This is the story of Werner Jaisli, a Swiss man who in 2008 started building a giant, star-shaped ‘ovniport’ – a UFO landing spot – in an Argentinian desert, because aliens telepathically ordered him to.

It’s not clear exactly when Werner Jaisli arrived in Cachi, a small town in the Argentinian province of Salta, but it’s not hard to figure out what drew him to this place. The deserts of Salta have become famous among UFO enthusiasts around the globe, after several sightings of unidentified flying objects and other unexplained phenomena were reported in the area over the last few decades. On the night of November 24, 2008, Jaisli himself was allegedly contacted by aliens who gave him specific instructions on how to build a UFO landing port, aka ‘ovniport’.

Photo: Geocaching

“I was there, at Forte Alto, at midnight on November 24, 2008. Suddenly, everything was silent and the power was cut off,” Werner Jaisli told reporters a few years back. “At that moment, two luminous objects advanced about 200 meters above the Calchaquí River. They were solid, circular, and had the color of burnished metal. They stood about 100 meters above our heads and projected a powerful beam of light. The strange thing is that this extraordinary light did not affect our vision at all. At that moment, something began to boil through my brain: it was an order. They asked me telepathically to build the UFO port.”

Soon after this bizarre incident, the Swiss started building his now famous ovniport of Forte Alto, about 4 kilometers from the town of Cachi. It consists of a large star-like pattern, with 36 points and measuring 48 meters in diameter, which has a smaller star in its center. It is made of white stones that Jaisli and his assistant, Luis – who was also present the night that the aliens made contact – gathered from the nearby mountains. There are also smaller star patterns made of darker rocks that together form a compound visible from high altitudes.

“I built it the way they told me to,” Jaisli once said after being asked what the patterns of his ovniport symbolized.

Over the years, Werner Jaisli and his unique ovniport became famous all over the world, and UFO enthusiasts still visit the sight regularly, even though the area is known to be crawling with poisonous snakes. As for Jaisli, who should be around 70-years-old, he got into trouble with the law a few years ago, and disappeared soon after being released from prison.

In 2011, the Diario Veloz newspaper reported that Werner Jaisli had been jailed for stealing the wallets of an Uruguayan couple staying at a hostel in Cachi. He was easy to identify from the security camera footage, as he was the only one who sported an impressive beard and went around dressed like a druid. When police raided the cave he called home, they found $1,828, half of the money reported missing by the tourists.

Jaisli spent some time in jail for his crime, and disappeared from the area soon after being released. No one seems to know what has become of the eccentric Swiss. All the locals know is that he gathered his things and started walking north. There were some rumors that he settled in Bolivia where he started working on another ovniport, but no one has been able to confirm these claims.

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In 2014, he was photographed by French photographer Etienne Jeanneret in a bar in Cochabamba, Bolivia. Jaisli apparently told him that he had fled Argentina because he felt persecuted, but did not mention a second ovniport.

The UFO landing port of Fuerte Alto, in Salta, remains a popular tourist attraction for both UFO enthusiasts and tourists looking for unusual sights. No alien landings have been reported yet, but who knows, maybe one day…