Introduction
With an area of 8.52 million square kilometers, and a population of 215 million, the country of Brazil has a rich history of UAP and this is reflected in the number of both Brazilian and non-Brazilian organizations and individuals who have taken time to explore this history. There are dozens of local Brazilian UAP research groups who have contributed volumes of case studies over the years. However, in this article I wish to examine the American interest in the Brazilian phenomena, book marked by two individual Brazilian researchers. These are early investigator Dr. Fontes, and the current Rony Vernet.
Dr. Olavo T. Fontes
One of the earliest local Brazilian researchers was Dr. Olavo T. Fontes, who was the Brazilian representative for the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization (APRO) between 1957 and his death in 1968. According to the May-June 1968 issue of the "APRO Bulletin" Dr. Fontes was a medical doctor specializing in gastroenterology and was a Professor of Medicine at the National School. A careful investigator, who documented his UAP research in an impeccable manner.
Notable cases which he investigated include the 16 October 1957 abduction of Antonio Vilas-Boas: the Ubatuba "UAP fragments," and the 1957 Itaipu Fort incident.
His work is recorded in numerous articles in the "APRO Bulletin" and in a number of Jim and Coral Lorenzen's UAP books including "Flying Saucer Hoax." (Lorenzen, C.E. William Frederick Press. New York. 1962;) "Flying Saucers: The Startling Evidence of the Invasion from Outer Space." (Lorenzen, C.E. Signet. New York. 1966;) and "UFOs Over the Americas." (Lorenzen, J. and C. Signet. New York. 1968.) There is also rare 1966 archival recording on YouTube of Fontes discussing the Vilas-Boas case.
J. Allen Hynek
Professor J. Allen Hynek was one of the earliest academics who took an interest in UAP. Hynek was an astronomer at North Western University in Chicago, in the U.S.A. He was also a consultant to the United States Air Force's Project Blue Book. In that role he investigated a lot of cases occurring in the U.S.
Hynek authored two classic books on UAP. The first was "The UFO Experience." (Regney. New York. 1972.) The second was "The Hynek UFO Report." (Dell. New York. 1977.) He also co-authored "The Edge of Reality." (CreatSpace. 1973.) with Jacques Vallee.
In August 1975, according to Vallee's "Forbidden Science Volume 2" in a diary entry dated 19 July 1975.
"Allen is elated because he'd received an invitation to Brazil that includes an opportunity to address the Brazilian Congress next month."
However, this visit did not go well. Vallee reports, in a diary entry dated 27 September 1975:
"The next day over a private breakfast Allen confessed his trip to Brazil was a fiasco. General Uchoa, who invited him, had no clout. The man who managed the much-advertised congress was a French journalist trying to make a quick buck. He must have lost a ton of cruzeiros, because in the end he begged Allen to give more lectures to balance his finances. As for his talk before the Brazilian Congress, that went flat: his interpreter was an enthusiastic lady who was big on ufology but short on linguistics. As for the official files, the military is keeping them under lock and key."
Bob Pratt
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| Image courtesy of Amazon Books |
Robert Vance Pratt (1926-2005) was an American journalist who made ten visits to Brazil between May 1978 and July 1993. His detailed reporting on what he found in Brazil is in his 1996 book titled "UFO Danger Zone: Terror and Death in Brazil. Where Next?" (Horus House Press, Madison WI.) His first four trips between 1978 and 1980 were paid for by one of the U.S. publications in which he published his work. The other trips were funded by him as he was so interested in what he had found on these earlier visits.
In chapter after chapter Pratt describes his firsthand interviews with individuals who were chased by lights or distinct objects; hit by beams of light; suffered medical issues as a result of their encounters; were lifted off the ground; or were paralyzed. He even came across cases where individuals were said to have died as a result of their encounters. Pratt also interviewed medical staff who had seen for themselves the results of some of the medical aftereffects of the UAP incidents.
Although a number of the accounts had occurred years before Pratt's visits, some of them had reportedly occurred only days or weeks before Pratt conducted his interviews. Despite his lengthy stays in Brazil Pratt himself never reported having personally encountered any UAP.
