Peruvian locals of Alto Nanay have told local media that they were frightened by the sight of "strange creatures" that attacked them at night.
According to the locals from the hamlet of about 3,000 people in the northern Amazon Basin, the uninvited guests were two meters high, immune to their hunting weapons and "disappeared" when cornered.
"These men are extraterrestrials. They look like armored green goblin type from Spiderman. I have shot him twice and he does not fall, but rises and disappears. We are frightened by what is happening in the community," Jairo Reategui Avila, the village leader, told media.
Reategui added that an adolescent girl was attacked with cuts on her neck by the creatures. In addition, as the vigilant head of the community pointed out, these beings knew how to take off.
In the village, some described the strangers as so-called "pelacaras," as alleged organ traffickers from Amazonian legends are called in the jungle.
However, the invaders turn out not to be goblins, aliens, or even organ traffickers, but...a gang of gold miners.
The identification was carried out by Peru’s National Prosecutor’s Office, which accused the "gold mafia" of orchestrating the "flying aliens" story to invoke fear in locals to keep them inside their homes and away from their illegal gold mines.
Gold mining gangs have been reportedly expelled from the neighboring Brazil and Colombia.
Peru, glorious for the legends of the lost golden Inca city of Paititi, ranks ninth in the world for gold production in 2022, according to the statistical company GlobalData.