The face peelers of Peru: what happened in the Amazon in 2023

In the summer of 2023, an Indigenous community deep in the Peruvian Amazon said it was being hunted at night by tall, armored figures that could float above the ground and shrug off gunfire. Villagers called them los pelacaras, "the face peelers." Three years on, nobody has been arrested, and nobody has produced a clear photo. Here's what was reported, what the authorities concluded, and what independent investigators like Timothy Alberino found when they went there.

Where and when

• Who: the Ikitu, a small Indigenous people living along the Nanay River in the Alto Nanay district of Loreto, Maynas province.
• How remote: roughly 10 hours by boat from Iquitos, the nearest city, which itself can't be reached by road.
• When: the community says the visits began on the night of July 11, 2023, and kept coming for weeks.

What villagers described

Accounts from the community were strikingly consistent. The figures were about seven feet tall, dressed in dark or silver armor, with large lenses or helmets over their faces. Several witnesses said they moved by floating about a meter off the ground on round, disc-like footwear, with a red light at the heel. Community leader Jairo Reátegui Ávila told Peruvian radio station RPP on August 1 that he shot one of them twice and it "didn't fall"; it rose and disappeared into the trees.

The most serious incident came on July 29, when a 15-year-old girl was reportedly seized and injured in what officials treated as an attempted kidnapping. Families stopped sleeping, men organized night patrols with shotguns, and the community publicly begged the military for help.

The name pelacaras is older than 2023. In Andean and Amazonian folklore, the pishtaco and the pelacara are outsiders who prey on Indigenous people for their fat, organs or faces. The stories are often read as a memory of real exploitation, from colonial times through the rubber boom to modern organ-trafficking rumors. When something terrifying came out of the jungle at night, the old name was waiting for it.

The official answer: miners with jetpacks

Peruvian police and Navy personnel made the long trip upriver in early August. Lead prosecutor Carlos Castro Quintanilla pointed to illegal gold mining: by his office's count, about 80 percent of the region's illegal gold dredging happens in the Nanay basin, and authorities had destroyed 110 dredges and 10 mining camps there that year. Prosecutors suggested foreign gangs from Colombia and Brazil were using flight gear to terrify the Ikitu away from the river. Cristian Caleb Pacaya, a local teacher who witnessed an attack and filmed some of the viral footage, said he searched online afterward and decided the "thrusters" he saw were jetpacks.

That explanation has problems of its own. Jetpacks are loud, burn fuel in minutes, and are hard to fly under a jungle canopy at night. No equipment was recovered, no suspects were named, and no arrests were made. The grainy videos that went viral show shapes in the dark that could be people, or branches.

What Timothy Alberino found

Author and researcher Timothy Alberino didn't accept either the jetpack story or the dismissals, so he went himself. He made a two-day river trip up the Nanay to the affected communities, including San Antonio de Pintuyacu, bringing food, medical supplies, night-vision goggles and thermal binoculars so villagers could document any future visits. He then laid out what he found on podcasts including Blurry Creatures ("The Face-Peelers") and in later interviews.

• Witnesses on camera. He recorded interviews with multiple villagers, including the teacher behind the original footage, and walked the spots where encounters reportedly happened.
• Injuries. He described a girl who said attackers used a laser-like syringe device on her and left a numbing substance on her skin, a boy who was rushed to hospital with deep cuts to his neck, and a man who said he tackled one of the figures and was knocked out by what felt like a high-voltage shock.
• Consistency. Witnesses separated by distance and age gave the same core picture: black armor, big lenses, hovering on circular platforms.
• His read. Alberino argues the miner theory can't account for the flight, the bullet resistance or the specific injuries. He has floated possibilities ranging from non-human beings to a human group with secret, advanced technology. He's also candid that no thermal footage or clear imagery came out of it, which leaves the case resting on testimony.

Where it stands

The pelacaras case is a hard one to file. Something frightened a whole community badly enough to put armed patrols in the jungle every night, and a teenager was hurt. The official explanation is plausible on motive, since illegal miners in the Amazon have a long record of intimidating Indigenous people, but thin on evidence. The extraordinary explanation has vivid, consistent testimony and no hard evidence at all. Both sides are left waiting for the same thing: a clear recording, a recovered device or an arrest.

If you've seen something strange yourself, start with our six-question checker to rule out the usual suspects, and browse the Evidence Room for how verified cases are documented.

Sources: VICE (Aug 14, 2023), Remezcla, Dazed, Science Times, Blurry Creatures EP 185 with Tim Alberino, Alberino interview summary.