High in the September sky over the world's UFO capital, a flashing brilliant white light hovered for two hours before silently gliding off.
At several points the light from an apparently cigar-shaped object disappeared completely before reemerging above Santiago, Chile.
Now DailyMailTV has obtained exclusive video of the event, which is being analyzed by experts trying to determine what could possibly be behind the phenomenon.
And Lue Elizondo, the former head of the US government's UFO monitoring unit, says the extraordinary video 'warrants further investigation.'
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DailyMail.com has obtained videos Hugo Franzani took on his phone of a mysterious object hovering over Santiago, Chile
Three of the four videos turned out blank, but the fourth showed the bright light in the sky veer off to the left after staying still for several minutes. The white light was as bright as a camera flash, and the cigar-shaped object also sporadically shot blue, green and red light from its sides
Dustin Hoffman lookalike Hugo Franzani, 81, shot four videos of the object over Santiago with his cell phone, but only one of them came out. He said he had never had that problem with his phone before
The video was shot on September 9 by Hugo Franzani, a retired Chilean realtor and amateur photographer, from his family's backyard in the Santiago suburb of Las Condes.
The 81-year-old who bears a striking resemblance to actor Dustin Hoffman, said the pulsating white light emitted by the object was as bright as a camera flash, and that it also sporadically shot blue, green and red light from its sides.
Franzani said when he saw the UFO in the sky to the west he grabbed his phone and started filming – but that in three of the four videos he took, although the audio was working, the video came out completely black.
The video obtained by DailyMailTV is the only one in which the view was not blacked out.
Franzani, an experienced amateur photographer, said he had never had that problem with his phone before or since.
Bizarrely, the object in the two-minute video at one point seems to disappear for a moment then reappear, flashing with an intense burst of light.
Franzani said that when the light on the object flashed off, he could make out its shape 'like a cigar', with what looked like 'tiny headlights' on the side.
'The bright light was like nothing he'd ever seen,' Franzani's son Andy told DailyMailTV. 'My dad's best friend has helicopters and planes, and my dad's brother is a pilot so he's been out on planes. But he said there's nothing he'd ever seen in the sky that would make that big of a light.
'He didn't want to go on record as the wacky guy who sees UFOs, and as a Christian he was reluctant to go on record as having seen a UFO, with aliens and the whole story behind it.
Hugo Franzani (pictured with his son Andy and wife Alicia) said he had never seen any object that would emit such a bright light. He does not believe it could have been a drone, helicopter or plane
Lue Elizondo told DailyMailTV that Hugo Franzni's video 'warrants further investigation'
'But I spoke with him immediately after he sent me the video. He was just shocked. He'd never seen anything like that. He was ecstatic that he saw it and caught it on at least one of the videos.'
The Franzanis are still struggling to explain what Hugo saw. They do not believe it could have been a drone, helicopter or plane.
'The light was way too bright, a drone can't give off a light that spectacular. It must have been incredibly big because it was far enough away. My dad said you couldn't hear a thing.
'It would do a drop of 3-4 inches, then it would go back up, go to one side, stop, move sideways, stop. Then it started to scoot sideways. That's when he went to get the binoculars and that's all we got.'
DailyMailTV sent the video to Elizondo, the former head of the US government's UFO-monitoring unit. He said the incident appears to 'warrant further investigation' and though more mundane explanations like a weather balloon are possible, he believes they are 'unlikely.'
In an exclusive interview Elizondo also said he believes the US military is currently sitting on 'physical material' recovered from a UAP – an 'unidentified aerial phenomenon' – but said he could not elaborate on classified information he had been party to.
Franzani's video is not the first UFO incident over Santiago.
In January 2017 the Chilean government's Committee for the Study of Anomalous Phenomena in the Atmosphere (CEFAA) released a 10-minute video of another cigar or tic-tac-shaped object flying near the city, which has become the UFO capital of the world.
The object was filmed by thermal cameras from a navy helicopter patrolling the coast near the Chilean capital on November 11, 2014.
After two years studying the footage of the object, the Chilean government was left stumped.
'We do not know what it was, but we do not know what it was not,' CEFAA director General Ricardo Bermudez told investigative reporter Leslie Kean.
However aviation experts including renowned UFO debunker Mick West have since presented convincing evidence identifying the object as a nearby A340 passenger plane.
The CEFAA also investigated an unidentified object captured on seven different cameras at an air show at El Bosque Air Force Base, south of Santiago, in 2010
The El Bosque object flies so fast that, unless there is a camera defect, it is traveling an estimated 6,000mph
The CEFAA also investigated an unidentified object captured on seven different cameras at an air show at El Bosque Air Force Base, south of Santiago, in 2010.
Experts said the object seemed to shoot through the sky at over 4,000 mph but inexplicably caused no sonic boom and went unnoticed until the video owners spotted it in the footage.
Scientists analyzing the videos have disagreed on whether the object is a distant craft, or a nearby bug flying across the shot.
In another intriguing video shot by a Santiago resident in February 2013 and posted on YouTube, a cluster of lights can be seen flying over the city at night.
And last November, a Chilean passenger on a commercial flight got striking footage of a large 'cigar' shaped object hanging