Chapter twenty of the book records events in Colares, at the mouth of the Amazon River. Pratt writes
"UFOs have been deadlier in Colares than perhaps any other place in the world...in Colares alone approximately forty were burned and two of them died."
The year was 1977. Pratt reports that the Brazilian military conducted a several months long investigation and interviewed hundreds of people. The Brazilian Air Force conducted Operation Prato in the area. Pratt relates that the data gathered was sent to the Air Force Headquarters.
Pratt visited Colares for the first time in February 1979, then twice after that. He interviewed Captain Uyrange Hollanda, who had led the official investigation in the Colares region. Pratt was later able to secure brief summaries of 281 incidents in Colares and surrounding areas, plus maps, and twenty photographs. Hollanda told him his team "...took about three hundred photos and we photographed eight different types of UFOs."
Pratt's "Epilogue" chapter describes the then (1996) known facts about the Varginha live captured aliens who were reportedly sent to the U.S.A.
Here is a link to several hundred pages of Bob Pratt's own material, including many on Brazil.
Jacques Vallee
Well known researcher Jacques Vallee made two trips to Brazil. The first in 1980 and the second in 1988. On the first trip in April 1980, Vallee and his wife Janine went to Argentina with a stopover in Brazil. In Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, they met researcher and writer Irene Granchi. According to a diary entry dated 29 April 1980 in Valle's book "Forbidden Science Volume three" "...we spent most of the time talking about the 1966 Lead Mask mystery..." and met the pathologist who conducted the autopsies on the two dead men. Later that day they visited the site of the incident.
The second visit in July 1988 had a much longer stay in Brazil. In "Forbidden Science Volume three" Vallee describes in some detail his research there with his wife Janine. They visited Fortaleza, together with an American friend Bill Calvert who had lived in Brazil, and a Professor, Agobar Oliveira, a local UAP investigator. Travelling on to Parnarama they interviewed firsthand witnesses to incidents. One such account which they attempted to verify was that of a man called "Ramon" who was reportedly killed by his encounter with UAP. Vallee wrote that there was no object in the sky at the time, no beam, and that the man had died of symptoms which fitted a heart attack.
Vallee writes:
"We have brought back details of about twenty cases, two of them involving characteristic chupa injuries. So far there is no proven instance of any death related to the objects."
Continuing their investigations they travelled on to Balem, Brazil, gathering firsthand accounts. They met with Colonel Hollanda Lima, in the headquarters of the First Air Force region. He led the team sent to the Colares region during Operation Prato. Vallee was shown a military file which: "...held the military photographs, detailed aerial maps, trajectory analyses by the staff of Project Prato." The Vallees and party went on to interview the medical doctor from the island of Mosqueiro during the Colares wave, before returning to the U.S.A.
Vallee published more details of his on-site investigations in Brazil, in both 1980 and 1988, in his book titled "Confrontations: A Scientist's Search for Alien Contact." (Anomalistic Books. Charlottesville, Virginia. 2008.)
BAASS
As part of the Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Applications Program (AAWSAP) Bigelow Aerospace Advanced Space Systems (BAASS) sent a group of team members to Brazil in May 2009, with a second visit in October 2009.
In a 7 April 2020 blog article, French researcher Marc Cecotti and I told the story of the May 2009 Brazilian visit by BAASS. We communicated with a number of former BAASS employees and UAP researchers in South America. One such researcher Ademar Gevaerd, met BAASS members in Curitiba, Brazil. In part Gevaerd said: "They wanted artifacts from UFOs, such as metamaterials."
In a second blog article dated 17 April 2020 we reported that the BAASS team visited Fortaleza. Here, they photographed and filmed files and case notes of the local UAP organization, over several hours. Fortaleza based researcher Helio Loyola told us:
"Here in Brazil they didn't do any research. They took and photographed what the ufologists saw and documented."
BAASS members also visited other locations in Brazil.
