The UFO situation in the southern hemisphere is REALLY heating up. During the past two weeks, while your editor was on vacation, UFOs hovered over two capital cities of the southern hemisphere.
We’ll be getting to that in a minute. First, however, a word of explanation for those readers who wrote in and asked about attribution. Wherever possible, UFO ROUNDUP lists the name and the date of the newspaper in which a UFO story appeared. But we also receive many stories via the Internet. So from now on, if a story was emailed to us, we’ll identify it at the end in this manner– (Unsolicited Email). If it’s a story your editor tracked down through cyberspace, it’ll be identified as (Email Interview). Okay? And now, on with the news…
HOVERING UFO FILMED BY SOLDIER IN BRASILIA
Brasilia, the capital city of Brazil, was the scene of a major UFO flap on Thursday, August 22, 1996. According to the August 23 issue of Correio Brasiliense, the city’s daily newspaper, a crystalline UFO pursued a car near Lagoa da Paranoa (Lake Paranoa) in the city’s south end, then hovered above the lake, where it was videotaped by a corporal of the Policia Militar.
The incident began at 1 a.m. Banker Agamemnon Nascimento was driving back to Brasilia from Palmas with two companions, Sr. Leite de Oliveira and another unnamed man. As the Beemer reached Ceilandia, a suburb near the lake, one man noticed “strong glowing lights” on his right. Turning, he saw a UFO that “seemed to be made of crystal. It was 2.5 meters (8 feet) in size and had red and blue lights.”
At first, the witness thought he was hallucinating, but Nascimento saw the UFO, too. Immediately he stepped down on the gas pedal. The UFO kept pace with the car, flying an estimated 30 meters (100 feet) above and behind them.
As they reached the lakeshore, Nascimento swerved off the road, and the men got out of the car to observe the object. Nascimento described the UFO as “two upside-down pyramids joined together.” Grabbing his cellular phone, he called the police. Senhor Leite de Oliveira then used the phone to call his son, Marcelo, a photographer and described what was happening.
“The light was so intense that the road seemed to be lit up,” Nascimento said.
The UFO hovered over the lake about 35 degrees above the horizon. Eight police cruisers converged on the scene. The tumult drew about 15 civilian eyewitnesses to the area, as well. All of them watched as the UFO retreated to an altitude of 250 meters (825 feet) above the lake.
The UFO was videotaped by Corporal Jose Raimundo Galdino of the Policia Militar. Galdino shot 8 minutes, 56 seconds of videotape before the object zipped away. Still, photographs were also shot by Marcelo Leite de Oliveira.
Prof. Wilson Gerardi de Oliveira (no relation), an anthropologist and director of ufological studies at the University of Brasilia viewed the Galdino film and said, “It was a very provocative detail, very interesting. The UFO appears to make a vertical movement as if it were diverting its route of flight.”
However, Eduardo Dorneles Barcelos, director of the Brazilian space agency, dismissed the sighting as “a routine meteorological phenomenon.”
POLICE HELICOPTER CHASES UFO IN SOUTH AFRICA
Six days after the flap in Brasilia, a solitary UFO appeared in the early morning sky over Pretoria, the capital of South Africa. The story broke on August 28 in a news report by the South African Broadcasting Co. (SABC-TV) in Johannesburg.
The UFO appeared over Erasmuskloof, a suburb of Pretoria, at 4 a.m. on Wednesday, August 28, 1996. Police Sgt. Johann Becker told SABC-TV that the “light was floating in the air. When we went outside to investigate, we realized it was something from another world.” He described it as “a disc-shaped object slightly glowing. We also noticed what looked like a red triangular light on the disc.”
The sighting took place near the Adrian Vlok police station. At first, when the witnesses called for backup, they were laughed at. But then, as more reports came in from Centurion, South African police responded in force, sending in their Flying Squad (SWAT team), canine unit, and mobile units from all over Pretoria.
The police watched the hovering UFO for 90 minutes. One officer, Nico Stander, reportedly shot videotape of the object.
