Guillermo del Toro Claims He Witnessed 'Horribly Designed' UFO

Filmmaker Guillermo del Toro, whose motion picture The Shape of Water released earlier this month, opened up about his experience with a UFO in a new interview. While the director said he felt a “primal” fear during the incident, he described the object as “horribly designed.”

“You sound like a complete lunatic, but I saw a UFO,” del Toro told the Hollywood Reporter in an interview published last week. “I didn't want to see a UFO. It was horribly designed. I was with a friend. We bought a six-pack. We didn't consume it, and there was a place called Cerro del Cuatro, "Mountain of the Four," on the periphery of Guadalajara. We said, ‘Let's go to the highway.’ We sit down to watch the stars and have the beer and talk. We were the only guys by the freeway. And we saw a light on the horizon going super-fast, not linear.”

The director described the object as “so crappy” but claimed it “went from 1,000 meters away [to much closer] in less than a second.” What’s more, del Toro said the object followed him and his friend as they drove away from it.

“It was a flying saucer, so clichéd, with lights [blinking],” he said. “It's so sad: I wish I could reveal they're not what you think they are. They are what you think they are. And the fear we felt was so primal. I have never been that scared in my life. We jumped in the car, drove really fast. It was following us, and then I looked back and it was gone.”

The director’s brush with a UFO wasn’t the only supernatural experience described in the interview with the Hollywood Reporter. He claimed his film Devil’s Backbone was inspired by his episode with a ghost — one of two he’s reportedly encountered.

“[T]he more remarkable one, the one that inspired Devil’s Backbone, was a sighing ghost, it was a really sad sort of inhaling [SIGH], like a really sad sigh,” del Toro said. “It was my uncle, I think, because it was in his room after he died.”

Earlier this year, actor Kurt Russell also claimed he’s seen a UFO. The Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 star, who is a pilot, told BBC that he was flying with his son when they observed the famous Phoenix Lights phenomenon above Arizona on March 13, 1997.

“I saw six lights over the airport in an absolute uniform, in a ‘v’ shape, and Oliver said to me — I was just looking at them — we’re maybe a half mile out, and Oliver said to me, ‘Pa, what are those lights?’” he recalled. “Then I kind of came out of my reverie and I said, ‘I don’t know what they are.’”