“They were six bright lights…at first we thought it was a military helicopter, but it just flew meters above our car without wind or making any type of noise. It was silent…”

This is what Mr. Christos Tarsinos told me, as he looked to his son for confirmation. The boy, barely 15 years-old, nodded in agreement. His father then continued: “I was scared. The lights were bright and so close to our car. Then they flew past us and hovered near some houses on a hill before going into the woods. That’s when I heard a mechanical sound…like drilling or hammering.” Mr. Tarsinos said.

I met Mr. Tarsinos at a small restaurant near the location of the sighting. It has been two weeks since the sighting but you could still see the uneasiness on his face. “What was it? Do you know?” he asked me. I told him and his son that I was writing an article on the sighting since it had been witnessed by dozens of other villagers. I also happen to live near the area and wanted to get some answers from the sources and not media. This is how Mr. Tarsinos’ story went:

On the evening of March 10th, 2022, Mr. Tarsinos and his son were driving via some backroads into the small town of Lygourio, Greece. It was getting darker by the hour as they sped down the desolate road. Off in the distance, from what appeared to be the top of a mountain, descended six bright lights. They were lined up horizontally and moved in a uniformed manner. At first glance, Mr. Tarsinos believed it to be a low flying helicopter. However as he pointed the lights out to his son, they both saw the lights drop down from the top of the mountain to about a few meters above the road in front of them. 

“I told my dad that it was too big to be a drone, and I knew it wasn’t a helicopter. They were so bright and scary.” his son added. “The lights were different colors. The first two were red, the second two were white, and the last pair were greenish in color…”

The boy was still clearly still agitated by what he and his father had experienced just a few weeks ago. Hoping to calm the boy down, I said: “It could be a lot of things, let’s go check out the location.“

Location

The Ligouriou Neas Epidavrou was the ancient route between the villages and the theatre of Epidavors and the Temple of Asklepios. It connects the main towns of Argos, Nafplio, Lygourio as well as dozens of smaller villages. The route eventually leads you down to the waters of the Saronic Gulf.

Mr. Tarsinos and his son were heading west bound on Ligouriou Neas Epidavrou road. From their village of Dimaina, the two were heading to Lygourio’s pharmacy to buy N95 masks for his son during the COVID outbreak. Just minutes into their drive, the pair spotted the bright lights coming from the top of the mountains that surround the villages. The lights descended from the direction of near the ruins of the Temple of Hera (in the Peloponnese).

The UAP appeared to be heading east/south as it approached the compact-sized car. The lights descended onto the Ligouriou Neas Epidavrou road and hovered briefly before flying directly at the car. The occupants, both father and son, were frozen in fear as the lights hovered above their moon roof, bathing them in a blinding white light.

“It was so bright, we couldn’t see our hands in front of us.” The boy said. “I thought we were going to die.”

Sighting

Mr. Tarsinos described watching as the lights approached his car and hovered for what appeared to be a few seconds. They then made a right turn towards the small (about 5 houses scattered across two small hill tops) village of Anastasopouleika. He stopped his car and stepped outside to get a better view. This is where Mr. Tarsinos stated seeing a light come down from the craft and shine down on the village. “It was a bright tube of light…it appeared to shine down on the houses for a minute or two, as if looking for something. The lights were low, about 15-20 meters or so above the roofs. They then moved down towards the old, abandoned quarry. The UFO, or whatever it was, hovered above the quarry for a few more minutes.” At that point he told me that his view was obstructed mainly by the small hills that surround the road.

“We couldn’t see the lights anymore but we could hear them doing something. A loud mechanical sound started to come from behind those hills. It sounded like some type of hammering or drilling…it was mechanical in nature I can tell you that.” Mr. Tarsinos was spooked. His son kept pleading with him to get back in the car and head into town. “We were scared…what was it? I had no clue. So we just drove off as the lights seemed to go back behind the hills.”

The boy then added: “But we did call the authorities…and they did come out.”

