Things are really heating up south of the equator, readers.
VARGINHA CASE BLOWS WIDE OPEN
The reported capture of aliens at Varginha, in the state of Minas Gerais, on Saturday, January 20, 1996 continues to make headlines in Brazil.
The July 1996 issue of UFO Magazine, published in the capital city of Brasilia, contains more detailed information on the saucer crash and subsequent capture of its alien occupants.
According to ufologist Pedro Cunha, witnesses in Varginha now claim that up to seven occupants were captured. The group included one dead alien, two badly injured and five more flushed out of hiding in the neighborhood of the Jardim Andere, a park on the north side of the city. The dead alien was first taken to the Regional Hospital in Varginha on January 20 before being shipped on to the Hospital Humanitas in Campinas in Sao Paulo state for an autopsy.
The magazine article published more detailed descriptions of the UFO occupants by the three girls who encountered an injured one in the Jardim Andere at 3:30 p.m. on January 20. The girls were Liliane Fatima Silva, 16, her younger sister, Valquiria Fatima Silva, 14, and their friend, Katia Andrade Xavier, 22, all of Varginha. The girls were walking home from their jobs as housemaids when Liliane spotted an alien crouched about 25 feet away.
In this week’s article, the girls described the alien as “being dark brown, with a small body of 4 to 5 feet in height, no hair at all, big brown head, small neck. It also seemed to have some greasy dark oil on its skin. The head of the creature had two big red eyes, no pupils, very small mouth and nose and three protuberances on the head. The girls described such protuberances as horns.”
On Sunday, June 16, the show “Programma de Domingo” aired a Varginha story on Brazilian TV. According to this story, many witnesses saw Brazilian Army trucks heading for the Jardim Andere at around 10:30 a.m. on January 20. The show also revealed that the Varginha Fire Department received its first call just after 9:30 a.m. Someone complained of “a wild animal” loose in the park. Figuring that they were after a jaguar or a peccary, the firefighters arrived with nets and cages. When they encountered their first injured alien, the crew chief immediately put a call through to the nearest Army base, the Escola Sargentos de Armas in Tres Coracoes. He reportedly spoke to the school’s commandant, Gen. Sergio Coelho Lima, who ordered troops into Varginha to seal off the park.
“Programma de Domingo” also identified the men involved in the three-truck convoy that transferred the aliens to Campinas on January 22. According to the broadcast, Lt. Col. Olimpio Wanderly Santos commanded the convoy, accompanied by two officers, Captain Ramirez and Lieutenant Tide, plus a Sergeant Pedrosa from S-2, Brazilian military intelligence. Corporal Cirilo and Sergeant Pedrosa drove the middle truck with the aliens inside. The other trucks were driven by Private Vassalo and Private de Mello.
Gen. Coelho Lima is reportedly cracking down on leaks in his command. Soldiers have been warned not to talk to ufologists like A.J. Gevaerd, Pedro Cunha and Vitorio Pacaccini. Personnel returning to Tres Coracoes from leave have been confined to barracks and, at last report, at least one talkative sergeant is in the guardhouse. (Note: Tres Coracoes is also the birthplace and childhood home of Brazilian soccer star Pele.)
AGENTS TAGGED IN UFO HUSH MONEY PAYOFF
Rumors of American involvement in the Varginha saucer retrieval and alien roundup of January 20 – 22 continue to surface. According to Brazil’s UFO Magazine, an American civilian was present when the wrecked cigar-shaped UFO was loaded aboard a flatbed truck the morning of January 20.
The crash site is said to be “north of Varginha.” Wherever it is, it had to be within easy walking distance for the two injured aliens, as they reached the jungle-covered Jardim Andere before daybreak, i.e. before 5 a.m. The most likely sites are the coffee-growing country northwest of Varginha, between the village of Tres Pontes and the reservoir, and the forested serra, or ridges east of Tres Pontes. Both areas are within 10 kilometers (6 miles) of Varginha.
The UFO was first seen at 1 a.m. by Eurico and Oralina Rodrigues at their farm midway between Varginha and Tres Coracoes. The cigar-shaped UFO was flying slowly and enveloped in white smoke. The crash must have happened between 1 a.m. and 5 a.m.
Brazil’s UFO Magazine claims that the North American Air Defense Command (NORAD) tracked the UFO late Friday night, January 19, and alerted Brazil’s CINDACTA that it was coming down somewhere in southern Minas Gerais.
Luiza Helena Fatima de Silva, mother of two of the girls who saw the alien in the Jardim Andere on January 20, says she “noticed a peculiar smell” when she went to the park at 4 p.m. Senhora de Silva also claims that she was visited by four men last February. The unidentified men, who were not Brazilian, wore white and cream Armani suits and offered Senhora de Silva “a large sum of cash” if she would come forward and tell the media that her daughters had made up the story about the alien.
