The World Cup venue that’s home to UFO sightings: ‘They’re objects that don’t have an explanation’

It may be the best view at the World Cup. 

Some believe it is literally out of this world.

Estadio Monterrey — usually known as Estadio BBVA — is built in the shadow of the Cerro de la Silla, a mountain which rises 1,820 metres above sea level and is part of the Sierra Madre Oriental range in northeastern Mexico. Its distinctive peaks are visible from inside the stadium, which will host four games this summer, including a round of 32 match.

It is an icon of Monterrey, and one that has spawned its fair share of myths and legends. Its name — ‘saddle hill’ in English — is said to come from Portuguese conquistador Alberto del Canto having seen that likeness in the mountain’s ‘U’ shape in the 16th century. But the city’s inhabitants have given it plenty of other nicknames, including the Giant of Monterrey, the Silent Guardian and the Crown of the City (because of its various peaks).

One story told about its origins explains that the mountain is a fallen giant frozen in time. Another claims it was home to a birdman — a humanoid figure with wings — who lived in its caves. More recently, UFO (unidentified flying object) enthusiasts have seized on an unexplained case involving a ‘witch’, floating spheres and what they believe could be otherworldly encounters. 

The Giant of Monterrey looms behind the stadium (Hector Vivas/Getty Images)

In January 2004, a 20-something police officer, Leonardo Samaniego Gallegos, was carrying out his nighttime rounds on the outskirts of Monterrey — a five-minute drive from where Estadio BBVA now stands and just below the Cerro de la Silla — when he says he saw a mysterious figure. 

“A person fell from a tree, moving as if they were a bag of rubbish,” he said in a YouTube interview with paranormal investigator A. Guts Villarreal in 2019. “She stopped about 50 metres from the ground after falling backwards with her hands like this,” he said, with his arms held out to his sides. 

In the headlights of his Volkswagen patrol car, Samaniego Gallegos said the creature’s eyes were “completely black”. According to his testimony in that interview, it began to fly towards him as he called for back-up and reversed. There was a blow to the windshield and the figure was suddenly on top of his car bonnet, trying to grab him through the window. He let go of the steering wheel and “lost consciousness until my commander came and saw I’d fainted”.

TV reports from the time show a visibly shaken Samaniego Gallegos being attended to by paramedics while explaining “she didn’t have a broom or anything, she was flying by herself”. In that 2019 interview, he said he spent two days in hospital while doctors carried out tests on him, and also claimed that four men in suits had taken away the police uniform he was wearing that night. 

It didn’t take long for UFO ‘experts’ to draw their own conclusions. Mexico’s foremost UFOlogist Jaime Maussan invited Samaniego Gallegos onto his TV show, where he tried to make the link between what he had seen and the Flatwoods monster, a 10ft tall creature supposedly seen in West Virginia in 1952 (Maussan has had various UFO claims debunked, and in 2023 presented two mummified corpses to Mexico’s Congress that he said were “non-human”, claims which were rejected by scientists).

The regional Nuevo Leon OVNI Club (OVNI is the Spanish word for UFO) carried out its own investigations in the area and interviewed Samaniego Gallegos. In 2006, the group released footage from another of Monterrey’s mountains, the Cerro de las Mitras, which claimed to show a floating figure similar to what the former police officer had described.

“People have reported UFOs. They’ve reported spheres,” Tomas Amador, a publicist and member of the group at the time, tells The Athletic. “This is an area where it’s so common that people don’t see it as something strange anymore.” 

The ‘spheres’ Amador is referring to are floating metallic orbs in the skies of Monterrey, unverified photographs and videos of which have appeared on social media in recent years. Nelson Valdez, a local weather presenter for Canal 6, regularly shares them to his 131,500 followers on X and says he receives them from the city’s residents.

#ÚLTIMAHORA ⚠️
Ciudadanos en #Monterrey captan una extraña esfera plateada levitando y luego elevándose en pleno centro de la ciudad. El avistamiento ocurrió esta mañana de Lunes. #UAP pic.twitter.com/bwhW1YZGDa

— Nelson Valdez (@nelvaldez) June 30, 2025

“There are certain things where I tell people they’re looking at a more explainable phenomenon,” Valdez says. “Sometimes, people confuse certain cloud formations with some kind of flying device. I dedicate myself to observing the skies each day, so I help them differentiate from those kinds of phenomena — but there are others which undoubtedly don’t have an explanation.”

Valdez, 39, claims to have personally experienced two of these sightings himself. 

“I saw these silver spheres moving at high speed,” he says. “Lots of people here say they could be helium balloons, but they’re not. They’re objects that don’t have an explanation.” 

Valdez says for a while he thought they could be a rare meteorological phenomenon known as ball lightning, when unexplained spheres sometimes appear during thunderstorms. But he says he ruled that out, as these orbs appeared to be “intelligent, because they made calculated movements and didn’t behave in an erratic way”. 

How about drones?

“If it were a drone, why doesn’t it move even a little bit, when we know that it’s forbidden to fly there?” asks Diana Perla Chapa, founder of the Nuevo Leon OVNI Club, of the 2006 footage recorded by her group.

Samaniego Gallegos maintains that what he saw was a witch. “Lots of people who weren’t involved in my case told me to say it was an extraterrestrial, that they were people from another planet, but it was nothing to do with that,” he told TV channel Info 7 in 2023. 

“I’ve overcome it, but my kids watch the videos on YouTube, and I also watch them. On that day (every year), I get shivers.”

The mystery, then, remains unsolved. Should visitors to Monterrey for the World Cup be afraid of such an encounter?

“Not at all — it won’t harm you in any way,” says Valdez. “On the contrary, it would be an unparalleled experience. 

“I’d recommend they go to the city’s natural areas and give themselves the opportunity to be able to experience these phenomena. They are sure to feel that strange and curious vibe and energy which emanates from the mountains of Monterrey.”