Police Investigate

The phone call was made to the Nafplio Police Ministry as soon as they got back on the road by a panicked Mr. Tarsinos. “I told them what we saw and I asked them if they knew anything about any military activity in the area. They told me that they new nothing about any type of training or military activity in the area.”

Mr. Tarsinos filed the report and focused his attention on the road. He said that he kept looking through his rearview, expecting to catch a glimpse of the lights but there was nothing. They both ran into the pharmacy a bit excited. They told their story to the pharmacy owner, a man who’d known the Tarsinos for decades. As they paid for their N95 masks, Mr. Tarsinos decided to call the police for an update.

“They told me to hold on for a second. Then another voice came on the phone and explained to me that he was with the special task force in the department. They asked me if I could meet them near the area this happened. It was late and I had to get my son home and ready for school but he then said something to make me change my mind. He said: ‘We’ve been receiving a lot of calls about the lights you reported, and they tell us that the lights you saw are still there. So we we are on our way out there and are wondering if you and your son don’t mind?’ That is what the police detective told me. So what could I say?”

Mr. Tarsinos and his son arrived near the location of their encounter. It was near a small roadside church (Εκκλησία Άγιος Ιωάννης), where Mr. Tarsinos had asked the detectives to meet him and his son. “When we got there, the police were already there. Two male and one female detective from Nafplio…all three of them had a serious look.” As soon as they stepped out of their vehicle and approached the group, Mr. Tarsinos and his son saw the lights off in the distance. The lights appeared to move in between the tall pines that carpet the northwestern side of Epidavros’ Akros Mountain.

“We all just stood there for a minute, watching these lights go in and out, in and out of the trees.” Tarsinos and his son then proceeded to tell them the entire encounter they had earlier on the road. “That’s when we were joined by the mayor and others. There were several other cars that drove up to our location near the church…most of them were neighbors or other villagers who had seen the lights.” He then continued: “The mayor was there and he talked to the police for awhile while we all just stared at these far away lights. They were still up on those mountains, going between the trees as if they were looking for something…”

Villagers witness the lights

Since the first reported sighting by Mr. Tarsinos, the lights had been flying and hovering over the valley of Epidavros for well over two hours. Some of them had called into the local police station to ask about the strange lights shining down from above, only to come out and see a mob of people pointing up towards the dark skies. Some even took photographs of the lights as they had receded back into the forests of mount Akros.

When I asked him, Mr. Tarsinos lamented on not having an adequate cell phone to have been able to capture a decent photograph. “Look, it can barely send an SMS.” He then pulled out an old Motorola cell phone. “I didn’t get any but we saw people using their cell phones to take a few. The police were also photographing it from a distance.” he added.

Some of the photographs were submitted to the Greek website Anagnostis.org and show what appear to be a bright light source on top of a small hill. According to Mr. Tarsinos, there was talk amongst the crowd about how many had seen the lights hover over the small houses on the hill top. Many said that they had seen the lights descend down from the mountains (just like Mr. Tarsinos and his son had reported seeing) and hover and fly over the area as if looking or scanning for something.

“By the time everyone was out there, you can barely see the lights in the distance. There was definitely no mechanical sounds, just quiet.” Tarsinos said.

The initial conversation and meeting between the detectives and Mr. Tarsinos had yielded very little information as to what these lights could have been. From what was gathered, it was impossible for this UAP/UFO to have been a drone. According to the witnesses, the lights were about one meter in diameter and separated by at least three meters between the pairs. Red, white, and green were the colors seen by many and said to have been at least the size of a small bus.

By around one o’clock in the morning, the excitement had died down. The lights had not been visible for over an hour and the crowd was getting restless. They looked towards the officials present to provide some sort of explanation as to what these silent, multi-colored lights were. However according to Mr. Tarsinos, the mayor and detectives were just as dumbfounded as the rest of the late-night witnesses.

