DAYLIGHT DISC FILMED IN NEW BRAUNFELS, TEXAS
On Thursday morning, September 12, 1996, Bert Linartz and his wife were at home in New Braunfels, Texas (population 23,000) when they saw a light in the sky “as bright as a star.” At first, Mr. Linartz “thought it was a hot-air balloon.” As it approached, however, he described it as “a white-colored light that appeared saucer-shaped. Not the thin, long saucer but the thicker-shaped saucer.”
Grabbing his camcorder, Mr. Linartz shot several minutes of videotape, showing the UFO hovering in the sky. According to UFO buff Daniel Michael, who copied the tape from a news broadcast Friday, the tape shows a daytime scene, a blue sky with no clouds, and the white UFO hovering clearly in the sky. “A bird flew overhead near the tree and can be seen in the picture (with the UFO) at the same time.”
At the end of the video clip, the UFO zigzags to the rear, then flies off at a very high speed in the same direction from which it approached.
The Linartz video was broadcast Friday, September 13, during the noontime news show on Channel 7, KTBC-TV in Austin, Texas. At 10 p.m., Channel 36, KXAN-TV, aired it again.
New Braunfels is located at the junction of Interstate 35 and Texas Highway 46, about 30 miles northeast of San Antonio. Both the MUFON central office at Seguin and Kelly Air Force Base are close to the site. A spokesman for Kelly Air Force Base said there was no blip on the base radar at the time of the sighting.
MUFON is currently evaluating the Linartz video.
KXAN-TV does have an email address. Readers can reach them at news36@kxan.com. (Email Interview)
UFOLOGISTS SEEK BOOTLEG VIDEO OF VARGINHA ALIENS
In Brazil, the hunt is on for a videotape of the five aliens who survived a UFO crash north of Varginha, Minas Gerais state, last January 20.
According to Brazil’s Planeta magazine, published August 23, while the aliens were being held at the Hospital Humanitas in Campinas on January 21 and 22, they were filmed by an officer of the Servico de Intelligencia do Exercito (Army Intelligence Service), better known as S-2.
On May 30, 1996, Minister of the Army Zenildo Zoroastro de Luneta reportedly convened a meeting of 30 senior officers to discuss the Varginha case. According to Rogerio Porto Breir, the Planeta article’s author, the generals met at the headquarters of the 2nd Regiment of Combat Vehicles, 11th Armored Infanty Battalion at Pirassununga in Sao Paulo state. Present at the meeting with de Luneta were Army chief of staff Gen. Paulo Neves de Aquino and Gen. Sergio Coelho Lima, who commanded the alien capture/saucer retrieval operation.
Gen. Coelho Lima reportedly briefed the others on the capture and then passed around still color photographs of the aliens. Afterward, Gen. Neves de Aquino reportedly had a VCR brought in so they could all watch the videotape. When it was over, several officers said they wanted to go to Campinas to see the aliens “in the flesh.” However, Minister de Luneta allegedly told them that this was not possible because the aliens were “now at a detention camp in the EUA (United States).”
According to Brazilian ufologist Pedro Cunha, someone at S-2 headquarters in Campinas made a copy of the official tape and brought it home with him. Months later, the soldier’s 16-year-old daughter Rosalia and her best friend, Capitolina, were rummaging through the family’s video collection when they found the unmarked tape. Thinking it contained X-rated entertainment, Rosalia and Capitolina put it in the VCR. Instead of a sex scene, the girls watched open-mouthed as “horrible creatures” ambled around what looked like a hospital room. Horrified by the aliens’ appearance, they began screaming. Rosalia’s father rushed into the room, saw what they were watching, and began yelling at both girls. He then confiscated the videotape and told them both to forget they ever saw it. Instead, the girls told all their friends at school, and by now the story is all over the state of Sao Paulo.
The Planeta article also offered more precise information about the Varginha incident, which is summarized below:
Liliane Fatima da Silva, 16; her sister, Valquiria Fatima da Silva, 14; and their friend, Katia Andrade Xaiver, 22, saw the alien in an empty lot across the street from Rua de Benevenuto Braz Vieira 76, in the Jardim Andere section of Varginha at 3:30 p.m. on January 20, 1996.
Valquiria Fatima da Silva described the alien as “the color of a giant ox heart” (reddish-brown) and 1.6 meters (five feet, four inches) tall. She said the alien had “shiny dark brown oily skin with many bulging veins, two legs with enormous two-toed feet, two arms and small hands with three long, tapered fingers, a big head with three bone formations on top. Its eyes were red in color and protruded like a frog’s eyes. It had two nostrils in front with no discernible nose, a small mouth and a thin, black tongue.”
Lt. Col. Olimpio Wanderley Santos’s convoy, with the five captured aliens aboard, drove from the Escola de Sargentos das Armas in Tres Coracoes to Campinas in Mercedes Benz Type 1418 military trucks.
According to the Planeta article, there is one eyewitness to the capture who desperately wants to remain anonymous. The witness, a man in his 20s who was discharged from the Brazilian army during the past year, was on the Rua de Suecia, Jardim Andere in Varginha at 2 p.m. on January 20. He says he saw a platoon of S-2 soldiers dressed in tropical jungle camoflauge and toting FN-FAL automatic rifles enter a small forested ravine near the street. He heard three gunshots in quick succession. Having used an FN-FAL in the army, he recognized its distinctive sound. From his hiding place at the corner of a house, he watched as the soldiers emerged from the woods carrying two body bags. There was a small body in each bag. One didn’t move–the other kicked and thrashed and struggled as if trying to get out.
