No, it's not the headline from a sequel to the movie Independence Day. According to several Brazilian authorities on the subject of extraterrestrial and UFOs, this is happening in Brazil and quite often. Ever since the first sighting of UFOs there in 1957, Brazilians have reported a record number of extraterrestrial-related activities. In 1996 alone there were more than 2,000 sightings, and there are at least 100 organizations dedicated to studying the phenomenon. Brazilian ufologists believe that Brazil is currently experiencing intensive UFO activity.

According to Claudeir Covo, president of the National Institute of Aerospace Phenomena Investigations (INFA), of all the cases of contact with extraterrestrials reported all over the world, 7.8% occurred in Brazil. Only the US, with 11.3%, has a larger number of reported contacts. Covo, an electronic engineer who has been doing ufological research for 31 years, has catalogued more than 3,000 cases of UFO sightings in the country. Most of them (84%) occurred at night, and of these, 89% occurred in rural areas. Covo says that in 63 instances extraterrestrial vehicles left marks on the floor where they landed, and he estimates that there were at least 130 cases of abduction of Brazilians by aliens. In addition, the number of reported sightings in Brazil have tripled since August of 1995. But this is nothing new. Brazilians have been seeing ETs for 40 years now. 

The term flying saucer was used for the first time to describe a phenomenon occurred on June 24, 1947 during a rescue mission by American pilot Kenneth Arnold who was on search mission for a lost plane. Arnold was flying on the west coast of the United States when he came across a flying object shaped like a disc. This object was flying at high speeds and seemed to be equipped with several headlights. In an article describing the incident, journalist Bill Bequette used the term flying saucer; and the rest is history. 

They reported that they heard a loud noise from within the space ship, a sound similar to one that could be emitted by a generator. Then they felt an intense heat coming from the vessel. One of the guards fainted and the other began to scream. His screams alerted the other guards and as they came running they glimpsed the UFO just as it was leaving the area. Officials at Forte Itaipu contacted the Brazilian Army, which in turn contacted American UFO specialists. 

Westendorff is certain that what he saw was not a meteor. He describes it as an object the size of a soccer stadium (approximately 350 feet in diameter and 200 feet in height) with a circular base, whose body was made of a material that looked like aluminum. He claims to have circled the ship three times, that the spaceship kept circling around in its own orbit and that in order to keep up with its speed he flew at 60 miles per hour. Suddenly, the spacecraft ejected a flying saucer that shot upwards at an incredible speed and he immediately reversed his position, keeping a 700-foot distance from the object.

While he was circling the ship, he tried calling his wife and daughter on a cellular phone but neither understood what the agitated Westendorff was trying to explain. And there others who claim they have seen the same object. Shortly thereafter, he contacted air traffic control at the Pelotas airport and the air traffic manager on duty also confirmed seeing a similar cone-shaped object in the sky in the east.

His description of the object is very similar to that of another object photographed on September 16, 1996 in Valley, Alabama, where after the sighting, three black helicopters were seen in the surrounding area. None of the helicopters had any identifying tags, which is typical of military planes, so that it could be denied that secret tests and maneuvers were being conducted by the U.S. military.

In the Cosmic Secret, author William F. Hamilton III, director of the organization MUFON, an organization which is responsible for researching UFO activity in the United States, reports that a similar spaceship was seen in Belgium in 1989 and again in 1990. These sightings were by pilots, aeronautical engineers and air traffic controllers.

From August through October 1996, there were 30 reported sightings in the region of Pelotas in the state of Rio Grande do Sul. The only difference is that Westendorff's is the only one that happened during the day. Electrician Donato Santos and a friend were walking on the lake when they saw a light the size of the moon, with a similar intensity. The light seemed to be dancing in a circular fashion, and at a lower height than those traveled on planes.

Agents Maria Helena Fonseca and Kátia Santos Goulart were relaxing at home on September 24, 1996 when they heard fireworks that seemed to be coming from the nearby Pelotas Sport Club. They decided to see the fireworks up close but they were confronted by an intense light in the sky, a light comprising four smaller circular lights. Fonseca and Goulart claim that they briefly saw a UFO. Other residents of several rural cities in the state of São Paulo also claim to have seen objects radiating colorful lights flying above the cities of Americana, Nova Odessa, Piracicaba, Sumaré and Santa Bárbara d'Oeste. 

According to Conceição, at first the object descended rapidly and they thought that it might be a plane because it had bright lights. The headlights emitted bright lights with a bluish tint and the rear lights were red. This sighting was never reported to the Petrobrás management; it was transmitted via E-mail to other employees. 

It was 3:30 p.m. on a sunny Saturday on January 20, 1996, when Liliane Fátima Silva, 16; Valquíria, her 14-year-old sister; and 22-year-old Kátia Andrade Xavier, a friend, saw what they called a strange, foul-smelling creature in an empty lot in the neighborhood of Jardim Andere, a mile from downtown Varginha. "The creature was squatting with its long arms between its legs," recalled Liliane in an interview with Isto É. "The first thing I noticed were the eyes, huge and red." "It wasn't either an animal or a person," said Kátia. "He seemed dizzy and didn't make any noise."

