Tabloid Takes New Editorial Direction as UFOs Invade Hungary

In a hard-hitting cover story likely to send waves through the local publishing industry, tabloid Színes mai lap this week broke news of an extraordinary drama taking place in an unidentified hamlet in South Hungary. According to the paper, which appears to be under siege by both long-time rivals such as Blikk and upstarts like Napi Ász (Daily Ace), the chairman of the Hungarian UFO Federation has received a desperate appeal from a family under siege by aliens.

More strange doings after the jump...

The UFO chief, Tibor Sós, recently paid a visit to the Varga family, whose members claim to be permanently "under the influence" of aliens. According to Sós, the family says their close encounters have resulted in a number of dramatic physical manifestations, including sudden loss of consciousness and weird burn marks appearing on their bodies. Mrs. Varga says she has fainted on five occasions since last September, while her husband and 29-year-old daughter have been similarly felled at the hands of what they are convinced are space aliens.

"I don't know what to do," said the daughter. "I was feeling a sharp pain in my neck... I only remember standing near the coat-rack and then I suddenly blacked out. When I regained consciousness I was lying on the floor. I am not suffering from any known medical conditions. A few months later the symptoms occurred again."

Mrs. Varga offered a similar story: "My husband and I were struck at the same time... He went into the kitchen. I heard an unusual noise and I followed him, but when I found him he was already lying on the floor, unconscious. I stepped over his body, and at the very same moment I fainted myself. When I awoke, my husband's face was covered with burn marks and so was my neck."

According to the Vargas, the village doctor cannot offer any explanation for the strange incidents, which one observer said sounded like nothing more than countryside folk getting drunk and falling over.

The Vargas also claimed to have seen unidentified objects, "heard voices" and noticed the lights switching on and off in the house, which the observer said was not so unusual, when you consider they are drinking so much they routinely black out, fall over and burn themselves with their own cigarettes.

Meanwhile, the observer pointed to similarities between the Vargas' account and a recent story in the Weekly World News about the travails of one Bob Sigrand, a 38-year-old hardware store clerk from Omaha, Nebraska who claims he was "branded like a steer" by space aliens.

"It was absolutely humiliating - those inhuman monsters treated me like an animal," Sigrand told the WWN, an American tabloid that, like Színes mai lap, has found a profitable if dubious niche regaling down-market readers with fantastic tales almost too unbelievable to be believed.

Neither the Vargas nor the circulation director of Színes mai lap could be reached for comment.