(Editor’s comment: This guy is scared shitless! As you would be, too, if you were the only eyewitness to the S-2 blowing somebody away.)
For readers who’d like a first-hand account of the Varginha case, UFO ROUNDUP has the “snail mail” address of two of the girls. Address your letters to…
Srta. Liliane e Valquiria Fatima da Silva
Rua Tapajos 41
Jardim Andere
Varginha, M.G.
BRASIL
NEW UFO LANDING IN BRAZIL
On Sunday, September 8, 1996, a triangular UFO landed at Piracicaba, in the coffee-growing region of the state of Sao Paulo. Several people saw it touch down. A hatch opened, and three occupants floated to the ground. Witnesses described the occupants as approximately 50 centimeters (1 foot, 10 inches) tall, wearing a coverall garment and with heads “very large and far out of proportion to their bodies.”
On Tuesday, September 10, 1996, a domed saucer with flashing lights was seen in the night sky over Guarabira, in the state of Paraiba, in the Brazilian “Sertao” or Northeast. Local ufologist Oriel Farias described the UFO as “very similar to the one seen in Brasilia last week.” Guarabira has been ground zero for an ongoing UFO flap that began on April 5.
On Wednesday, September 11, 1996, residents of Guarabira were startled by an overflight of “several small gray saucers,” about the size of a volleyball. The UFOs careened through the late evening sky and were videotaped by several people, including members of the Paraiba UFO study group. According to Oriel Farias, this group now has over 16 hours of videotape on the UFOs of Guarabira. (Unsolicited Email)
BEN AND STEVE’S UFO ADVENTURE
Chalk up another UFO sighting for Gisborne, North Island, New Zealand. At 8 p.m. on Saturday, August 31, 1996, two boys, Ben and Steve, ages 10 and 13 respectively, were on the hill opposite Haache Road, near Darwin Road, in Gisborne when they spotted something unusual in the night sky. The boys saw “a glowing green shape about the size of a half (New Zealand) dollar zigzagging about the sky for several seconds.” The UFO then “zoomed off and then disappeared in the northwest,” over the mountains toward Tauranga and the Bay of Plenty. “It made no sound, and they could not make out any particular shape. They went straight home and told their mother.” (Thanks, and a tip of the saucer to Norm W., our correspondent in New Zealand)
FIVE UFOs SEEN IN THE PENNSYLVANIA MOUNTAINS
A UFO incident, possibly involving “missing time,” occurred in Boswell, Pennsylvania on July 16, 1996. The town of Boswell (population 1,480) is located in the Appalachian Mountains on Pennsylvania Highway 601, about fifteen miles southwest of Johnstown. The incident involved an elderly couple, George and Edna P. and three of their neighbors.
According to George, a World War II veteran, “There were five diamond-shaped objects varying in pulsating lights of blue, red and green. They were soundless. About 180 feet (54.5 meters) up (above ground). They came and went at high rates of speed.”
George tried to look at them through a pair of binoculars. He said he “couldn’t take his eyes off the UFOs” and “an overwhelming fear came over me.” Suddenly, three jets appeared on the horizon, and the UFOs took off “at an incredible speed.” The objects’ departure was also seen by three of their neighbors.
Although he has “long been a skeptic,” considering UFOs “so much tomfoolery,” George has been troubled by the encounter. After the sighting, he said, “I noticed that my watch was an hour off.” He has also reported having recurring dreams in which a shadowy someone shoves something in his nose. In addition, since the encounter, Edna has developed a muscular problem with her arm that her doctor cannot explain.
(Email Interview)
UFO RETURNS TO SAVONA
On Sunday, August 25, 1996, at 5:40 p.m., ten people in Alassio, a small town in Italy’s Savona province, witnessed a UFO overflight with their binoculars. The UFO came in from the sea and hovered over the town for ten minutes, making lateral motions.
Later the same evening, at 9:30 p.m., a second UFO flew over Alassio. Witnesses described it as “a rotating UFO with lights all around” its equator.
(Thanks to CISU Flash #3 for this story)
ANDEAN UFO IDENTIFIED AS A RUSSIAN SPACECRAFT
At 9 p.m. on August 14, 1996, nearly a hundred people in the northern border area of Argentina and Chile “observed a strange phenomenon” which was described as “a ring-shaped object crossing the sky from north to south.”
This week the Harvard Observatory in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA identified the UFO as exhaust from a rocket motor “burn.” The spacecraft was a Molniya-IT satellite launched from the Plesetsk cosmodrome in Russia’s Arctic region. The spacecraft was on a north to south polar orbit, ranging from 207 to 438 kilometers above the Earth. The satellite’s Blok-ML booster stage fired at 9 p.m. over the Andes, a spokesman for the observatory said, and the angle of the sun made the exhaust plume visible to observers on the ground.
(Editor’s Comment: Well, that explains the “ring-shaped UFO,” but what about the nickel-colored saucer seen flying over Talagante, Chile?)
Remember, if you have any UFO news, be sure to send it to us. We’ll be back next week with more on the latest sightings of unidentified flying objects. In the meantime, best wishes from “the paper that covers the saucers–UFO ROUNDUP!