Ojo Critico JULIO F. HISTORIA DE UN FRAUDE UFOLÓGICO – El Ojo Critico
The story also contains features that became increasingly difficult to defend as investigation standards improved: telepathic dialogue, beings asking oddly simple questions about Earth, the witness acting as a supposed “antenna” through which investigators could communicate with the entities, and the reliance on emotionally intense hypnotic performances before interested observers. These details may fascinate readers, but they do not add independent verification. They mainly show how the case grew into a performance-rich abduction narrative.[El Ojo Critico]elojocritico.infoEl Ojo Critico JULIO F. HISTORIA DE UN FRAUDE UFOLÓGICO – El Ojo CriticoEl Ojo Critico JULIO F. HISTORIA DE UN FRAUDE UFOLÓGICO – El Ojo Critico
Why the case still matters for Soria
The Julio F. story is not Soria’s strongest UFO evidence, but it is one of Soria’s most culturally influential UFO stories. Barahona matters because it reached official military channels; Medinaceli matters because it shows how a dramatic, human-centred abduction claim can outgrow its evidence and become part of national UFO folklore. The contrast is useful for readers trying to understand the province’s UFO history: not all famous cases are strong cases, and not all weak cases are unimportant.
The Medinaceli story also illustrates a wider problem in UFO culture during the late 1970s and early 1980s. Abduction narratives were often strengthened in public imagination by the very things that make them weaker as evidence: anonymity, hypnosis, dramatic retelling, expert-looking sessions, illustrations, conference appearances and later media repetition. By 2024, even paranormal radio summaries were presenting Julio F. as a case with “lights and shadows”, noting that it had been considered almost a “perfect case” by some but was also attacked by detractors as a possible fraud.[Onda Regional de Murcia]orm.esOpen source on orm.es.
Did later reporting strengthen or weaken the claim?
Later reporting weakened the claim. It did not produce a decisive official file, a corroborating second witness, physical traces, reliable records from Hostal 113, or hard documentation that would move the story beyond testimony. Instead, later discussion highlighted the case’s vulnerabilities: hypnotic recovery, the disputed hostal episode, the absence of landing traces, the theatrical way the witness was presented, and the early involvement of Jordán Peña.
The fairest classification is therefore not “confirmed abduction” or even “solid unexplained encounter”. It is a famous but compromised case: valuable as a piece of Spanish and Soria UFO history, weak as evidence for an extraordinary event, and important mainly because it shows how a single dramatic testimony can become durable folklore even after its foundations have been seriously challenged.
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Endnotes
1.
Source: academia.edu
Link:https://www.academia.edu/116893052/Entre_uf%C3%B3logos_creyentes_y_contactados_Una_historia_social_de_los_ovnis_en_Espa%C3%B1a
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Source: avalonlibrary.net
Title: Avalon Library
Link:https://avalonlibrary.net/ebooks/Timothy%20Good%20-%20Unearthly%20Disclosure.pdf
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Source: elojocritico.info
Title: El Ojo Critico
Link:https://elojocritico.info/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/EOC_74.pdf
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Source: julio.com
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Source: elojocritico.info
Title: El Ojo Critico JULIO F. HISTORIA DE UN FRAUDE UFOLÓGICO – El Ojo Critico
Link:https://elojocritico.info/julio-f-historia-de-un-fraude-ufologico/
7.
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Source: Wikipedia
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Additional References
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Unearthly Encounters | ALIEN ABDUCTION: THE STRANGEST UFO CASE FILES | Beyond Belief...
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Source: youtube.com
Title: Top 20 Creepiest Real-Life Alien Abduction Stories
Link:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iv5FybZKcQA
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The Truth is Out There… and Closer Than You Think | ALIEN ABDUCTION: THE STRANGEST UFO CASE FILES...
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