Varginha UFO Encounter

 

A very important case was reported in January 1996 in Varginha, Brazil. Given the number of witnesses, the recovered physical evidence and the claimed capture of several alien creatures, according to the investigators, the case rivals Roswell. In fact, if all is true about these sightings, it is the most important of the UFO retrievals to have been reported in South America.

Varginha, Brazil

I confess that I hadn’t paid much attention to this case because it was nearly impossible for me to travel to Brazil to interview the witnesses and examine the evidence. However, I have read Thiago Luis Ticchetti’s report on the case and I know him to be a careful and reliable investigator. We have corresponded for many years, and he has verified the information about this event that I am reporting here.

According to his investigation there were UFO sightings in the region in the days that preceded the main event. There were many witnesses to strange lights in the region. It was reported that many local investigators assumed that the Brazilian authorities had been warned that US satellites had detected flying objects in the area.

That is an interesting claim. The locals were reporting the strange lights, orbs and even cigar-shaped objects and the US military had detected some of that activity. If true, that is an amazing fact because it reveals that the United States had the capability to detect these things and that there was coordination between the US and Brazil in that investigation decades ago, but kept that information secret. In fact, there seemed to be an indication that something had crashed near Varginha, and that the Brazilian military not only knew where it had hit but had recovered it.

Ticchetti reported that a businessman and ultra-light pilot Carlos de Souza, said that on January 13, early in the morning, as he drove along about five kilometers from Varginha, he thought his engine was making noise. He stopped and got out. He spotted what he described as a cylindrical airship flying about a hundred fifty feet overhead. He said that it was metallic, polished and reflected the sun. He saw a hole in the right side that was pouring smoke. He believed the craft was about to crash.

He decided to go in search of the wreck but the roads in the area made it difficult. He finally found a dirt road and arrived at a field filled with metallic debris that he said looked more like tinfoil than anything else. He picked up a piece that was thin and light and when wadded seemed to return to its original shape. Yes, this sounds suspiciously like descriptions of the metallic debris found in New Mexico in 1947 by Major Jesse Marcel, Sr.

In the distance there was an Army helicopter, two tarps, an ambulance and three cars. Before he had gotten too close, he was approached by two soldiers shouted, “Go away. You saw nothing.”

Souza didn’t move right away but two more soldiers appeared to back up the first two. They forced him from the scene. He left, drove to a restaurant and was approached by a stranger who asked if he was Souza. When he said, “Yes,” the man told him, “What you saw, I saw, too. You should not talk to anyone about it.” I’m not sure how the stranger knew Souza’s name or what he had seen.

There were allegedly others who had seen part of the retrieval operation, but most haven’t told anyone what they saw. Joao Bosco Manoel said that he saw a parked fire truck. He walked over to half a dozen fire fighters and asked what had happened. He knew that something weird was going on but wasn’t sure what it was.

Again, according to what Ticchetti learned, Manoel finally saw four gloved fire fighters carrying a net with a strange creature inside it. He didn’t see much else, and it appeared that the fire fighters were attempting to conceal the creature from the onlookers. When they reached their truck, other fire fighters there helped load the creature into the truck.

There were other reports and other witnesses to all the strangeness. This all seemed to suggest there had been three strange creatures that were eventually captured by the military, the fire department or the police. Souza, among others saw the remains of a wrecked craft, and, according to Souza, the debris displayed a technology that doesn’t exist on Earth. At least that was what he said later.

According to Ticchetti, the report that garnered the most media and worldwide attention was made by Katia Andrade Xavier, Liliand Fatima de Silva and Valquiria Aparecida Silva who were young women and teenagers. They were outside a local restaurant when the saw a thin, dark-skinned, hairless creature that had two legs with enormous feet. They said it had two arms and hands, each with three fingers and a huge head with three bony protrusions on its head, one on each side and one in the middle, The also saw three huge red eyes.

They thought it was a statue, but it then turned its head. Because of the blazing red eyes, they thought it was the devil. They fled, running home to tell their mothers what they had seen. They all, mothers and daughters, returned to the area where the devil had been but there was nothing there except large footprints and a horrible odor.

This is the report that I heard originally, and I was not overly impressed by it. Three young women, the oldest twenty-two and the youngest just fourteen, didn’t seem to be reliable. They were terrified by the weird creature, and it seemed to me to be a case of overreaction to something mundane seen under strange circumstances even if it was in the middle of the afternoon. But I have since learned more about the sequence of the events and the involvement of government officials from Brazil and the US.

