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Classic Mysteries—Alternate Perceptions Magazine, September 2020



Brazilian UFOs: The Good, the Bad, and the Downright Dangerous

by: Brent Raynes



On November 4, 1957, around 2 a.m., two army soldiers on watch at Brazil’s Itaipu Fortress, located on the south coast of Sao Paulo, near the city of Praia Grande, were startled when a large orange glowing disc-shaped object flew in and hovered over them. The two soldiers suddenly found themselves suffering an intolerable heat wave, collapsing to the ground. Soon afterwards hospitalized, they were said to have suffered first and second degree burns over more than ten percent of their bodies. As this disturbing close-range encounter was occurring, the electrical systems of the army installation inexplicably failed, along with intercommunications and emergency circuits.

The next day, the commander of the Brazilian installation issued orders to the fort’s personnel not to discuss the incident with anyone – not even relatives. Intelligence officers arrived on the scene and tried to keep the situation quiet. The facility was even reportedly placed under martial law and a top-secret report was submitted to army headquarters. A few days later, officers with the U.S. Army Military Mission arrived at the fort to question the soldiers and other witnesses. Despite the lid of secrecy that had been imposed, a Rio de Janeiro physician named Olavo T. Fontes, also a civilian UFO researcher, managed to track down and interview four of the officers who had been at the fort the night of this disturbing incident. He filed a detailed report with the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization, a civilian UFO group located in Tucson, Arizona.

One Saturday, in November 1979, around 7 p.m., a man named Antonio Amador De Lima, age 76, reportedly had one hell of a frightening encounter! A resident of a small town in northeastern Brazil, named Santo Antonio, this elderly gentleman was returning home on foot when he spied a strange light approaching in the sky. He tried to lay flat on the ground, hoping it would simply pass by.

Why did he do that? Well, long-time Brazilian ufologist Albert Francisco do Carmo of Brasilia told me that peasants and farmers living out in the country had come to recognize a potential threat from such things. “They knew nature,” he explained to me. “They were aware of how helpless they were and always found ways to face their close problems. And, as the UFOs came, and they became a SERIOUS PROBLEM, they increased their cares about their own security, as their ancestors did in case of a jaquar.”

What sort of problem? Well it seems Antonio was about to experience it firsthand. Next thing he says he knew, a light began shining down on him. He had heard that laying down on the ground could help when dealing with the UFOs. He said he was “pulled” up about 20 inches off the ground. With one hand, he held onto a plant to stop from going any further. Then four hooks, dangling down from what resembled ropes, came down around him from a brown colored, cigar-shaped object about twice the size of your average car. One of the hooks snared the back of his shirt. For a terrifying period of time, that he estimated was about 15 minutes, he held on to the plant for dear life.

Meanwhile, in a window in the craft hovering overhead he could see three human-like occupants. He claimed they weren't Brazilian. One was a bearded man, and there were two women, with short black hair, strange and ugly faces, with yellow skin. He recalled one of the women said, “Here is a good old man we can take with us to our earth.”

Eventually the hook in his shirt ripped loose, he fell to the ground, and the craft spun around 3 or 4 times, and then flew off, much to his relief. Later, while telling his story to American journalist Bob Pratt, this witness had to stop, becoming very emotional and unable to speak for a time, with tears in his eyes. The encounter had happened only two months earlier.

Thoughtout his life, this man had been a farm worker. Twelve years later, in August 1992, Bob Pratt returned to Santo Antonio and learned that Antonio had passed away back in February 1985. His granddaughter, Maria Pontes, recalled how prior to describing his frightening UFO encounter he had always worked very hard, worked long hours, and had been a strong man. But after the encounter he never worked again, and in fact aged quickly, taking to his bed only a few days afterwards, getting up only once and awhile, and never leaving the house. His appetite changed from good and hearty to where he just ate a little. He started having heart trouble, his legs swelled, and his hands trembled, and though always somewhat a picky person who got irritable if things didn’t more or less go his way, he suddenly became very difficult and at times so angry that he wouldn’t speak the rest of the day if something upset him. In addition, he didn’t like talking about his UFO encounter.

