In January of 1996, a number of people in Varginha, Brazil, claimed to have witnessed a UFO and encountered one or more extraterrestrials. As the story spread, there were reports the Brazilian military had captured two ETs and the news was picked up by the mainstream media, including The Wall Street Journal in the U.S. While the incident and the eyewitness account by three female witnesses inspired a local disc-shaped water reservoir and tourist sites catering to the story, the military and the Brazilian government have never confirmed the UFO nor the aliens. That may change after this week when a man came forward claiming he was a soldier in 1996, participated in the capture of the aliens and was in very close proximity to one of them.
A sign a city loves its ETs and UFOs
UFO researcher and reporter Edison Bonaventura interviewed Saulo José Machado and posted the video (watch it here in Portuguese) on his Enigmas e Mistérios (Riddles and Mysteries) YouTube channel. Portal Vigilia reviewed the video in Portuguese and Google provided the English translation of this interesting account by Machado – who claims he was a low-ranking junior soldier in January 1996 when his life was changed forever by a trip with other soldiers from his base in Belo Horizonte in southeastern Brazil to Varginha for an undisclosed operation. Make that an unusual operation too – the first thing they noticed was that they were carrying rifles with no ammunition in them. While sweeping the area where they were dropped off, he claims two other soldiers came out of the woods carrying a strange being.
“The first thing that caught my attention was the very large head. The head is completely disproportionate to the body. And a very big red eye. And then, in those 10 or so seconds that I had to observe it, I noticed that it was quite oily. Dark, a reddish more iron-colored, but very oily, and a weird smell that reminded me of acetone.” (Google translation)
In the video, Machado holds up his drawing of the creature and claims he was within five feet of it. His description of it sounds similar to the accounts of the three women, who estimated it to be five feet tall with a large head, large red eyes, thin body, V-shaped feet and brown skin. The mother of two of the girls went to the area and smelled a strong ammonia-like odor. There were reports of a second creature being found by soldiers two days later (Machado claims he was there a day or so after January 20th when the women saw it) as well as other accounts of a UFO crashing and being retrieved by soldiers, who ordered people in the area to say nothing. Some people claimed the two ‘aliens’ were taken to a medical clinic before being removed by the military. A detailed account of the numerous reports was made in on the 20th anniversary in 2016 by South of Minas (read it here).
Varginha without aliens and UFOs
Edison Bonaventura seems to consider Saulo José Machado to be a credible military witness to what would, if real, be Brazil’s Roswell incident. The local police response was that the young women saw “a citizen known as Mudinho, who probably has some mental disability and whose physical characteristics matched the description (…) make it likely that the hypothesis that this citizen, probably being dirty, due to the heavy rains and seen crouching by a wall, was mistaken by the three terrified girls as a space creature.” They say the military and emergency vehicles were actually there to be repaired, and the military claimed that the two ‘creatures’ were most likely an expectant local couple who were dwarfs.
A military witness to UFOs and a ‘shadow person’ at a U.S. Air Force nuclear base came forward this week. Are more military witnesses to UFOs and ETs revealing their stories now that the stigma and the consequences are diminishing? Will this encourage the Brazilian authorities to open the files on the Varginha UFO Incident?
We’ll see.