The Tarbaca Disc

A disc the size of a tractor tyre hung a few metres above the ground, tilted and spinning on its axis. The moment Marvin Badilla looked away it flipped and was gone. Badilla was a 35-year-old carpenter working in Tarbaca in the canton of Aserrí in San José province. In November 2007, just before 4 pm by his own account, he heard a strange buzzing and saw the small bright disc about 100 metres away. He filmed it on a Motorola RAZR phone. His co-worker William Rivera missed it because of the noise of his drill. Jaime Maussan later called the clip among the most authentic footage he had tested.

What is on the record

The clip went national. Teletica's Telenoticias broadcast it across three editions with the journalist Luis Carlos Monge, and the Costa Rican press followed it up. The case also sits in an online catalogue of sightings. No official body took part.

The doubts are on the record too. Sceptical analysts on the Metabunk forum judge the film a likely hoax, a small model hung on a string. The witness was said to be a skilled model maker. Nothing was ever exposed and no one admitted anything, so the hoax reading remains a judgement from the footage and not a finding.

Our transcripts render the town as Arbaca, and it is Tarbaca. Two of our three tellings spell the witness Badia, and his surname is Badilla.

Why it sits where it does

The archive holds three videos on one channel and resolves two claimants, Badilla and Rivera. Rivera did not see the object, so the film rests on one witness and the count overstates it. The case grades L3 for independent witnesses on that count. Its evidence is one phone clip, seen across the country on the evening news and doubted by analysts who suspect a string. What hung over the ground at Tarbaca is not resolved here.