The spontaneous teleportation of Gil Perez

If this story were true, Gil Pérez would be one of the first people ever to travel by teleportation, albeit unwillingly. According to legend he was a Spanish soldier guarding the governor’s palace in Manila, in the Philippines, and in October 1593 he suddenly found himself in Mexico, on the other side of the Pacific Ocean, with no idea how.

The riddle of an impossible leap

On 24 October 1593 the soldier was on guard at the Palacio del Gobernador in Manila. The night before, Governor Gómez Pérez Dasmariñas had been assassinated, but the guards went on watching the palace while awaiting the appointment of a successor. At some point the soldier felt dizzy and exhausted. He leaned against the wall and closed his eyes for a moment.

When he opened them, a few seconds later, he was standing in the Plaza Mayor of Mexico City, the heart of New Spain, more than 14,000 kilometres away. Some guards noticed his uniform, unlike any other, and began questioning him. He was still wearing the uniform of the Manila palace guard and knew of the governor’s death. In Mexico City, however, that news had not yet arrived.

The authorities jailed him as a deserter, suspecting him of being in the devil’s service. Months later a galleon from the Philippines arrived with news of the governor’s death, which matched his account. One of the passengers recognised the prisoner and said he had seen him in Manila around the time of the murder. In the end the soldier was released and allowed to go home.

A detail that doesn’t add up

There is a first clue that something is off. Gómez Pérez Dasmariñas did not die in Manila: he was killed at sea, during an expedition, by the Chinese rowers of his galley, who mutinied. The legend, on the other hand, often speaks of “Chinese pirates” and has him die almost outside the palace where the soldier stood guard.

How the legend was born

For a long time it was written that the episode had already been told in 1609 by Antonio de Morga, colonial official and historian, in his Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas. In fact de Morga recounts the assassination of Dasmariñas but mentions no soldier. According to the Mexican folklorist Luis González Obregón, de Morga wrote that the governor’s death was known in Mexico the same day, without being able to explain how.

The first true account comes much later: it is found in the Conquista de las Islas Filipinas by the Augustinian friar Gaspar de San Agustín, published in Madrid in 1698, more than a century after the events. The friar presents the story as fact, but does not name the soldier and ascribes his journey to witchcraft. In his view, after all, the governor’s death was known in Mexico the same day through “satanic arts”, and in Manila too a supernatural sign announced it: the governor’s portrait painted in a monastery supposedly cracked right across the head.

In 1894 Luis González Obregón retold the story under the title “Un aparecido” (An apparition) in his collection México viejo. In December 1908 the American folklorist Thomas Allibone Janvier, who lived in Mexico, published it in Harper’s Magazine as the “Legend of the Living Spectre”, and it is he who first gave the soldier the name Gil Pérez. Janvier wrote that the legend was “current among all classes of the population of the City of Mexico” and noted that similar motifs are common in folklore.

In the 20th century paranormal enthusiasts did the rest. Morris K. Jessup and Brinsley Trench, Earl of Clancarty, spoke of alien abduction, Colin Wilson and Gary Blackwood of teleportation.

How could a soldier travel thousands of kilometres without realising it? Most likely he never did. But the story of Gil Pérez shows how far a legend can travel: from the Philippines to Mexico, from a 17th-century friar to today’s mystery websites.

Sources

• Wikipedia – 1593 transported soldier legend
• Luis González Obregón, “The soldier who teleported from Manila to Mexico”, trans. Zach Lindsey, Synkrētic (2022)