UFO sightings in Brazil

This is a list of alleged sightings of unidentified flying objects or UFOs in Brazil.

1947

 * On 23 July 1947, topographer José Higgins was working with many laborers in Bauru, São Paulo. Suddenly, they heard an extremely sharp sound. Some moments later, they saw a lens-shaped object landing near them. The workmen ran away, leaving Higgins alone. The man reported that three humanoid figures emerged from the UFO and spoke to him in an unknown language; after about a half-hour, they returned to the UFO which then took them away.

1952

 * On 5 May 1952, the journalist Joao Martins and the photographer Eduardo Keffel claimed to have seen a flying disk in the vicinity of Barra da Tijuca. Keffel took some photographs of the UFO, which were published by the magazine O Cruzeiro.

1957

 * On 13 September 1957, the journalist Ibrahim Sued received an envelope containing a letter and three fragments of metal. The author of the letter wrote that he saw a UFO which exploded in the sky over the beach of Ubatuba; he collected some fragments and sent three of these to the journal together with the letter. Sued sent the fragments to a laboratory which analyzed them and discovered that they consisted of pure magnesium. James Harder and other ufologists came to the conclusion that the fragments of Ubatuba have an extraterrestrial origin, but other investigators think that this story is a hoax.
 * Antonio Villas Boas claimed to have been abducted by extraterrestrials on 16 October 1957. Though similar stories had circulated for years beforehand, Boas's claims was among the first alien abduction stories to receive wide attention.
 * On the evening of 4 November 1957, two sentinels at the Itaipu Fort, (Praia Grande, São Paulo) suffered moderate burns after being hit by a heat wave from an unidentified flying object, which allegedly came descending from the sky. The entire electricity of the fort, including the emergency circuits, went down during the incident. Afterwards, Brazilian Army and United States Air Force (USAF) personnel, along with investigators of the Brazilian Air Force, flew to the fort to interview the soldiers.    USAF's Donald Keyhoe expressed his opinions on the case:

""Such civilization could see that in Earth we now have atomic bombs and that we are quickly improving our rockets. Given the past history of mankind - frequent wars showing a belligerent human race - they must have become alarmed. We should, therefore, expect, especially at these times, to receive such visits. According to this, the main objective of the aliens would be to watch our space improvements, fearing we could become a threat to other planets. If this hypothesis is exact, it could be expanded to link the launching of the Sputniks with the attack to the Fort Itaipu. However, this sounded absurd for all investigators. It would mean that the aliens would be worried about our firsts steps in space, and by small space ships so primitive that would look like a canoe if compared to a transatlantic liner. It would also mean that those burnings had the purpose of demonstrating the superior weapons they could use against the aggressive explorers coming from the Earth. However, we were still far from piloted space flight, even to the Moon. According to human logic, we would not be able to threaten a superior space ship - not now nor later.""


 * In 2008, a document reporting the incident was written at the Brazilian Embassy in the United States.

1958

 * At 12:00 pm on 16 January 1958, the Brazilian ship Almirante Saldanha, taking part in projects of the International Geophysical Year, was preparing to sail away from Ilha de Trindade, off the coast of Espírito Santo. Captain Viegas was on the deck with several scientists and members of the crew when he suddenly noticed a flying object, which had a "ring" around it, just like Saturn. Everyone reportedly saw the UFO at the same time. It came to the island from the east, flew towards the Pico Desejado (Wished Peak), made a step turn and went away very quickly to the northwest. As soon as the object was noticed Almiro Baraúna was requested for photographing. After getting the camera and going up the quarterdeck, he stated that he managed to take pictures of the object.

1966
Two men were found dead near Niterói. Both were wearing lead masks. A UFO allegedly was seen flying near the point where both died. According to veteran UFOlogist, Alberto Francisco do Carmo, sightings and encounters northwest of São Paulo led to the development in 1966 of an office called SIOANI (for Serviço de Informação de Objetos Aéreos Não Identificados). Headed by Major Gilberto Zani de Melo, the study and office was shut down years after his retirement.