Meanwhile, the police sent a helicopter to investigate. The chopper was piloted by Col. Fred Vijoen and had four officers aboard. Col. Vijoen was afterward interviewed by SABC-TV.
Col. Vijoen said he spotted “a bright light above Mamelodi, a township near Pretoria, about 70 degrees above the horizon.”
“It is the first time in my life I’ve ever seen anything like this,”
Col. Vijoen said, interviewed by Rapport, the leading South African Sunday newspaper. “At first I thought it was a joke when I was called out, but soon came to realize that this was something I had never experienced before. We were going after it full speed, and it still outran us.”
“What was very unusual were the undulating motions of the craft,” he added. “I followed the white disk with the unusual flight patterns in the direction of Cullinan. It traveled at a high speed. We could not keep up with it, and eventually had to give up when lack of fuel became a problem.”
Add South Africa to the list of southern hemisphere countries that have been visited by UFOs during 1996.
And many thanks to Mike Lindemann and CNI News of September 1, 1996, for forwarding this story to us.
MORE UFOs IN BRAZIL, ARGENTINA AND CHILE
Late August saw South America under a UFO siege. According to the August 18 issue of Correio Brasiliense, the daily newspaper of Brasilia, numerous UFOs have been sighted along the border between Argentina and Chile.
In Talagante, a town 40 kilometers (24 miles) west of Santiago de Chile, “dozens of residents congested the Phone lines of a local broadcasting company to ask for an explanation of what they were seeing,” namely, a large, nickel-colored saucer.
According to Rodrigo Fuenzalida, president of Association de Investigaciones de OVNIs (AION) of Chile, “We think that it could be space rubbish entering Earth’s atmosphere, but we do have our doubts about that. What happened was seen for a very long time in several places in the region (northern Chile). That obliges us to continue to study this phenomenon.”
In addition to the incident in Brasilia, there were three UFO-related incidents in the state of Sao Paulo, according to ufologist Eduardo Mondini of Sumare, who runs the CEPEX study group. All three took place on or about Friday, August 23, 1996.
In Sao Carlos, S.P., residents reported: “uma esquadrilha de OVNIs” (a squadron of UFOs) flying over the city. Sao Carlos is 6 kilometers (4 miles) northwest of Campinas, where the captive Varginha aliens were taken on January 21, 1996.
In Nova Odessa, people heard “a mysterious explosion in the sky.”
And in Sao Roque de Fratura, a fazendeiro (farmhand) spotted a monster, or what he called “um animal extranho” in a coffee field. He described the creature as a quadruped, gray-green in color, approximately 1.5 meters (5 feet) long, with a large head and what looked like “armor” protecting its foreleg shoulders and rear end. He likened it to “a scorpion lacking its pincers and a tail” but with “legs like an ox.” Despite its fearsome appearance, the creature fled back into the jungle when the fazendeiro threw rocks at it. (Editor’s Comment: First Varginha, now Sao Roque. Seems to me that Homo sapiens has this bad habit of throwing rocks at anything they don’t understand.)
UFOs RENDEZVOUS IN SOUTHERN CHINA
On Tuesday night, August 27, 1996, Jean-Michel M. and two friends were relaxing on the balcony of their high-rise apartment house in Macau, China when a squadron of UFOs decided to hold a convention in the southern sky.
“We were on the balcony, and one of my friends saw something in the sky,” Jean-Michel said. “I looked up and saw what appeared to be a star. So I looked back at him and said, ‘You’re very tired.’ But he insisted I look again.”
As he did so, Jean-Michel “saw the star change color very clearly…This was not a star. The colors were too clear and too strong. The color appearing most often was red, and after green, white, but never in the same order. Once I saw the light freeze in white for about five seconds. It was at about 35 degrees (above the horizon) and retreated west-northwest. My friend saw the smaller white stars swing around it. Later on, I saw a lot of very small lights and four large white lights on the horizon, appearing and disappearing in less than a second, moving very fast and leaving fuzzy trails.”