On January 20 there was bad weather with pouring rain and huge hailstones falling in and around Varginha. The police and fire fighters again in the area. The bad weather provided them with a cover story. They told the residents they were looking for damage from the storm. It was clear that they knew there were other creatures in the area and that they were searching for them. They didn’t care about storm damage.

Some three hours later, between 6:15 and 7:30 p.m., two members of the Intelligence Service, Marco Eli Chereze and Eric Lopes were in search of the creature. By the time they were on the scene, the story told by the girls was well known in and around the city. Ordered into the area by their superiors, Chereze and Lopes spotted something in the shadows. Both got out of their truck and according to the report, they pursued it, whatever it was, into a nearby pasture. They realized that it wasn’t an animal but thought it was an injured and deformed human.

It did not struggle as they approached and captured it. Despite its strange appearance, they put it in their car. They drove the creature to a health post in the city but were turned away by the medical staff. They then drove to the Hospital Regional de Minas in Varginha. It wasn’t long before the hospital was filled with police and military personnel. The hospital staff gave the creature oxygen but died. The body was taken to the Hospital Humanitas.

On January 22, the governmental authorities began a cover-up operation as they transferred the bodies. Fifteen people were involved in the transfer, including doctors, nurses and soldiers. Apparently, three creatures had been captured. two were alive and one was dead. The two living creatures died quickly. All were taken away in three trucks.

Witnesses to all this included Dr. Marcos Carvalho and Eduardo Bertoldo Praxedes and a watchman at the Parmalat Factory. The watchman said that for several days there had been unusual activity at the nearby Army Cadets Preparatory School.

Eventually, the creatures were taken to University of Campinas where medical examiners performed autopsies by Badan Palhares and Conradin Metz. Lab workers reported they were prevented from entering the restricted areas where the creatures were taken. According to three other military sources, one of the dead creatures was taken to underground labs at the university. All of this was deemed highly unusual and there were rumors about strange metal fragments taken to the Aeronautical Technological Center in Sao dos Campos, where they were examined in underground labs which seemed to confirm the weirdness of the situation.

Back at the university, employees there said they saw a metallic box delivered, with what appeared to be air holes in it, that was linked to Palhares. A nurse accompanied two soldiers carrying the box to the room where they left it. No one was allowed to enter but Palhares who was seen carrying fruits, vegetables and milk into the room. That raised questions about what was in the box and in the room. Some mentioned a terrible odor, which had been associated with the creatures captured around Varginha.

On January 23, a propeller-driven aircraft used for moving cargo and passengers took off from the Canoas Air Base carrying three containers, a box and soldiers. The plane was alleged to be carrying a new radar system for Varginha because of the UFO activity around the city.

Two days later, on January 25, a helicopter carrying US military personnel landed at the regional airport. Intelligence specialists also arrived. The next day there was the arrival of NASA representatives. The NASA personnel were allegedly there to select Brazilian scientists for future space flight missions. No explanation was offered for the others.

While all this seemed strange and more than a little coincidental, there were other developments. In early February, Marco Eli Chereze, one of the two soldiers who had captured one of the alien creatures, became sick. He had a fever and aches all over his body. He was admitted to one hospital but then was transferred to the intensive care ward in the Regional Hospital. He died the following day. He was buried quickly. Doctors said he suffered from a very serious disease, and they were worried about contamination. I have to wonder if they really would have buried the body without taking samples for later study.

The strangeness didn’t end there. On April 21, Terezinha Gallo Clepf, stepped out of the restaurant where she had been celebrating her birthday. Although it was dark, she spotted a horrifying creature behind a fence that matched the descriptions given by the three girls. The only difference was that it was wearing a yellow helmet. Frightened, she returned to the restaurant but a few minutes later went back outside. The creature was still there. I don’t know what happened to it, or why it was still loose so long after the others had been captured.

On April 29, Luzia Helena Silva, the mother of two of the girls who had reported seeing a creature weeks earlier, was visited by four men who did not identify themselves. They offered the woman money if she would record a statement that it was all a joke that had gotten out of hand.

Others who had witnessed additional aspects of this complicated tale were also visited. Joao Bosco Manoel said that strangers approached him on three separate occasions, suggesting that he not talk about what he had seen.

