The Night of September 2, 1990
Shortly after ten in the evening, the Karatrantos family is at their sheepfold on Mount Asprogies, above Atalanti. Suddenly, thirteen luminous objects appear in the night sky. They are flying at low altitude, about a hundred meters above the ground, in a striking formation. And then one of them seems to run into trouble. A metallic sound is heard. Flames and thick smoke follow. The object changes course and, according to the testimony, lands on the opposite slope, about three hundred meters from the sheepfold. And that is only the beginning.
The remaining twelve objects head toward the same spot. For about five hours they remain there.
From the sheepfold, the family watches small dark figures moving around the site and liquid being sprayed toward the object that had run into trouble — a scene that Zoi Karatrantou later described as resembling an attempt to put out a fire.
At around three in the morning, the twelve objects begin to take off.
One by one.
And they vanish into the sky.
The thirteenth, however, never takes off!
Η Αταλάντη ξανά στο μικροσκόπιο: Τι δεν μας είπαν για 36 χρόνια
The Atalanti incident of September 2, 1990, and the landing of the thirteen UFOs remains one of the most astonishing events ever recorded on the global ufological scene. Yet, as is almost always the case with events of this magnitude, we never learned even half the truth. Whatever information has circulated over the past thirty-six years was deliberately distorted, concealing the real substance of the matter.
The Discovery of the Following Day
The next morning, Zoi Karatrantou returns to the site with her brother, Ilias Giannoulakos. There they find a burned patch of ground. The soil is soaked with a white, sticky substance. And there are small metallic objects. Three or four, according to the testimony. Giannoulakos collects them, wraps them in his shirt, and they take them to Atalanti. They are then handed over to the police, and from there they end up with the Hellenic Air Force, at the Air Force Technology Research Center. Shortly afterward, an official report is issued. The objects are classified as materials of terrestrial origin, of old technology, and most likely of Soviet origin.
So the case could have ended there. Only it didn't.
A Family That "Disappeared"
As the years went by, one strange detail remained on the sidelines. The people who had been at the sheepfold that night were no longer at the center of the story. At some point, word even spread that the family had left the area and moved to France. It was one of the claims we decided to verify. And in 2024 came one of the first major turning points of the investigation.
We located Zoi Karatrantou.
And we discovered something that changed the picture: the family had never left Atalanti. They were still there. And their sheepfold was still on Mount Asprogies. Then a question arose:
Why did we spend decades looking for the family elsewhere, when they were right there all along?
Before Questioning the Location, We Looked for It in the Literature
When our three-year investigation began, the first step seemed simple: to locate the landing site.
And, according to the literature of the time, that should not have been difficult.
The first on-site investigations, just a few days after the incident, placed the event in the field of Giannis Gloustianos. This information appears in various sources of the period, among them the book by Sokratis Aikaterinidis, a report in the newspaper Apogevmatini, the book by Makis Podotas, articles by Stavros Michas, and also later accounts. Giannis Gloustianos was, in fact, the one who took the first investigators up to the hard-to-reach field on his tractor.
The site was near the small chapel of Agios Nikolaos, about four kilometers west of Megaplatanos and two kilometers east of Goulemi.
This was the site we had to check. And we checked it.
Before You Accept or Reject a Piece of Information, You Must First Go Back to Its Source
And that was when the first contradictions began to appear. One of them even concerned the identity of people who had been present at the first on-site investigation. Argyris Alavantas, president of the community of Megaplatanos, appeared in press reports under a different capacity and a different name. The local residents helped us clear up this old confusion. And the more we went back to the original sources, the clearer it became that the case needed to be examined again, from the beginning.
And Then the Biggest Problem Emerged
Up to that point, there was one location that everyone knew.
Megaplatanos
That was where, according to the version that had prevailed, the incident had taken place. That was where investigators went. That was where journalists went. That was where on-site investigations were carried out. That was where the traces were searched for. That was where the findings were linked to the case.
On Mount Asprogies, on the Itia ridge, opposite the family's sheepfold. About six kilometers in a straight line from Megaplatanos. And here the case takes on an entirely different dimension, as we are talking about two different locations. On the one hand, Megaplatanos — the spot that remained in collective memory as the "Atalanti landing site." On the other, Mount Asprogies — the spot pointed out by the people who were there on that particular night.
And somewhere here arises the question that changes the entire case:
How did the shift from one location to the other come about?
And even more importantly:
What happened to the evidence from the first location?
At Megaplatanos, according to the evidence we gathered, a second scene was created the following night. A burned circle about thirty meters across. Inside it were found cables, connectors, metal components, and other materials, which were later examined by KETA (the Air Force Technology Research Center). The official report described these objects as being of terrestrial origin, of old technology, and most likely of Soviet origin.
But caution is needed here.
The fact that the objects examined were terrestrial does not, in itself, answer another, far more critical question:
Were these the same objects that had been collected from the original site? The actual crash site?
Our investigation points to a different version of events.
According to the evidence we gathered, the findings that were examined are connected to the second site, at Megaplatanos. "Findings" that were planted so that journalists and investigators would have something to see and something to analyze. And, above all, to turn their attention away from Mount Asprogies — away from the true crash site.
The original small metallic items that, according to the testimony, had been collected on Mount Asprogies do not appear in the official report in any way that would allow us to know what became of them.
And that leaves a gap. A very significant gap.
The Investigation Does Not End Here
And above all:
how is it possible that an entire story was built around one location,
when the people who lived through the event pointed to another?
The full investigation, the evidence, the testimonies, the locations, and the contradictions are presented for the first time in the book The Atalanti File – The Truth Behind the Shadows.
What is presented in this article is only part of the investigation.
The case still holds unanswered questions. What exactly was the path followed by the original findings?
What happened to the objects that were handed over to the authorities?
When and how did the case become linked to Megaplatanos?
What really emerges when we compare the original testimonies with the later press reports?