“Later we saw two more coloreds ‘stars’ in the south, moving (in the direction) west-southwest with apparently the same characteristics as the first,” he added, “except they seemed to be more distant (from Macau) and the colors were not as strong.”
The UFOs vanished at precisely 1:40 a.m. (Unsolicited Email) (Note: Jean-Michel wants to know if there were other UFOs seen in east Asia at that time. If you have one to report, either contact us at or contact Jean-Michel.M@macau. ctm.net)
ORANGE SAUCER SIGHTED IN AUSTRALIA
On Sunday, August 18, 1996, a woman and her family spotted a UFO near Bundaberg, Australia, a city on the Queensland coast 250 kilometers (150 miles) north of Brisbane.
“It was a bright orange saucer-shaped object,” Helen M. said. She and her family were staying in Bargara, east of Bundaberg, with another family and helping with the sugar cane harvest. “I was outside…when I noticed what appeared to be a sunrise coming up on the horizon. At that time, the sun had already gone down behind the property. A saucer-shaped object rose rapidly into the sky, then was stationary for a short while before descending again. I had enough time to ask the people what it was, and they said they didn’t have a clue,” although one man thought it might have been a fireworks display in Bundaberg.
“It wasn’t particularly attractive or interesting to look at,” Helen added. “What’s more, it didn’t disintegrate as it went below the horizon but remained solid.” (Unsolicited Email)
THREE UFOs STALL CARS IN MEDFORD, OREGON
Three oblong silvery UFOs, each one approximately 190 feet (57.5 meters) long, flew over Table Rock on Highway 62 just east of Medford, Oregon at 3:45 p.m. on Thursday, August 8, 1996, stalling the cars of several motorists.
According to Mrs. Manora F., her daughter visited a local gas station (the son-in-law’s place of business) and spoke to a handful of motorists whose vehicles had been affected by a strong electromagnetic effect. “A man walked in and said that all the cars on Interstate (Highway) 5 had been affected,” Mrs. F. reported. “Then another woman came into the station and said her car had stalled in town, and she was afraid to drive out there to pick it up until it was checked by her husband. (Later) the mechanic could not find anything wrong with her car.” (Unsolicited Email)
UFOs RANGE ALL OVER ITALY
The Centro Italiano di Studi Ufologici just launched its own weekly online newsletter called the CISU Flash. Issues #1 and #2 are already out and contain some interesting UFO reports from Italy.
In early August, a fiery UFO passed a truck at night on a road outside Vicenza. In addition, a ring of burned grass was found in the village of Lugo Vincentino, near Vicenza. The previous night, onlookers had seen “a bluish-white luminosity on the same hillside.”
On August 10, two men reported seeing “a bright red disc” flying low above a farm in Fontana Rosa, near Avellino. A circle of dry yellowish grass was found the following day.
On August 17, tourists camping out at Varazze, in Savona province watched a round white light in the sky from 1 a.m. until 1:30 a.m. The light gradually changed color from white to yellow. The same day, two daylight discs appeared in the sky over Livigno in central Italy. The UFOs were videotaped by a young man, who turned the tape over to the Carabineri (Italian police).
On August 22, “a large red ball, twice as big as the moon” frightened campers in Baia Domizia, near Caserti, appearing at 9:30 p.m. and hovering for five minutes over the bay. As one tourist lifted his video cam, the UFO sped away.
On August 24, mysterious lights in the sky were seen at Guspini, Cagliara district, on the island of Sardinia. Teenagers watched the lights from 9:30 to 9:40 p.m.
(Source: CISU Flash #1 and #2)
Next week: New information on the Varginha case!
Remember, if you have a recent UFO you want to report, email us @ UFO ROUNDUP pledges to protect the confidentiality of all eyewitnesses. Till next time, here’s wishing our undergrad readers a successful school year, from “the paper that goes home–UFO ROUNDUP!”