Outlandish
UFOs are all the rage in Brazil these days. One of the most successful
novelas (soap operas), for example, is O Amor Está no
Ar (Love Is in the Air), in which Luíza, played by Natália
Lage, makes contacts with beings from other planets. These days, aliens,
UFOs, and supernatural phenomena take up 30 hours of TV programs each week.
A group of UFO enthusiasts is planning the world’s biggest UFO conference
ever for December 1997. And it seems that Brazil has become one of the
favorite spots for extraterrestrials to land and make contact with humans.
By
Divya Shukla
Aliens land on the beaches of Brazil!
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 first alien saucer
In 1947 the term “flying saucer” was popularized worlwide. That year, thousands
of individuals throughout the world claimed to have had either contact
with or sightings of unidentified flying objects that could not have been
described as either a common airplane or any other known aircraft. In addition
to the many sightings, there was a wealth of material documented in various
media, including film. Some of these earlier sightings were by German and
American pilots during World War II. The American Air Force believed that
these were secret German weapons and the German Air Force believed that
they were American weapons of war.
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.
Sighting in Forte Itaipu,
Rio de Janeiro
On November 4, 1957, at 2 a.m., two guards stationed at Forte Itaipu witnessed
an intensely bright light in the sky. At first, they thought that it might
be starlight, for some unknown reason magnified, and they noticed that
an object was descending at high speed directly above the fort. Then the
strange object hovered at about 1,000 feet overhead. The guards described
the object as possessing the features of a traditional UFO—circular in
shape and with a diameter of approximately 100 feet. Neither of the guards
fired shots at the object, although they were both equipped with machine
guns.
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.
Sex With Space Alien
That same year, in the first report of sex between a human being and an
alien, Antônio Villas Boas, a farm worker from São Francisco
de Salles in Minas Gerais, said he was abducted, taken inside a UFO and
forced to have sex with a she-alien on October 16. In December 1983, 62-year-old
Gaúcho (from Rio Grande do Sul) real estate agent Nélson
Antônio Tasca told a similar story. According to Tasca, married for
27 years and with six children at the time, he was abducted when driving
alone on a road in the state of Santa Catarina. He revealed spicy and intimate
details about the forced copulation, stating: “The blue-eyed blonde alien
had a pre-pubescent vagina, with no pubic hair, and the encounter gave
me the most intense sexual pleasure I ever had.”
Sighting in São Vicente,
São Paulo
Some members of AUIB (Associação dos Ufólogos Independentes
do Brasil—Brazil’s Association of Independent Ufologists) believe that
a ray from an extraterrestrial flying object might have caused the destruction
of a Tucano-model plane from Esquadrilha da Fumaça (Smoke Squadron),
a team of daredevil pilots during an air show at Itararé beach in
São Vicente on November 16, 1996. This incident is said to have
caused one fatality and six injuries; and this hypothesis is substantiated
by the presence of an unidentified image in pictures taken during the air
show by an amateur photographer.
The photographs can be found in reports published by researchers José
Agobar Peixoto, a professor at the Federal University of Ceará,
and Jorge Cláudio Nóbrega, a retired technician at Petrobrás,
a Brazilian state-owned oil conglomerate. Researchers claim that they enlarged
the photographs by using digital technology and that one of the photographs
reveals a cylindrical light projected directly onto the plane. A similar
light has been noted in other UFO-related accidents.
Sighting in Rio Grande do Sul
Businessman Haroldo Westendorff, the owner of a rice distribution company,
claims to have come in contact with an extraterrestrial spacecraft. According
to Westendorff, a pilot for 20 years who owns a single-engine plane, he
was circling the sky over the Island of Saragonha in Rio Grande do Sul
in October of 1996 at 10:15 AM when he was confronted by a huge, ship-like
plane.
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.
Sighting in Parque das Nações,
São Paulo
In March 1997, police officers Moacir Pereira dos Santos and Anerilton
Neves were patrolling the neighborhood of Parque das Nações
in the greater São Paulo when according to them, a flying object
traveled towards them and then stood still for a few minutes at about 700
feet above a house. When they turned on the headlights of their patrol
jeep, the object traveled in the direction of the city of Sumaré.
They also drove in the same direction and saw the object again. The officers
told reporters that the UFO was slightly larger than a helicopter.
Sighting in Americana,
in the interior of São Paulo
In the dawn hours of March 31, 1997, in the neighborhood of Liberdade in
Americana, sergeant Íris Alves de Souza and soldier Wilton Franco
saw an object in the sky that emitted orange, blue, red and yellow rays.
Franco characterized watching the object as having a similar feeling to
that of staring at the sun. The sergeant instructed Franco to get a video
camera to document the event. Franco complied and in the process left sergeant
Alves de Souza alone. The object then moved closer to Souza (500 feet above
him) and illuminated the area around him with a single white light that
was shaped like a cone. Almost simultaneously, an airplane flew into the
same area as the presumed saucer.
The approach of the airplane, according to the soldier, alarmed the
saucer, causing it to retreat, turn off its lights, and fly away. All of
this happened very quickly. The UFO was capable of flying at an incredible
speed, according to Souza. When Franco returned with the video camera,
the object had already vanished, so he was not able to document what had
happened. And throughout the week following the sighting, both Franco and
Souza attested to suffering from physical ailments such as irritated eyes
and headaches.
Sighting in Santa
Bárbara d’Oeste
The day following the sightings by Franco and Souza, police from Santa
Bárbara d’Oeste were informed about an unknown light directly above
the neighborhood of Rochele. When officers Mário Henrique Pultrini
and two other colleagues arrived in the area, they did not see anything,
but acting on a tip that they received from a resident in Rochele, they
drove towards the town of Capivari to chec it out. Before they got there,
they heard over their police radio a call from an ambulance announcing
that an unknown object had been seen. Eventually Pultrini and the other
policemen also saw the object with red and blue lights.
Sighting in Ceará and
Rio Grande do Norte states
On October 14, 1996 at 11:30 p.m., a mysterious object startled employees
at the Petrobrás oil refinery, a state owned company in Rio Grande
do Norte. Lindomar Castilho da Conceição, a security guard
who was on duty that night, was patrolling the grounds of the refinery,
at the Fazenda Belém ranch. Shortly afterwards, the guard and co-worker
José Valdécio Baptista reached the Mossoró installations.
Upon arriving at Mossoró, Conceição and Baptista observed
an intense light that seemed to illuminate most of the area.
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.
The Varginha,
Minas Gerais,
sightings
The January 1996 Varginha sightings by a series of witnesses—reportedly
there was physical evidence at the location—are the most important sightings
ever to have occurred in Brazil. This incident made the cover of Isto
É, a respected national newsweekly magazine, and was also
reported on page one of a skeptical Wall Street Journal as well
as in other publications around the world.
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.
Art Imitates Life
Extraterrestrials are now part of Brazilian pop culture. The soap opera
O Amor Está no Ar (Love Is in the Air) has as its main theme
the story of adolescent Luíza who talks to extra terrestrials. She
likes to shop, date, has a difficult relationship with her mother and she
communicates with beings from other planets. In a story written by Alcides
Nogueira, Bosco Brasil and Felipe Miguez, Luíza is abducted and
goes on a long trip in a spaceship. The soap opera was modeled after the
American television series The X-Files.
The Meeting
The First World UFO Forum to be held in Brasília from December 7
to 14, 1997, is being touted as the world’s biggest UFO conference ever.
More than 50 internationally renowned researchers on the subject have already
been invited. At the event, Brazilian UFO experts are expected to present
an updated in-depth report on the Varginha sighting.
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.