At about 2 a.m., on September 5, 1976, near Vargem Grande, in Minas Gerias, Brazil, a farmer named Hermelindo da Silva, who also owned a small roadside bar, was on foot nearing his home when the sky lit up like day and low overhead he saw a bright object, an estimated 10 foot in diameter, surrounded by yellow and violet hues. It had a dark hole in the middle. He took a pole and struck it, receiving a slight shock. He decided to make a run for it to his house, which was about 70 yards away at that point. He didn't get far before the object was again low overhead and he noticed cane like “hooks” attached to what resembled “steel cables” dropping down around him. Next, a small humanoid figure, an estimated 4 foot in height, came sliding down one of the “cables.” The being wore a gray polished hard suit. A struggle ensued, but the creature managed to hook the farmer's left ankle, at which point the little being scurried back up a cable “agile as a cat.”

Next the farmer found himself being hoisted up toward the craft, toward the hole, which produced hot air and was now glowing with a purple color. His screams finally got the attention of a brother-in-law who was staying with his family at the time. He opened a glassless wooden shuddered window and witnessed Hermelindo's struggle, hanging beneath a UFO that was conical shaped with a round top. Next Hermelindo managed, with his free right foot, to kick the edge of the hole, at which point he became free from his entanglement, falling an estimated 20 feet to the ground, into a large yucca plant, with large, razor sharp leaves.

Alberto explained to me that this man's body still bore the cuts and scrapes from his fall into the plant, which nonetheless must have saved his life.

Alberto visited the witness and the site a week or so after the reported encounter with Brazilian psychologist Hulvio Brant Aleixo. He explained to me that this was the third incident with similar beings reported in that area – beings that again acted in a violent manner.

Alberto also recalled another case, involving a boy, who reported an encounter with a barrel-shaped UFO and how two cane like hooks dropped out of it from something resembling a bombay door that opened up on its underside. Luckily, I was informed, that boy escaped as well. It was about 6 p.m., September 1991, just a few miles outside of Acari in Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil, as Jerinaldo Dantes, 18, was riding his bicycle home after working all day on an uncle’s farm. He was listening to music on his Walkman, pedaling along a dirt road with the setting sun to his back, when suddenly Jerinaldo noticed a large multicolored “ball of light” flying toward him from the direction of nearby mountains. Then he noticed his Walkman was filled with static. Overcome with fear, the young man jumped off his bike and ran underneath a nearby tree, squatting down and wrapping his arms around its trunk. Next the mysterious light stopped and hovered just over the top of the tree!

Jerinaldo occasionally tried to glance up at the UFO, but because he was terribly frightened he tightly hugged the tree’s trunk for an estimated 20 minutes. During this time, he noticed an intense amount of heat from the object, to the point that he felt that it might set the tree on fire. He then decided that it was too dangerous to remain under the tree, and so scooted under a nearby barbed wire fence and then rushed some 20 feet out into a corral, when suddenly the top of the tree broke off and crashed down upon the fence he had just scooted under! Meanwhile, the ball of light was now giving off a bluish illumination, lighting everything up around it, continuing to hover over what was now a scorched and smoldering stump of a tree.

By this point, Jerinaldo stated that he was very afraid and trembling as he helplessly watched the UFO and feared for the worst. But then the light went out and a moment later came on a good distance off in the west. He also noticed a certain unusual coldness in the air too that stopped when the light was extinguished.

About 200 yards away, in a large farmhouse, Sebastiani Sales, 56, went to look out her window as her dog was barking loudly. She opened the shutters and saw a bluish ball of light, that she estimated at 60 to 70 centimeters in diameter, giving off blue sparks, above the tree. Then she went to the door, obviously to get a better view, and described how the light was very low and in fact was touching the tree. Then she noticed someone squatting under the tree.

What happened next seems even stranger. She says she shut the door, closed the window, and returned inside to watch her television! She laughed and admitted to Bob Pratt to being embarrassed at recalling her behavior, but Bob explains that in Brazil TV soap operas, called Novelas, are watched faithfully every evening by a fourth of the country’s population. And so, Bob reasoned, Sebastini, being one of those faithful viewers, wasn’t going to let a mysterious ball of fire and a terrified boy keep her from her TV program.

