Varginha, a small town in the state of Minas Gerais, Brazil, has become famous overnight because of something other than its excellent coffee. Local people celebrate now the four-month anniversary of the most extraordinary close encounter with extraterrestrials ever to be registered in the country.

At 3:30 p.m., on a sunny and bright Saturday afternoon, January 20th, three girls were coming down a narrow path in the area known as Jardim Andere, 2 kilometers away from the city center, when one of them, Liliane Fatima Silva, 16 years old, looked left and screamed. She had seen a strange creature, with slippery brownish skin and what looked like three small rounded horns protruding from its head, at about 7 meters from the point they were standing. It was near the back wall of an old garage.

"He was squatting , with his long arms between his legs," the girls say. "The first thing to call my attention were his eyes, huge and red."

Terrified, Liliane turned her back while her sister Valquiria, 14 years old and their friend Katia Andrade Xavier, 22 years old, stayed looking at the creature, unable to move. "It was not an animal and it wasn't certainly human. It was a horrible thing!" says Katia, who works as a maid and has three children.

"He seemed stupefied. He didn't make any noise," says Valquiria. But then, the creature made a small movement and the three girls ran for dear life. Forty minutes later, Liliane and Valquiria's mother, Luiza Helena, 38 years old, arrived at the place to find out what had scared her daughters so much. She found nothing.

The story has been widely publicized because, apparently without knowing about the incident involving the 3 girls, an elderly couple, Oralina Augusta and Eurico Rodrigues, who work as farmhands, insist on having seen a UFO very early in the morning of January 20th. They were sleeping in their house which is located near the road which goes from Varginha to Tres Coracoes when they woke to the noise made by the cows. They looked out of the window to see the animals totally disoriented and running around the house.

Eurico says: "We looked at the sky and saw a gray object, similar to a submarine, the size of a small bus, flying very slowly over the ground," describes Oralina. "There was something like white smoke coming out of it. There were no lights and it wasn't making any noise." Local people immediately associated this spaceship with the ET who appeared 14 hours later.

The day after, Mr. Ubirajara Franco Rodrigues, a UFOlogist and a lawyer who teaches at one of the four colleges in Varginha, started investigating the incident. Mr. Rodrigues has been studying UFOs for over 20 years now and he says that only 1% of the so-called UFO sightings are authentic. For him, the Varginha episode is the exception which confirms the rule. "What these women saw was, without any doubt, an alien creature", says Mr. Rodrigues. He has also concluded, after his investigation, that at least 2 EBEs (extraterrestrial biological entities) and not only one were seen in town on January 20th.

Since then, a great number of ufologists have visited Varginha. To be more precise, 66 specialists have been to the city to investigate the event. "It is certainly the most extraordinary thing we have ever heard about, and we have lots of registers of UFO apparitions," says Mr. Claudeir Covo, an engineer who is the president of the Instituto Nacional de Investigacao de Fenomenos Aeroespaciais (INFA). Mr. John Mack, a professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School is a specialist in research with human beings who have been in close contact with ETs. He traveled all the way from the U.S. to Varginha especially to do a series of interviews with the three women who said they had seen the alien.

The repercussion of the episode reached beyond the specialists in UFOs. The most popular Brazilian TV program covered the subject three times in less than two weeks and the mayor of Varginha is considering the possibility of organizing an international congress. But before such an event, the ufologists working there intend to finish their investigation which lasts 4 months already and which points at the army as the party responsible for the CAPTURING AND HIDING of at least 1 of the 2 aliens who are supposed to have been seen in Varginha. In a report signed by 10 DIFFERENT ORGANIZATIONS, they unveil "a REAL, complex operation involving military personnel as well as civilians, which resulted in the capture of unidentified biological creatures. These creatures", according to these organizations,"were kept under medical observation for some time and later on removed from the city."

Apart from Mr. Rodrigues, another ufologist, Mr. Vitorio Pacaccini, 31 years old, has been traveling to the area over the past few weeks. Both specialists swear to have listened to 14 witnesses of the ET episode, among which 4 people from the army. But they refuse to reveal any names or evidence, apart from a photograph of a supposed interview with 1 of the officers or soldiers who would have participated in the operation. The ufologists insist that an alien would have been captured by 4 firemen at 10:30 a.m., on January 20th near a wood which is located a few meters from the place where the girls would have seen their ET and about 5 hours before Liliane, Valquiria and Katia had the fright of their lives.

According to the ufologists, the alien was immediately placed inside a wooden box, covered with a white cloth, put inside an army truck and taken to the Escola de Sargentos das Armas, in Tres Coracoes, a bigger town about 25 kilometers from Varginha. The day after, still according to the specialists, another ET would have been seen at the Hospital Regional, in the city center and this time, yes, it would be the alien seen by the 3 girls. In an operation involving military personnel from the Escola de Sargentos, officers from the military police and the fire brigade, the ET, said Mr. Rodrigues and Mr. Pacaccini, would have been taken, before dawn, on Monday, January 22nd to the Hospital Humanitas, the best hospital in the area, 1.5 kilometers from the city centre. At about 6:00 o'clock p.m., on the same day, the ET, already dead would have been taken back to the Escola de Sargentos in one truck which was part of a convoy of three vehicles.

The same convoy would leave the school in Tres Coracoes at 4:00 o'clock a.m., on Tuesday, January 23rd. Destination: Campinas (a much bigger city upstate Sao Paulo) where the "cargo" would have been delivered to another military unit, probably the Army Cadets Prep School.

"All this operation was coordinated by lieutenant-colonel Olimpio Wanderley Santos," says Mr. Rodrigues. "We have the testimony of an army officer from the Escola de Sargentos in Tres Coracoes who was directly involved in the operation. He describes in detail everything that happened during those days," adds Mr. Pacaccini. In the 42-minute recording, this person says that decomposition had already begun and when the corpse left Hospital Humanitas the smell was pretty bad.

