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Sci-Fi

Brazil's UFO Capital Marks 30 Years Since 'Alien Encounter' (theguardian.com) 34

Thirty years after the alleged 1996 "ET of Varginha" encounter, debate continues to rage over the events that happened in Brazil's self-styled UFO capital. An anonymous reader quotes an excerpt from the Guardian: The skies over this far-flung coffee-growing hub went charcoal black, the heavens opened and one of Brazil's greatest mysteries was born. "It really was something unique," recalls Marco Antonio Reis, a zoo director, who was at his ranch outside Varginha one stormy day in January 1996 when, he says, an otherworldly creature came to town. Reis and other locals claim the unusually ferocious downpour heralded a series of disturbing and seemingly paranormal events. At least six of the zoo's animals, including a spider monkey, a tapir and a raccoon, died mysteriously after a horned interloper with bulging red eyes was spotted in the vicinity by a woman who had gone out for a smoke. When a vet examined their corpses, "they were all black inside," Reis claims.

On a nearby wasteland, three young women spotted a peculiar and malodorous being with a heart-shaped face and three lumps on its head cowering beside a wall. "I've seen the devil," one of those witnesses would later tell her mum. Soon afterwards, an unexplained infection was rumored to have killed a strapping police intelligence officer who was said to have grappled with the oleaginous unidentified being. Three decades later, Reis says he is convinced Varginha received a non-human visit. His only doubt was from where it came.

"We don't know if it was extraterrestrial or intraterrestrial," the 71-year-old says as he climbs a staircase to the veranda where the smoker claims to have seen what, in reference to Steven Spielberg's 1982 film, became known as the "ET of Varginha". A 2ft statue of a two-toed alien now marks the spot. "It's possible it was an intraterrestrial, from inside the Earth They don't just come from space," Reis says. "It might have come from the depths of the Earth, too. We don't even know what it's like at the bottom of the sea, do we?"

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Brazil's UFO Capital Marks 30 Years Since 'Alien Encounter'

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  • by Jeremi ( 14640 ) on Thursday March 26, 2026 @12:11AM (#66062430) Homepage

    Or some other Weekly World News cast member?

    • With the news coming in, seeing articles about Bat Boi isn't something that isn't too bad these days.

      Maybe getting overrun by infernal creatures (think Doom 2, except with no Doomguy) might be a better fate than the indifference we see now.

  • by Mirnotoriety ( 10462951 ) on Thursday March 26, 2026 @12:23AM (#66062444)
    Brazil's Roswell: The Varginha UFO [skeptoid.com]

    “This story of alien visitation in Brazil from 1996 claims to be the most convincing proof we have .. the Varginha UFO story .. is the most compelling example of a case where literally nothing at all happened that was remotely unusual, and was magnified into a case considered unassailable proof of alien visitation by many. To those believers, I would suggest recalibrating where you set the bar for quality of evidence.”
    • by Viol8 ( 599362 )

      Believers gonna believe. They're not interested in rational explanations because if true it proves they're gullible idiots and no one wants to face that.

      • by JustNiz ( 692889 )

        OK Mr. smarty pants. Please inform yourself about the case, (watching Moment of Contact is a good entree) then you provide a rational alternative hypothesis to us all.

        • The parent comment already linked to the refutation and that "Moment of Contact" ignores the actual reports from 1996 to invent a story. For example, the women who reported an alien in 1996 reported that they didn't know of Mudinho, a mentally disabled boy who's behavior and appearance exactly matched their description. Today their story is that they did know Mudinho and the Alien wasn't Mudinho. So their story changed. They are now lying either intentionally or not.
          • by JustNiz ( 692889 )

            So Mudinho came from a crashed flying machine that caused the army (and apparently some secret US 3 letter agency) to immediately respond, has feet and hands with 3 digits, leaves tracks matching the same, has large bright red eyes with no pupils, no visible ears, and can even fool a room full of doctors? got it.

            • by JustNiz ( 692889 )

              oh I'm forgetting that he as a human lives with something so dangerous to humans that it quickly killed an otherwise very fit and healthy cop just from being accidentally scratched by him?

        • by Viol8 ( 599362 )

          Hmm, a choice of thick idiots making up stories or aliens landed and hid behind walls. Tough one...

        • Easy peasy. The rational explanation for all ET events has always been, and always will be, ignorance. Somebody see, hears, or smells something they are too ignorant to understand. They cannot admit they are ignorant and therefore everything they don't understand must be super intelligent. Brian Cox and other intelligent Scientists have calculated the odds of a star maintaining a stable radiation emission for 5-billion years, with a stable planet in the Goldilocks orbit with a magnetic field and a moon to c
          • by Viol8 ( 599362 )

            " There is no intelligent Life in the Universe. Anyone who believes otherwise is under-educated."

            Given the universe could be infinite in extent that seems unlikely.

    • by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

      It's interesting how practically everything is "the most convincing proof we have."

    • by JustNiz ( 692889 )

      I suggest you inform yourself about the case, perhaps watch "Moment of Contact" first, before you make a fool of yourself by posting a derisory "noting unusual happened" post.

      A lot of apparently credible people (including doctors etc) have a common story. A cop actually died as a result of handling the alien. You can;t simply make a death up and it's clearly being covered up by governments. There are too many credible witnesses to say nothing happened at all. The only question is what.

    • Oh hey a Skeptoid link. I didn't know Brian Dunning was back at it. I stopped listening years ago after he went to prison.

  • I'll believe it when I meet them.
    Cringe. These posts are Slashdot-unworthy.
  • by Anonymous Coward

    The vagina UFO? I realise most would consider a vagina a UO, but a UFO?

    • It depends.

      There once was a woman named JILL
      who tried a dynamite stick for a THRILL.

      They found her VAGINA
      in South CAROLINA,
      and bits of her tits in BRAZIL!

  • https://northseasurf.bandcamp.... [bandcamp.com] (just to add a little local flavor..)
    • I don't normally encourage advertising in the comments, but in this case I'm happy you made the recommendation and will buy the album. Thanks.

  • Hehe. Interesting the view of these BS "facts" of Varginha when coming in from the International Press. Inside Brazil, this remote city inside Minas Gerais is a joke to most of us Brazilians. Stories "without feet and head" as we call it here. But there are similar cities in other countries with the same tourist alien-themed "attractions". There are nuts for every job out there, I guess.

The opossum is a very sophisticated animal. It doesn't even get up until 5 or 6 PM.

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