Senhora de Silva said the men showed up at her house while her husband, Jose Lopes de Silva, a bus driver, was at work. “They said they would pay cash,” she said. “They also said they would come back but we cannot hide the truth.”
(Persistent rumors that cannot be substantiated – Senhora de Silva’s callers drove a navy-blue 1994 Lincoln Continental with Distrito Federal (Brasilia) license plates. The presence of a USAF transport plane, either a C-5 or a C-17, at Sao Paulo International Airport on January 20 and at Campinas airport on January 22. The presence of several unidentified American men at the restaurant Churrascaria Gaucha, Avenida Dr. Campos Sales 515 in Campinas late in the evening of January 21.)
AMERICAN AND BRITISH UFOLOGISTS AT VARGINHA CONFERENCE
A large contingent of American and British UFO researchers were on hand at the big conference in Curitiba, Parana state, Brazil from June 5 to June 9. The conference was sponsored by A.J. Gevaerd and several Brazilian UFO research groups.
During the conference, John Carpenter and Stanton Friedman of the USA and Britain’s Graham Birdsall interviewed Vitorio Pacaccini, 31, an engineer from Belo Horizonte. Pacaccini briefed the trio on the Varginha case for over two hours.
Arriving back in the USA on June 13, Carpenter said of Varginha, “In short, it’s a darn good case. I’d say it may be equal to Roswell.”
UFOs BUZZ AUSTRALIA’S THREE LARGEST CITIES
Australia just finished the third week of a UFO flap that shows no signs of dying down. On Wednesday, June 19, the Australian national television network, TEN TV, aired video footage of the bright orange UFO that cavorted over the city of Adelaide four days earlier.
The flap hit high gear last weekend when orange UFOs appeared suddenly over Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide. (See “UFOs Trouble Hotline” in the Melbourne Sunday Sun-Herald for June 16, 1996).
According to Ross Dowe of Australia’s National UFO Hotline, his staff received “about a dozen calls” on Friday night, June 14, with excited callers describing “strange bright orange lights” over their neighborhoods.
On Saturday night, June 15, the lights were seen again in downtown Adelaide, in the Sydney suburbs of Sutherland and Parramatta, and at Kew near Melbourne. In Kew, residents saw “five orange illuminations going straight up into the sky.”
On Sunday, June 16, more lights were seen in Melbourne, and a single glowing UFO was videotaped in Adelaide.
Outlying regions of Australia were not spared, either. Orange UFOs were reported at Mudgeeraba in Queensland, at Campbelltown in South Australia and over the nation’s capital, Canberra.
“We normally receive calls just in one area,” Ross Dowe told the Sun-Herald. “But if this is a hoax, it’s a hoax that’s been done on the national scale over the past six weeks.”
On Monday, June 17, radio listeners in Melbourne heard the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) announce the formation of a commission to study “mysterious lights in the sky.” However, other correspondents in Australia dispute this report.
On Tuesday, June 18, Melbourne saw yet another overflight of orange lights. This was described as a group of 10 orange UFOs arrayed in triangular formation, flying northeast of the city. Several people watched the aerial procession fly over Preston on its way to Eltham.
MORE WEIRD UFOs VISIT CENTRAL CALIFORNIA
On June 16, while heading east on Highway 108, a Sonora man picked up a hitchhiker, a 34-year-old woman who lives in a trailer park in Calaveras County. As they drove along, she told him about an a pair of recent odd UFO sightings.
According to the woman, on Saturday afternoon, June 15, she saw “a type of UFO that looked like a huge bubble” near Twain Harte, a small town east of Sonora, just across the Stanislaus River. She described the “bubble” as looking like “a gelatinous mass that is covering a large area,” transparent but “sort of an opaque gray color.” Within the bubble she could make out a number of occupants. The occupants appeared only in silhouette and left no features that she could identify.
She also told our informant of an earlier sighting “a month ago,” about one mile northwest of Tuolomne City. This town, located in the Stanislaus National Forest, is 8 miles west of Twain Harte and closer to Sonora. No exact date was available, but hikers reportedly saw a disc-shaped UFO descend slowly to the forest floor, and then “it just vanished instantly.”
Curiously enough, a few minutes later, a helicopter with the white letters UN on its side hovered over the forest meadow. The helicopter flew back and forth for several moments, as if “searching for something” and then turned about and flew away to the west. (Note: This is the fourth UFO report from central California in just over a month. Earlier 1996 sightings were near Modesto, near Nikolaus and in Sacramento)
CLUB NEWS – Looking for the right UFO club? Well, come to the Nites. If you would like more info, contact the Nites at Niteloyal@aol.com.
And that’s it for this week. If you have a recently-sighted UFO to report, email us at . Have a great week!