But I can’t help but wonder if that’s the entire story. Through the years, there have been easily hundreds of reports wherein witnesses described entering altered states of consciousness and behaving in unusual ways. Sometimes as though they were under some form of mind control. Being a big fan of a TV soap opera is one thing, but to close the door on such an unusual sight and to turn your back on the predicament of the young man squatting at the base of the tree beneath it seems like very odd behavior to me. Then too, perhaps it was a form of psychological denial. What a bizarre perception of reality such a sight would pose. Who wouldn’t want to return inside to the comfort and safety of their home and simply resume watching their favorite soap opera.

At any rate, Jerinaldo was soon banging on her door, and when she opened it she found a very upset young man standing there. He described to her his frightening UFO encounter, and asked that she get his bicycle. But Sebastiani was frighened herself now. She said that the UFO was still visible in the distance. Instead, she phoned the farm manager and he picked up the bike.

While Sebastiani didn’t see the tree fall she knew that it had as she had heard it. When Jerinaldo arrived home about two hours later, he was, his mother stated, hysterical and unable to talk. In addition, his mother felt that he did suffer afterwards with mild psychological problems, such as a temporary case of absent-mindedness, and she felt he had become more timid as well.

Bob Pratt admitted that he was quite puzzled by the behavior of the UFO. While on the one hand it seemingly zeroed in on young Jerinaldo as he rode his bicycle and then it hovered directly over the very tree beneath which he had taken refuge, flushing him out into the open by directing an intolerable heat, the UFO nonetheless failed to finish the job once Jerinaldo had been forced out into the open. Bob could thus only speculate that perhaps the aliens simply wanted to demonstrate to their young witness how mean and powerful they were, writing that they behaved like lethal bullies, and that without a doubt Jerinaldo was convinced that they were all of these things.

In an email I had received from Cynthia Newby Luce, who had assisted Bob Pratt on this investigation, she reminisced: “I remember the case so vividly because the burnt tree was still there and the witnesses still so impressed by the incident. In fact, one could still smell the burnt resin. The tree branch looked like a giant had twisted it off. ...The woman that was watching the novela, the soap opera, was in her house very near, like 20 feet max and she looked out the door and saw the whole thing.”

Cynthia also shared her personal thoughts on some of the explanations being offered by certain “experts” for these experiences. For example, she took exception to one claim that “people only remembered abductions under hypnosis” for she has been involved in Brazil with credible cases wherein there were “attempts by UFOs to pull people up...by beams of light or hooks” and “NONE of those people (were) asleep” or had to “recover memories under hypnosis...plus there are often one or more witnesses.” In addition, Cynthia took issue too with what she called the “big claim” that “all perceptions of anomalous phenomena are due to brain chemicals.” “And when one comes back with objections to that hypothesis by saying that it is NOT brain chemicals producing those perceptions, one gets ignored. That is our problem. The so-called ‘scientists’ do not apply their own criteria to something that does not agree with their mind-set.”

Bob Pratt, the author of UFO Danger Zone, referring to Brazil, formerly himself a hard-bitten UFO skeptic, came to make 14 trips to Brazil to investigate the tremendous UFO activity going on there. Besides the terrifying medieval sounding abduction attempts with hooks, he also came across other terrifying episodes. He told me: “They have dropped scalding liquids on others, apparently trying to make them let go of a tree or bush that they were clinging to, and in one case a UFO dropped a slimy substance on a farmer as he tried to hide. Still another UFO dropped a glowing bubble about a meter and a half wide that exploded silently in the faces of a man and his wife riding on a motorcycle. Sometimes people weren't safe even in their own homes because beams of light from UFOs would pierce the tile roofs as if they didn't exist and burn someone inside. Most of these people recovered from their injuries, but several were permanently impaired. I have also investigated a few cases in which victims died during or after an encounter.”



Bob four times had visited the isolated island of Colares, at the mouth of the Amazon, and like Dr. Jacques Vallee, as described in his book Confrontations, interviewed Dr. Wellaide Cecim Corvalho de Oliveira, who during a massive UFO wave there back around 1977 treated no fewer than 35 patients, ages 18 to 50, who all had the same bizarre story. They would report being struck by a white light beam, about 3 inches in diameter, that would strike their neck and torso areas, leaving skin burns that felt “almost as hot as a cigarette burn” to the witnesses.



