The Varginha UFO incident involves a series of events in 1996 when residents of

Varginha Varginha is a municipality in southwest Minas Gerais state, Brazil. Varginha stands out as one of the major centers of commerce and coffee production in Brazil and the world. The city is a center for export of coffee draining most of the producti ...

Brazil Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area ...

claimed seeing one or more strange creatures and at least one

unidentified flying object An unidentified flying object (UFO), more recently renamed by US officials as a UAP (unidentified aerial phenomenon), is any perceived aerial phenomenon that cannot be immediately identified or explained. On investigation, most UFOs are id ...

(UFO). Other associated claims include the capture of one or more extraterrestrial beings by the Brazilian authorities, animal fatalities at a zoo, and a woman impregnated by an extraterrestrial. The reports have garnered extensive media coverage.

Overview

According to media reports, a creature was sighted on the afternoon of January 20, 1996, by three women ranging from 14 to 22 years old. The women described the creature as a large headed biped with "spots like veins on the skin and some bumps on the head ..eyes were two red balls." The creature (later termed the "ET de Varginha") seemed to be wobbly or unsteady, and the girls assumed it was injured or sick. The women said that they fled and told their mother that they had seen the "

devil A devil is the personification of evil as it is conceived in various cultures and religious traditions. It is seen as the objectification of a hostile and destructive force. Jeffrey Burton Russell states that the different conceptions of t ...

".English translation
/ref> Rumors afterward began to spread through the area, with some people claiming to have observed UFOs in the days prior. Later, claims were made of additional unidentified creatures/extraterrestrials being collected and observed at a hospital, military/police/government trucks and personnel being active in the area, an unidentified animal "prowling" a local forest, the death of a police officer, and unexplained animal deaths occurring in the local zoo. Ufologists would later allege links between these and other claims, including the claim that one of the initial creature witnesses was impregnated by the creature.

Inquiry

An official inquiry led by the Brazilian military concluded in 2010 that the young women had encountered a homeless, mentally unstable man nicknamed "Mudinho." The Commander of 24th Police Battalion Military "presented photographs (...) 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." The head of the official inquiry reported that the military trucks and personnel were performing routine duties on the night they were observed, stating, "the presence of the Firefighters in Jardim Andere, the parking of Army trucks in the vicinity of the concessionaire where their periodic maintenance would be carried out ... and the departure of EsSA vehicles ... were real facts ... incorrectly interpreted as Firefighters and the Military participating in the capture and later the transport of the alleged creature to

Campinas Campinas (, ''Plains'' or ''Meadows'') is a Brazilian municipality in São Paulo State, part of the country's Southeast Region. According to the 2020 estimate, the city's population is 1,213,792, making it the fourteenth most populous Brazilian ...

." The Brazilian authorities also reported that the aliens allegedly seen in a hospital were actually an expectant couple who had

dwarfism Dwarfism is a condition wherein an organism is exceptionally small, and mostly occurs in the animal kingdom. In humans, it is sometimes defined as an adult height of less than , regardless of sex; the average adult height among people with dw ...

. Skeptic Brian Dunning criticized sensational media accounts and UFOlogists claims. According to Dunning, "It 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"."

Notoriety

These claims have markedly effected tourism to the city of Varginha.

Grey alien Grey aliens, also referred to as Zeta Reticulans, Roswell Greys, or Grays, are purported extraterrestrial life, extraterrestrial beings. They are frequent subjects of close encounters and alien abduction claims. The details of such claims vary ...

dolls with football uniforms are sold at the location of the incident. Grey alien designs were used in advertising campaigns for the municipality. Bus stops were built in the form of spaceships and a 20

metres The metre ( British spelling) or meter ( American spelling; see spelling differences) (from the French unit , from the Greek noun , "measure"), symbol m, is the primary unit of length in the International System of Units (SI), though its pr ...

tall

water tower A water tower is an elevated structure supporting a water tank constructed at a height sufficient to pressurize a distribution system for potable water, and to provide emergency storage for fire protection. Water towers often operate in conj ...

with a disc-shaped water reservoir was erected in the town center called the Nave Espacial de Varginha. The Brazilian government denied conspiracy theorists claims that it was hiding evidence of extraterrestrials.English translation
/ref> In April 2020, a mask was placed on one of the public monuments of Varginha aliens, a stunt made as part of a

COVID-19 Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a contagious disease caused by a virus, the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The first known case was identified in Wuhan, China, in December 2019. The disease quick ...

public health campaign.

Media

*''"1996", a 2020 film by director Rodrigo Brandão, revisits the event in a horror story made along the lines of a documentary (in the style of

The Blair Witch Project ''The Blair Witch Project'' is a 1999 American supernatural horror film written, directed and edited by Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez. It is a fictional story of three student filmmakers— Heather Donahue, Michael C. Williams, and Jo ...

). The short was made in VHS and follows the trajectory of two teenagers who are going to the city of Varginha on 20 January 1996. They end up getting lost in the woods at night and are found by the ET. The short was well received and participated in several important festivals such as the 23rd Tiradentes Cinema Exhibition. * ''UFO Files S1 E4: The Brazilian UFO Crash: The Truth'' , was broadcast on July 23, 2011 on ''

Syfy Syfy (formerly Sci-Fi Channel, later shortened to Sci Fi; stylized as SYFY) is an American basic cable channel owned by the NBCUniversal Television and Streaming division of Comcast's NBCUniversal through NBCUniversal Cable Entertainment. Lau ...

.'' * '' Incidente em Varginha,'' a video game inspired by these events.

References

External links

Caso ET de Varginha (Mais Varginha)
* ''Revista UFO'' (''UFO Magazine''), Special Issue #13, July 1996, published by CBPDV

, Editor

Ademar José Gevaerd Ademar José Gevaerd (19 March 1962 – 9 December 2022), also known simply as A. J. Gevaerd was a Brazilian ufologist. He was editor of ''Revista UFO'' (UFO Magazine), founder and director of the Brazilian Center for Flying Saucer Research (C ...