On May 8, Brigadier General Sergio Pedro Coelho Lima called a press conference to explain the situation. He said that no soldiers from his command had participated in the alleged operation that had to do with the rumors flying around Varginha. But, according to a BBC report, Lima and Major Calza, appeared in a video saying, “That day there was a malformed and mentally disabled dwarf who was injured by the hailstorm and wandered around Varginha scaring residents, together with his wife, another dwarf, who besides that was pregnant and just about going into labor.”  Calza also said, “That was when we [the Army] caught the creatures.” He also said that the couple had been taken by Army truck to the Regional Hospital.

Official statements were also issued to explain the trucks seen in the area between January 20 and 22^nd. The trucks had been sent to the Automaco Comercial e Importadora for steering alignment and wheel balancing. The problem was that the business had not been open on those dates.

The statement continued to explain the other strange activities over the days following. Investigation by civilian UFO researchers, provided contradiction to those excuses. To explain the movement of two dead alien creatures, these were claimed to be the bones of the dead from Araguaia. The bones had been with the unit for years.

Civilian researchers in the area found additional witnesses, evidence of officials attempting to suppress the testimony of civilians and relate the whole case to three frightened girls who overreacted. The truth is that something strange happened, and if alien beings were recovered after the crash of a spacecraft, then this case takes on the importance of the Roswell UFO crash. Like Roswell, it is not a case of a single witness, or three witnesses who were together but one of many independent witnesses. It is a case where the movements of officials and the military suggest something more important than I originally thought, which is a situation similar to Roswell.

Jerome Clark, in the 3^rd Edition of his massive The UFO Encyclopedia, provided some interesting commentary. He wrote:

This complex story, ably relayed by our friend and colleague Thiago Luis Ticchetti, is surely the single most extraordinary claim made anywhere in this encyclopedia. It relates a high-strangeness CE3 [Close Encounter of the Third Kind, meaning a landing craft and a sighting of alien creatures] – there is no shortage of those worldwide – but more fundamentally, it demands that we believe that the Brazilian government possesses ironclad proof of otherworldly visitation in the form of actual biological entities. That would make this the story of the century, if not the millennium. Our advice is to suspend judgement and wait for new, clarifying developments.

The only real difference to this case and that of Roswell is that this was in Brazil. The elements are the same with civilian and military witnesses, evidence of the recovery of alien creatures, including a suggestion that one had survived for a time, and the work by the government to cover up the retrieval. Both the United States and Brazil offered mundane explanations for the reported recoveries, but it seems that both governments have been less than candid. It reflects the state of UFO research, which if proven, ends the debate about alien visitation.

The Truth about the Interplanetary Phenomenon Unit

Following is an analysis of the Interplanetary Phenomenon Unit by Brad Sparks. I had thought that we had disposed of this nonsense a long time ago. I thought we all realized that there had been nothing like it. Many of us, led by Brad, had showed that there was no such thing but there had probably been an IPU. It just had nothing to do with “Interplanetary Phenomenon.” I’ll let Brad explain this in detail and then hope this is the last time we talk about the IPU… which will not happen. Someone, somewhere, will find a reference to this and think they have something new and important. They will post it all over and we’ll all have to explain this again. Here, then is Brad’s third edition of his analysis:

 

There never was an “Interplanetary Phenomenon” Unit just an “IPU” standing for “Input Processing Unit” of Army Intelligence (later Army FSTC Foreign Science & Technology Center) based on my reconstruction of events from extensive research into Army org histories and the many FOIAs.  This "IPU" (Input Processing Unit) was the incoming documents Mailroom for Army S&T (science & technology) subjects in post-Sputnik 1958 space era, including routine UFO reports.  We know from Air Force Project Blue Book UFO files that lots of teletype and other UFO reports were cc-ed to the Army and this is one place where they would have gone. 

Decades later this space & science intelligence intake mailroom had the “IP” initials mistakenly misremembered as "Interplanetary Phenomenon" because the unit handled the receipt and forwarding of many routine UFO reports along with other incoming Army Intelligence on other space & science & technical intelligence subjects (remember, UFO Project Blue Book started in AF Technical Intelligence).  

We even know exactly who was the Army tech intelligence “old-timer” — literally called the "institutional memory" in FOIA replies — who did the misremembering in the Army's FOIA replies:  Craig Hunter.  It was Hunter who supplied the info for Army FOIA replies that suggested that IPU was the "Interplanetary Phenomenon" Unit in his "institutional memory" (meaning not from any actual IPU documents) — or rather, his mis-memory.  These were replies to Larry Bryant's general UFO FOIAs to Army and Army Intell in 1978, years before Dick Hall got involved, the latter getting the same type of replies Larry did.  