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| Image courtesy Amazon Books |
One of the projects undertaken by BAASS was the creation of the CAPELLA data warehouse, conceived by Jacques Vallee. In the book "Skinwalkers at the Pentagon" (RTMA LLC, Henderson, Nevada 2021.) by Lacatski et al there is a list of products of AAWSAP. These include:
* BAASS March 2009 Monthly report - "The UFO Assault on Brazil with its Epicenter at Colares (1977-2003) by John Schuessler."
* BAASS August 2009 Monthly report - "Relations with South American organizations."
* BAASS July 2009 Ten monthly report - "Project Colares/Brazil, Outreach to South America."
The CAPELLA data warehouse was a collection of eleven individual data sets of which one was titled "Brazil."
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| Image courtesy Amazon Books |
Chapter fifteen of the Lacatski et al book "Inside the U.S. governments covert UFO Program: Initial Revelations" (RTMA LLC, Henderson, Nevada. 2023.) says the following about the Project Colares database:
"Data base containing all UAP sighting events related to the 1977-1978, Colares, Brazil, UAP flap. Total records 346. Event timeline 1977-1978."
Rony Vernet
Rony Vernet is a Brazilian electronics and computer engineer, who has spent several years researching UAP. One of his areas of specialization has been that of documenting the UAP accounts of indigenous communities in Brazil. Recently, with the part sponsorship of the Australian Non Human Intelligence Research Institute, he travelled to a remote part of Brazil to document onsite accounts by people in an isolated village. While there, he encountered the phenomena for himself.
Vernet reports:
"During my mission in Amazon, I witnessed 4 types of phenomena:
Type 1 - Poltergeist activity (sounds of heavy furniture against ground, sounds of people walking on forest, lamps blinking, battery drainage, radio communications, smartphone freezing, camera shut down.)
Type 2 - Blinking orange spheres. A two-part object that blinks a huge orange light and flew low until enters the forest. 2 meters in diameter.
Type 3 - Steady orange sphere. A continuous orange to red light like a ball of fire that flew low until enters the forest. Around 1 meter in diameter.
Type 4 - luminous fog. Like a white aurora that becomes dense and forms a huge 3D shaped image. Paralyzed a boy and entered inside the forest at the same point of other lights.
A 5th type was not witnessed in person but recorded in multiple equipment. Types 2,3, and 4 also recorded.
Type 5 - A luminous entity with humming sound that illuminates the area and projects another oval shaped UAP near the ground. Silenced nature sounds before disappearing."
Rony was interviewed by Australian investigative journalist Ross Coulthart for Ross' show "Reality Check" where Rony provided further details on his own observations. He stated that he was intending to return to the remote locality later this year, but that in the meantime date was being remotely collected.
In conclusion
The work of all the above individuals and organizations details the ongoing nature of the Brazilian UAP phenomena.
There is a growing awareness in the UAP community, that the next breakthrough in our understanding of UAP will come, not from governments, but from individual or collectives of civilian researchers such as Rony Vernet.
Update: 16 February 2025
In January 2025 Anomalist Books published the sixth volume of Vallee's diaries. This book covers the years 2010-2019 and includes a third visit to Brazil by Vallee and his longtime friend Bill Calvert, who at one stage lived in Brazil. The trip took place in July/August 2015.
In Fortaleza, Brazil, they renewed their acquaintance with local researcher Agobar Peixoto. One item discussed was that back in 1988:
"At that time, we did an analysis of the massive UFO wave that had arisen from the south, moved up to the coast, and west to Colares. Operacion Prato was only a point of culmination."
Valle asked Agobar:
"Do you know that a research institute from Las Vegas has sent a sizeable team from the United States to obtain the data from Colares?" I asked: "Did they ever speak to you?"
"Sure, I met three Americans at a conference in Sobral," Agobr replied. "They were taking lots of notes trying to make contact with the group from Rio but looking in all the wrong places."
Vallee, Calvert and Agobar discussed new cases, and personally interviewed a lot of new witnesses during their time in Brazil.