Afterwards, the light beam would gradually retract and disappear from sight. The victims burns were like a bad sunburn, and in the center of those burns there were often two small puncture like marks. These people would be suffering headaches, be trembling, experiencing dizziness, and their red blood cell levels would drop. After about seven days they usually would return to normal again. However, in the case of one woman, she died of a heart attack about 8 hours after the doctor had treated large burns on her chest. In another case, a fisherman died the same day he was burned. At the time, because of the activity, a strong military presence (along with news media) was on the island observing what was happening. For some reason, the Brazilian Air Force would not allow an autopsy to be done of the man.



Curious, after all of this disturbing high-strangeness that Bob had investigated, I had to ask him if he had developed a pet theory of his own about what was going on. His answer was as follows:

“Nothing about this phenomenon makes sense, nor does any theory. As I said toward the end of my book, a growing number of researchers are coming to believe parallel universes may exist and some believe they actually do exist, side by side with our universe, perhaps in infinite numbers.

“If there are other universes, there must be stars and planets and life in them, just as we have in ours. And if other universes do exist, then it's possible that inhabitants of one or more of those universes have learned how to travel between universes. They come in craft that can counter the pull of our gravity, allowing them to hover silently and motionlessly, and then zip out of sight in seconds.

“They can also pop in and out of our universe at will and maybe into any of several other universes. This could explain why people see UFOs suddenly appear and just as suddenly disappear. It could also explain where UFOs go when they seem to vanish.

“The aliens may just be coming through while passing on to some other universe perhaps. There also may be many different civilizations traveling through space all the time, which could account for the infinite variety of shapes and sizes of UFOs.

“Parallel universes might clarify some abduction reports where people say they are taken to a strange land, a red city, for example, or a land with no sky. The victims might simply be taken into another universe and eventually returned to our own.

“But that's a universe of 'ifs.' It's all just a guess.”

And, alas, MAYBE that does account for the different crafts, beings, and apparent motives. However, sometimes these characters seem almost territorial. I remember being on a radio show one time talking about the Brazilian cases and the main host remarked how this made him think of how it sounded to him like the world was divided up into zones, like gangs who have a turf that belongs to them and another has their own separate turf elsewhere, and so on and so forth.

A few years back, I corresponded with researchers in Peru and found that the contactee movement was flourishing there, much like it was in the United States back in the 1950s. Friendly human-like alien visitors versus our “alien abductions” by the Greys. One researcher in Peru shared with me how many involved in the contactee movement there felt that our “alien abduction” phenomenon was “built up by government confederates in order to scare people away from direct friendly contact.”

I'm sure there's some farmers and peasants in the Brazilian countryside who would strongly disagree. Being beamed aboard a craft for an occasional anal probe seems almost mild in comparison to being hoisted aboard a craft with hooks!

Brazilian General Alfredo Moacyr Uchoa, an engineer and physics professor and the former director of the Military Academy of Brazil (our equivalent of West Point) said that there were indeed various visitors to our planet from space. There were good, bad, and indifferent visitors it seemed. Beginning on July 22, 1968, he and others (often military men and professional business people) began observing UFOs around a farm near Alexania, not far from Brasilia. There were many sightings with many observers. He wrote several books about his experiences. In 1973, he even claimed to have become a telepathic contact with the UFO beings. Bob Pratt interviewed him in 1979, during one of his 14 investigative trips to Brazil.

In December 2005, while attending a UFO conference in Virginia, Cynthia Newby Luce, who had been living in Brazil since 1975 and acted as Bob's guide and Portuguese translator during several of his trips there, introduced me to Denise Uchoa Slater, the granddaughter of General Uchoa. She had become a U.S. Citizen in 1990 and was (and still is) living in Virginia. She had several remarkable memories of UFO experiences there in Brazil, often accompanied by a eerie silence. In one she experienced temporary paralysis as a huge metallic looking craft flew low overhead. In another she and several other young people watched as a “red ball of fire” hovered in the sky, her grandfather relaying a telepathic message from friendly star visitors.

From Denise I learned of an extraordinary incident involving a young girl named Bernadete, who came from a poor family, who worked as her grandmother's cook since about age 14-15. However, she had a rare but deadly disease called Chagas, brought about by the bite of a certain beetle, in which the heart enlarges and eventually causes death. By age 17, she ended up on her death bed at a military hospital. General Uchoa communicated with the UFO beings and asked for help. He himself was a healer, but was unable to help her. The star visitors agreed to help, and so the General signed the young girl out of the hospital and took her to an isolated location to meet the beings. Soon a UFO landed, a being in an aura of blue light walked out. The girl was told to approach the being, she did, and with the injection of a blue light into her left arm from a “huge syringe” looking thing – which was said to have been very painful – two days later, Denise told me, a test showed that her heart had shrunk back to normal size. Later she married, had two sons, both in the army.