This was 20 years after the IPU was created in 1958 and memories got jumbled over the years.  It is likely that the Army’s Craig Hunter and any others who looked at vast Army org charts from decades in the past, and maybe saw initials for obscure low-level units like "IPU," had to guess what they stood for.  

The IPU, Input Processing Unit, was never “disestablished” in the “late 1950s” (why no exact year or date??) (some FOIA replies suggest 1962 not 1950s) as I reconstruct the Army history.  UFO sighting records (or just copies) may have been transferred to AFOSI in 1962 when IPU — still existing and not “disestablished” — got renamed within the new FSTC center.  It was then, as I reconstruct it from Army org histories, that the IPU was elevated to a higher bureaucratic level of a "Section" — a "Section" is above a "Unit" in military org structure —  thus became the IPU >> IPS (Input Processing Section), A&D Branch (Acquisition & Dissemination Branch), Support Division, FSTC (Foreign Science & Technology Center), Army Materiel Command.  

The IPU, Input Processing Unit, probably still exists today in 2025 under the new IPS name or more likely still later renamings, as part of the Army NGIC (National Ground Intelligence Center), which is successor to Army FSTC — so much for purportedly being "disestablished" in the "late 1950s” or 1962. (The whole IPU “disestablishment” mistake cited in 1978 Army/Craig Hunter FOIA replies probably arose from IPU’s transition to FSTC and renaming as “IPS” in 1962-63. So it would have looked from glancing at bare-bones org charts that “IPU” had disappeared in 1962-63, mistakenly assumed “disestablished.”)

NGIC "provides scientific and technical intelligence (S&TI) and general military intelligence (GMI) on foreign ground forces in support of the warfighting commanders, force and material developers, DA, DOD, and National-level decision makers."  (https://www.jmu.edu/cisr/research/gmar/search/national-ground-intelligence-center-ngic.shtml)

NGIC (with its presumably new version and name of its subordinate IPU Input Processing Unit) is the Army's "counterpart" to the Air Force's NASIC (National Air and Space Intelligence Center)  (“counterpart” quote from Joint Force Quarterly, 4thQ 2015 p. 17b-c).  NASIC in turn is the successor to the command division (FTD Foreign Technology Division) that ran UFO Project Blue Book in the 1960s. 

Thus Army NGIC and Air Force NASIC likely both cover UFO reports today — or under the new term UAP (Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena). 

Not one single page of actual legitimate “Interplanetary Phenomenon” Unit letterhead documents from the "late 1950s" or any other time has ever been found in USGovt records or by FOIA that (a) says the words 

“Interplanetary Phenomenon” (b) as the name of the Org Unit that (c) prepared the document. 

This whole thing has been a wild goose chase. 

Apologies for any typos or errors in this necessarily messy dissection of an honest mistake by an Army official that got blown up over the years.  My thanks to the many researchers who have helped contribute to this historical investigation. 

Condon Report of the Unknown Natural Phenomenon

 

For more than a half century, we have been bombarded by so many skeptics, academics and scientists claiming that the Colorado Study of UFOs commissioned by the Air Force in the late 1960s, had found no evidence of alien visitation. Those academics, debunkers, and even the government, often cite that report as a systematic analysis of UFO sightings. Yet nearly a quarter of the reports cited by the Colorado study were found to be unknown. In fact, one was solved by saying that it was a natural phenomenon so rare that had never been seen before or since. That to me, sounds like something they would want to follow up because it could lead to a scientific discovery.

That case, in which a BOAC crew reported a UFO was investigated at the time. Once they landed in London, the pilots were ordered to the Air Ministry. Months later, the navigator on the flight asked the captain what had happened at the Air Ministry and was told, “Sorry. I can’t say. You know the score.”

Here was a case in which the pilots were interrogated, there was radar confirmation of the sighting, and in the end, it was “solved” by saying it was a natural phenomenon. Interestingly, the official Project Blue Book card lists Mars as the culprit in the sighting.

For those interested in the details of this case, see:

https://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/search?q=BOAC

The case has been referenced in a couple of UFO books, but there are no additional detail. The Condon Committee entry for the case can be found beginning on page 139 of the Bantam Books edition of the Scientific Study of Unidentified Objects, originally published in January 1969.