1977
This was the first operation of the Brazilian Air Force conducted only to investigate UFO-related issues. This operation was started shortly after the Colares UFO flap.
 * The Colares flap refers to an outbreak of UFO sightings that occurred in 1977 on the Brazilian island of Colares. During the outbreak, the UFOs allegedly attacked the citizens with intense beams of radiation that left burn marks and puncture wounds. These sightings led to the Brazilian government dispatching a team to investigate under the codename Operation Saucer (Portuguese: Prato, see below), but the government later recalled the team and classified the files until the late 1990s.

1979

 * On the evening of 28 July 1979, security guard Antonio Carlos Ferreira was allegedly abducted from his workplace - a furniture factory in Mirassol, São Paulo. According to his own accounts, he was approached by three humanoid figures who tranquilized and took him aboard a small ship which ferried him to a larger craft further away. There, he said he was positioned in front of a large television-like device and presented with a variety of images before being forced to mate with a female alien, after which he was tranquilized again and returned to the ground. Ferreira described the creatures as being approximately 1.2 m tall with pointed ears, slanted eyes and human-like mouths. They lacked eyebrows or eyelashes and spoke in a language that superficially resembled Japanese. Some were said to have dark skin and red curly hair, while others had light skin and straight black hair. The ship was spherical with three undercarriage-like legs protruding from the bottom, with the interior lit by bright red and green lights. Ferreira states that he encountered the aliens again in 1982, with the craft supposedly landing close enough for him to see the female alien and a childlike alien observing him from a distance. He said he experienced a third encounter later in 1982 in which he was taken into the hangar of an alien craft via a green beam of light before being injected with a yellow substance. He said he was then taken to meet the two aliens once more, the younger of whom he was led to believe was his own child. Other encounters are said to have followed, to a total of 16 or 20 between 1979 and 1989.

1980

 * Elias Seixas de Mattos was a truck driver from Rio de Janeiro in 1980, when he had suffered an unexplainable experience. His story, along with the ones from his two friends, has earned an important page in the history of Brazilian Ufology because of the quantity of details he displayed to describe the situations.

1982

 * Sighting occurred on 6 March 1982, during a match of the 1982 Campeonato Brasileiro Série A between Operário-MS and CR Vasco da Gama. The Morenão stadium, which had an audience of more than 24,000, had several reports of the sighting of flying objects in the sky, including from some players such as Cocada and the match referee, José de Assis Aragão. Ademar José Gevaerd, one of the main Brazilian ufologists, began his career in the field as one of the witnesses of the phenomenon.

1986
A series of UFO sightings all over the states of southeastern Brazil, which led to several jet fighters being scrambled to intercept. During the attempted interceptions, pilots reported the objects capable of 90-degree turns and hypersonic flight.

1996

 * The Varginha UFO incident was an incident in Varginha, Brazil, in 1996 involving reports of unidentified flying objects and strange creatures (allegedly extraterrestrials) which were supposedly captured by Brazilian officials.
 * In Saragonha Island, at Patos Lagoon, Haroldo Westendorff witnessed a cone-shaped UFO, 50 to 60 m tall, with a base as big as a soccer stadium. He flew around the object for some 15 minutes, keeping 100 m of distance. The object was spinning around itself and heading towards the sea and was spotted at the radar of Infraero's room at Pelotas' airport. It was not detected by Cindacta II in Curitiba, Paraná, which was responsible for watching the skies of southern Brazil. Westendorff also reported a smaller object coming out of the top of the big UFO, which climbed into the skies at a very fast speed, with the larger UFO following shortly afterwards. The Ministry of Aeronautics kept a secret investigation of the object seen by Westendorff.

2008

 * In 2014, a document called "Dossier Riolândia" was produced by the amateur organization Inape (Instituto de Astronomia e Pesquisa Espacial (Institute of Astronomy and Space Research in Portuguese)) which allegedly shows the appearance of UFOs in the city of Riolândia on January 20, 2008.

2013

 * On 19 June, a light was visible in the sky over one of the protests in Brazil, and seen by thousands attending the event. It was reported to be a UFO, but it is currently believed to have been a drone used by local newspaper Folha de S. Paulo in order to shoot aerial images of the demonstrations.

2020

 * On 12 May 2020, in the city of Magé, Rio de Janeiro, from around 22:40 until 2:00, residents of the city recorded videos, and shared them on their social networks, which showed several strange lights of different colors in the city's sky, from circular objects, to also strong flashes occurring on the horizon.