“She's the only case of 'spontaneous healing' from Chagas disease alive in the world,” Denise said. “And she was in all the newspapers, TV, and news at the time. It was a huge, huge thing.” On the night of October 25, 1957, in Petropolis, Brazil, a young girl suffering from terminal stomach cancer and who appeared to be on the verge of death, was surrounded by her family and loved ones when her room became lit up by a powerful light that originated from a mysterious object outside. Two dwarfish humanoid figures emerged from the object and entered the house. They approached the girl and with strange instruments proceeded to seemingly treat her medically, and reportedly after about 30 minutes they left, leaving the girl completely cured. Though the identity of the family was not revealed, Anazia Maria, the family’s maid, gave this report to Brazilian journalist Joao Martins:

“The daughter of my employer suffered from cancer of the stomach. She suffered considerably, and I was employed to serve as a sort of governess, and to assist the Senorita Lais, the daughter with cancer. “She had been given many and diverse treatments to control the cancer, but the doctors had said there was no hope. In August of 1957 my employer sent the whole family to a small farm near Petropolis, hoping his daughter would improve in the better climate. But the days passed with no improvement. Lais could no longer eat and her suffering was horrible and became worse every day. She was given constant injections of morphine to control the pain. “I remember the night of 25 October very well. We expected her to die as the pains of Senorita Lais were terrible. The injections seemed to have no effect. Her father was singing a verse when suddenly a strong bright light came on to one side and shown directly on the house. We were all in the room of Senorita Lais whose window was situated exactly on the side of the house from which the light came. The only light inside was a small lamp at the head of the bed.

“LOOK,’ cried Julinho, a brother of the dying girl, as he ran to the window and saw a disc-shaped machine there in the light. It was not very big, and I am not learned enough to be able to say what its diameter might be or its height. I know that it was not very big. The upper part was enveloped in a luminescence of a yellowish-reddish color.

“Suddenly, a port automatically opened in the object and two small beings emerged. They came toward the house while a third one remained in the port of the disc. I noticed on the interior (of the disc) through the port I could see a green light dimly like can be seen in ‘night clubs.’ “The ‘humans’ came into the house. They were short, about 1.20 meters tall, smaller than a younger son of my employer who was 10 years old. They had large heads on top of their shoulders, reddish ears, small slanted eyes (like Chinese), but their skin was a vivid green! “They had something on their hands that I thought were gloves. Their suits were white and seemed to be thick. The chest, the sides and the cuffs shined brightly. I do not know how to explain. They came up to the side of Senorita Lais, who moaned in pain, eyes wide open, and not understanding anything that was going on around her. Nobody moved or spoke in the terrible tension. I was there in the room with Sr. X and his wife, Sr. Julinho and his wife, and Otavinho, the younger son of my employer.

“Those ‘humans’ looked at me silently and stood at the side of the bed and Lais placing the instruments that they carried on the top of the milky coverlet. They made a gesture towards my employer, and one of them placed his hand on the forehead of Sr. X and ‘discussed’ the case of Senorita Lais with a bluish light that showed all of her interior. We saw all there was inside the belly of the girl. With another instrument that emitted a noise, ‘he’ pointed it in the direction of the stomach of Lais and we could see the cancer. This operation lasted about a half hour. Then Senorita Lais went to sleep and ‘they’ left. But before leaving the house, they communicated with Sr. X telepathically that he would have to give her medicine during one month. Then ‘they’ gave him a sphere made of stainless steel-like metal which contained some 30 small white pills. She was to be given one per day and she would be cured. “Lais later returned to her doctor who verified that her cancer had been cured.

“Lais was condemned to die of cancer of the stomach and in spite of this she was saved by an instrument that looked like a flashlight, that emitted rays that ‘dissolved’ the cancer, and she survived. They saved Senorita Lais and the same night returned to the flying machine and were gone.”


Friday, March 29, 2024