When I spoke to Mr. Tarsinos, he told me that by around midnight, a reporter had made it out to the scene and began asking questions and interviewing the police. “There was a flood of interest in the first 24 or 48 hours I would say…then it just kinda died down. No one really talked about it or offered any follow up or explanation as to what it was that we saw that night.”

Visited before

A month after the interview with Mr. Tarsinos, I had spoken with a friend of mine in the area about the sighting. We wondered if there were other witnesses that had seen the lights up close and had not come forward yet, given the stigma of the UFO/UAP topic. So using her as my translator we headed up to the village of Anastasopouleika to see if I could gather any other information.

The village where the UAP hovered above and beamed down “…a bright tube of light.” was nothing more than a handful of cottages peppered across a couple of small hills. There were not more than three or four families that lived in that village. We went around asking those who were working outside if they had seen or heard anything in the recent weeks.

Surprisingly every single person we talked to denied having heard anything about the incident. They said that they had not seen any strange lights and had no idea what we were talking about. Something that I found strange since the houses had little to no outside lighting. The area is extremely dark after sundown so any bright light source that would shine from above (especially at an altitude of just a few meters) would seem impossible to not notice. however we didn’t press on. We started to get the feeling that the villagers did not want to be bothered by any of this and started getting cold shoulders and icy stares.

Another week went by when I received a call from my friend, the translator. She said that she had ran into a man who claims to have seen the lights near his house since the winter months. That he worked as a ranch hand near the area of mount Akros and had been seeing these lights come in and out of the forest for a few months. We scheduled an interview with this witness but they wished to not be photographed or named due to legal matters.

In a small coffee shop I met with “George”. George had been working as a farmer/ranch hand for over a decade in the area. After exchanging pleasantries, I came to find out that his boss is a good friend of mine. So immediately his guard drops a bit and George begins to relax more around us as he begins to open up. “I’ve seen those lights before, way before this recent sighting.” He said in a gravelly voice. “They’re mainly out there at dusk, when the sun is going down…that’s when we see them. They fly in and disappear into the trees, like the lights just turn off.”

The ranch that George works at is only about three or four kilometers from the village of Anastasopouleika and only about one or two kilometers from the old quarry. The other place where Mr. Tarsinos said that he saw the lights hover above. “We don’t know what they are, but they come in from the north, north-west side of the mountain and go into the trees. We can see them glow from behind the tree lines, really strange.” George continued.

I asked George if he had see the lights up close or if he could describe to me what they looked like. He answered: “No, we didn’t see them up close. We can just see them from a kilometer or two away, up in the mountains. Just bright lights that fly around the trees, around the mountains and then disappear. We don’t know where they go.”

I asked him about the “We” part and he mentioned and he’s seen them at night, when he takes his children into town for their dance lessons. “It’s mainly at night, when it starts getting dark that we’ve seen these lights. My kids and I have seen them several times. And so far, it was only this last winter…really strange.”

Aftermath

Almost a year after the mass UFO sighting in Epidavros, there are still talks around town about what those lights were that many witnessed one cold night in March of 2022. A few murmurs here and there, claims of other sightings in the area, and even explanations as to the lights being military drones are heard from time to time. However there’s still no official explanation as to what those hovering lights were. There has been no explanation or instance of that mechanical hammering sound that Mr. Tarsinos and his son said they heard when watching the lights move from village, to quarry, and to finally hide away in the dense forests of Epidavros.

“I’m not crazy…” Mr. Tarsinos added. “I know what we saw and what we saw was not military or any type of drone. It was too big, too silent and hovered for hours. I have been made fun of by many people, including people in the media now that this story got out. I didn’t want any of this attention, it’s brought nothing to us but heartache.” He looked at his son and put his hand on his shoulder.

“Tell me…you study these things, you have contacts in the field…in America…what were these lights? Why us?” He asked me. I looked at both Mr. Tarsinos and his son square in the eyes and answered the best I could.

“I really don’t know…” I said.