Brasília-based UFO Magazine in its July 1996 issue provided more details about the odd creature: It was not taller than five feet; it had a big head, no neck and no hair. According to the girls, the mouth was very small and it had three protuberances on the skull that girls called horns. When Luíza Helena Silva, Liliane's mother, went back to the spot a little over a half an hour later, the creature had disappeared.

At the same time news about the sighting reached the streets of the 120,000-residents city, another story broke. Eurico Rodrigues and Oralina Augusta, a farm worker couple living some six miles from where the mal-odorous creature was spotted by the three girls, also experienced a sighting. They said they were awakened in the wee hours of January 20, 1996, by the noise of farm animals that were running scared from one side to the other of the fenced pasture.

"We looked and saw a gray object with a submarine shape and the size of a mini-van flying over the pasture not more than 20 feet high," they told reporters. "It released a white smoke, but it didn't have any lights or make any noise."

It didn't take too long before people and the press put both reports together and concluded that Varginha had been visited by an alien spacecraft that crashed in the city. It was reported that the police, assisted by the Army, found the spaceship and its crew and whisked them out of the area, perhaps even to the United States. A story later told by the children's mother about two well-dressed men who offered her "big money" to say that her daughters had invented the whole story contributed to making the case even more intriguing.

Soon there was an overabundance of sightings—more than 100 in a few months—and ufologists from all over converged on the place, among them bearded, Vitório Pacaccini, 32, from the CBPDV (Centro Brasileiro de Pesquisa de Disco Voadores—Brazilian Center for the Research of Flying Saucers). Pacaccini, after weeks of piecing together fragmented reports, concluded also that there was a cover-up by the military. According to him, the identity of some of the witnesses he talked to—civilian and military—could not be revealed because they feared retaliation from their superiors or the authorites.

Paccacini believes that as many as six passengers were in the spaceship and all of them were chased and killed by military death squads, which then probed the corpses before shipping them elsewhere with the spacecraft. UFO Magazine claims that the Brazilian authorities had been alerted by NORAD (North American Air Defense Command) on the night of January 19 of the impending landing of the spacecraft.

Meeting organizers are all respected UFO researchers in Brazil and include Ubirajara Rodrigues and A. J. Gevaerd of the Brazilian Center for Flying Saucer Research (CBPDV), the largest and most important UFO organization in the country. Also on the organizing committee are Rafael Cury, of the UFO Research Nucleus (NPU); Claudeir Covo, of the National Institute of Aerospace Phenomena Investigations (INFA); Marco Antônio Petit, of the Fluminense UFO Research Association (AFEU); and Reginaldo de Athayde, of the Ufological Research Center (CPU).

Among foreign UFO experts expected to participate in the Forum are Walter Andrus, Bob Brown, John Carpenter, Jerome Clark, Mark Carlotto, Robert Dean, Richard Hoagland, Bud Hopkins, Linda Howe, James Hurtak, Jesse Marcel Junior, John Mack, Edgar Mitchel, Leonard Nimoy, G. C. Schellhorn, Derrel Sims, Yvonne Smith, Leo Sprinkle, Wendelle Stevens, and Donald Ware from the United States; Roberto Banchs and Antonio las Heras from Argentina; Glennys Mackay from Australia; Stanton Friedman from Canada; Mario Dussuel and Rodrigo Fuenzalida from Chile; Sun-Shi Li from China; Per Andersen from Denmark; Jaime Rodriguez from Ecuador; Colin Andrews, Robert Bauval, Graham Birdsall, and Tony Dodd from England; Timo Koskeniemmi from Finland; Yves Bosson from France; Michael Hesemann from Germany; Gábor Tarcali from Hungary; Darush Bagheri from Iran.

An also Barry Chamish from Israel; Mauricio Baiata and Roberto Pinotti from Italy; Johsen Takano from Japan; Jaime Maussan from Mexico; Jorge Alfonso Ramirez from Paraguay; Javier Cabrera Darquea from Peru; Ryszard Fiejtek from Poland; Joaquim Fernandes from Portugal; Jorge Martin from Puerto Rico; Yuri Guerassimov from Russia; Vicente-Juan Ballester Olmos and Javier Sierra from Spain; S. O. Svensson from Sweden; and Cynthia Hind from Zimbabwe.

Those interested in participating in the conference can write to the international coordinator for the First World UFO Forum, A. J. Gevaerd, C/o Brazilian UFO Magazine, P. O. Box 2182, CEP 79008-970 - Campo Grande Mato Grosso do Sul, Brazil. Call 55-67-724-6700 or E-mail: gevaerd@alanet.com.br

For more information on UFO sightings in Brazil, contact the AUIB (Associação dos Ufólogos Independentes do Brasil), Rua São Mateus, 1761 - Aeroporto São Vicente, Sao Paulo, SP CEP 60410-640 Several sites on the Internet that deal with the subject and most of them have links to other UFO sites.