The Varginha UFO incident of 1996, when “aliens” visited Brazil

Several residents of a town in Brazil claimed that their town was overrun by aliens in 1996 – and that the government covered it up. But is there any proof?

1091 imagesAn artist’s depiction of the alien life form reportedly spotted in Varginha, Brazil.

In January 1996, three young witnesses between the ages of 14 and 22 claimed to have seen something strange in Varginha, Brazil. They said they saw a small, hairless creature with greasy brown skin, a large head and red eyes – and they referred to it as a “devil.”

In the days that followed, several other residents came forward and claimed they too had seen something out of this world. These eerie phenomena soon became known as the Varginha UFO incident.

The more rumors spread, the more unclear and outrageous the details became. Some claimed to have seen UFOs flying through the sky, while others claimed that aliens were being detained by the military and examined at a local hospital.

The government denied all these reports. The strange “creature” that the three young witnesses had seen? According to an official investigation, it was just a homeless man nicknamed “Mudinho”. The aliens seen in the hospital? Nothing more than an expectant couple with dwarfism.

Today, much like Roswell, the town of Varginha borrows heavily from the story of its infamous UFO experience, selling Varginha alien dolls and even decorating a water tower with a UFO-shaped saucer.

However, there are those who insist that everything to this day is true.

First witness reports of a strange creature in Varginha

On January 20, 1996, two sisters, Liliane and Valquíria Silva, and their friend Katia Andrade were walking across a vacant lot in the city of Varginha, Brazil. There they suddenly came across a strange creature crouching in the weeds. They said it was about four feet tall, had huge red eyes and a disproportionately large head topped with three bumps.

They also noticed something else strange about the creature: its foul smell.

This creature, the witnesses claimed, seemed “sad” and was as afraid of them as they were of it.

Terrified, they ran home and the sisters allegedly told their mother that they had seen the “devil.”

1091 imagesSketches of the Varginha alien.

“It wasn’t human or animal — it was something else,” Andrade said, according to a 1996 article The Wall Street Journal.

News of this strange “ET” quickly spread throughout the city. And as a result, more information came to light. What the young women didn’t know at the time was that they weren’t the only sightings of the creature – or the plane it supposedly came from.

More reports of alien and UFO sightings on the surface

A week before the alien sighting in Brazil, a pilot named Carlos Souza claimed he saw a strange, cigar-shaped object the size of a school bus flying over Varginha. As he watched, he noticed that it was losing altitude and appeared to be emitting white smoke.

According to a 2022 News.com article, he mistook it for “a plane in trouble,” followed its flight path and landed in an open field. There he allegedly found metal debris on the floor – and a foul stench in the air, “like rotten eggs.”

Then, he claimed, the area was flooded by military personnel who forced him to leave the scene.

On the morning of January 20 – just hours before the creature was spotted – a couple living nearby reportedly spotted a similar craft flying through the sky. They claimed it looked like the hull had sustained significant damage – and it was on its way to town.

1091 imagesCarlos Souza at the scene of the plane crash, years after he allegedly witnessed it.

Shortly afterwards, residents of the Jardim Andere neighborhood called emergency services and reported that a strange animal was running through the streets. According to a translated EBC article, a construction worker claimed he saw authorities lock the creature in a wooden box and take it away.

Around 1 p.m., others reported seeing men in military uniforms in the city who appeared to be looking for something. Some claim they heard shots from the men’s rifles. About two hours later, the Silva sisters and Andrade reportedly discovered the creature.

And around 5:30 p.m., a 23-year-old police officer named Marco Eli Chereze allegedly caught one of the creatures, grabbed it with his bare hands and led it into his car. Witnesses claimed he then drove the creature to a nearby hospital for observation.

1091 imagesNewspaper reports about the alleged encounters with Varginha aliens.

The creature – which hospital staff never saw – reportedly died sometime during the night and was then placed on a troop transport headed to Weapons Sergeant School.

On January 23, witnesses claimed that a military convoy left Varginha with the bodies of aliens that they had collected to be examined by scientists at the State University of Campinas. Once again the authorities denied all this.

However, the story took a final turn on February 7, when officer Marco Eli Chereze was hospitalized with severe pain in his arm and the onset of paralysis. Chereze reportedly underwent surgery to remove an abscess in his armpit – and then died days later from a generalized infection.

Today, some claim that the disease was caused by alien bacteria that was transmitted to Chereze when he grabbed the creature and put it in his car.

However, the official story presented by government officials is far less fantastic.

The official investigation into the UFO incident in Varginha

In 2021, ISTOÉ received official documents from the Brazilian army regarding the alleged UFO incident in Varginha.

The documents outlined the Brazilian government’s investigation into the case, particularly the events of January 20 and allegations that military personnel in Brazil captured aliens and hid the evidence.

Lt. Col. Lúcio Carlos Pereira, the man in charge of the military police investigation, claimed that the Silva sisters and Andrade had never seen an extraterrestrial being. Rather, he said, they likely encountered a homeless man named “Mudinho,” who probably suffered from some sort of mental disorder.

It was possible, Pereira said, that Mudinho was crouching as he was often seen in such a position. He was about 30 years old at the time and lived near the area where the girls had seen “ET.”

Wikimedia CommonsA water tower decorated with the likeness of a UFO in Varginha.

When asked why residents had seen military vehicles near Varginha at that time, military justice prosecutor Antônio Antero dos Santos said it was “all just routine work” and that army trucks were simply using the barracks for “normal maintenance work in a workshop.” ” leave.

In retrospect, even some UFO believers look back on the Varginha UFO incident and say with confidence that it was not real.

Lawyer and ufologist Ubirajara Rodrigues, for example, testified during the investigation: “There is no evidence that an extraterrestrial being was captured in Varginha… People said they saw or touched an alien, but that does not serve as scientific evidence. “At that time we tended to believe that it was a creature from another planet.”

But what about the fate of Marco Eli Chereze? How could this strange death be explained?

“The death occurred due to a serious hospital infection after the operation,” said former commander of the 24th Military Police Battalion of Varginha, Maurício Antonio Santos. “Former soldier Chereze was not involved in any alien incidents.”

Of course, there are still people who believe that something crashed in Varginha that day – and that the government’s investigation was nothing more than a cover-up.

After reading about the Varginha UFO incident, Brazil’s most infamous UFO case, read about the Ariel School UFO phenomenon, in which a group of children in Zimbabwe said they received visions of aliens. Or take a look at the Calvine photo, the clearest UFO image in the world.