The army, of course, denies everything. The mouthpiece for the East Military Area, colonel Luiz Cesario da Silveira Leite, says that no military personnel of any kind helped capture an alien. "We worry a lot about national and international beings but only if they are terrestrials...", said the colonel to the reporter. The colonel has also classified as "exaggerated" all the connections between the ET and the army.

"What the ufologists say is ridiculous", says general Sergio Pedro Coelho Lima, the commanding officer of the Escola de Sargentos. According to him, the Air Force is the military organization which looks after extraterrestrial phenomena. The Centro Integrado de Defesa Aerea e controle de Trafego Aereo (CINDACTA) located in Brasilia has a dossier about UFOs.

"It is true that there are lots of cases which remain unsolved until today", confirms brigadier Cherubim Rosa Filho, a minister of the Military Supreme Court. One of the most famous cases involving an ex-minister, was confirmed by brigadier Otavio Moreira Lima (the minister for the Air Force at that time) and is now celebrating its 10th anniversary without any conclusive facts.

But what made the Varginha episode unique are some of the details which only now are known to the public and which intensify the mystery involving the whole thing. Luiza Helena, the mother of Liliane and Katia, the girls who insist having seen the ET, insists that at the beginning of this month, 4 men wearing suits came to her house and offered to pay a large sum if her daughters denied their contact with the alien.

"They said they would pay cash," says Luiza. "They also said they would come back, but we can't hide the truth." The 4 men did not identify themselves and only the girls were present when they arrived. Their father, Joao Lopes da Silva, a bus conductor, was working when the attempted bribery happened. The coincidence between what the ufologists had discovered and these facts only got publicized last week.

The administrator of Hospital Regional, Adilson Usier Leite, confirms that the week after the appearance of the supposedly ET, the 2 city hospitals went through unusual commotion. In the Hospital Regional, a car belonging to the fire squad brought a corpse which, they said, had been exhumed and needed an X-ray. The body was said to belong to a young boy, a university student and the son of an influential family in town who had been found dead in a cell, at the police station, after having been arrested for burglary. At the Hospital Humanitas, also administered by Mr. Leite at the time, the unusual movement was connected with the arrival of new equipment to be used during the first heart transplant to be done in Varginha. "When everybody started talking about this ET story, I thought it would be better not to mention that policemen and firemen had been at the hospital," says Mr. Leite.

But nothing convinces the ufologists. They insist that they are telling the truth when they say that instead of new equipment or a special criminal occurrence, both hospitals in town as well as the fire brigade were trying to HIDE THE BODY of an ET. And they go further: last Tuesday, Mr. Rodrigues and Mr. Pacaccini went back to Varginha after having been to Campinas. "We know without any shadow of doubt, that the creature was autopsied by Dr. Badan Palhares," says Mr. Rodrigues referring to the very well-known coroner of the Universidade de Campinas (UNICAMP). "By now, it is very likely that the body has already been flown from Brazil to the U.S.A.," finished Mr. Pacaccini.

"I don't know where this idea came from", denies Dr. Palhares in Campinas.

Public Report Signed by Brazilian Organizations Interested in the Varginha ET:

The Brazilian ufologists here represented by the organizations they belong to, after more than 3 months of intensive investigation, have no doubts of any sort that what happened in Varginha in January of 1996 was a gigantic cover up operation involving military personnel and civilians, and which resulted in the CAPTURE OF BIOLOGICALLY UNIDENTIFIED CREATURES. These creatures were KEPT UNDER MEDICAL OBSERVATION AND LATER ON WERE REMOVED FROM THE TOWN. This is a unique event in Brazil with unimaginable repercussion both scientific and philosophical. However, ufologists all over the world have come to the consensus that there is a widespread tendency for countries where these events take place to hide them from the public.

Ufology has been fighting for over 50 years now so as to make sure people in general have access to information about such events since the right to have access to the truth should be unquestionable to all humanity.

If you are a direct or indirect witness to the Varginha episode, get in touch with us since this event may have an enormous significance to all mankind. Be sure your anonymity will be preserved. Researchers, journalists and specialists are united in this task. Our telephone number for contacts is: (035)222-1020 -- Varginha -- Minas Gerais.

Signed by:

Claudeir Corvo -- Instituto Nacional de Investigacao de Fenomenos Aeroespaciais.

Edson Boaventura Jr. and Jamil Vilanova -- Grupo Ufologico do Guaruja -- Sao Paulo

Oswaldo and Eduardo Mondini -- Centro de Pesquisas Exologicas -- Sumare -- Sao Paulo

Centro Brasileiro de Pesquisas de Discos Voadores e revista UFO 0 Campo Grande -- Mato Grosso

Marco Antonio Petit de Castro -- Associacao Fluminense de Estudos Ufologicos -- Itaipava -- Rio de Janeiro

Rafael Cury -- Associacao Nacional dos Ufologos do Brasil -- Curitiba -- Parana

Irene Granchi -- Centro de Investigacao sobre a natureza dos Extraterrestres -- Rio de Janeiro

Marco Antonio Rodrigues Silva -- Grupo de Estudos de Objetos nao Identificados -- Sao Paulo

Vitorio Pacaccini -- Centro de Investigacao Civil de Objetos Aereos Nao Identificados -- Belo Horizonte -- Minas Gerais

Ubirajara Franco RodriguesCentro Brasileiro de Pesquisa de Discos Voadores -- Campo Grande -- Mato Grosso.

Copyright (c) 1996 The Alberta UFO Research Association
[NOTE: This article originally published in the ISTOE magazine in Brazil.
Translation by Regina Guimaraes mailto:reginag@originet.com.br]