By Reginaldo Pupo
In the last few months, several reports of UFO (unidentified flying objects) sightings in the cities of the northern coast of São Paulo have been spreading among residents and tourists in the region.
The first reports appeared more intense in November last year when several lights were sighted by residents and civil aviation pilots in Porto Alegre (RS) for one week.
Videos and photos of UFOs in various parts of the world have also been spreading on social networks in recent months.
Although the sightings on the northern coast have intensified recently, according to ufologists, the first records in the region date back to the 1920s.
Still, according to experts and residents, there are records of OSNIs (unidentified underwater objects) occurring at sea.
According to witnesses, the phenomena appear in parts of the Serra do Mar and over the sea, a few meters from the beaches.
The lights in the sky, which evolve rapidly in all directions and with varied colors, have already been seen in Caraguatatuba, Ilhabela, São Sebastião, and Ubatuba.
The last case recorded by ufologists occurred on Dec. 31, shortly before New Year’s Eve, around 11 pm.
Resident Guilherme Miranda observed and filmed a UFO at Perequê-Açú, about 1.5 kilometers from downtown Ubatuba.
He said it was a solid reddish light in the sky, unlike an airplane or a drone. He and a friend pointed a laser toward the flying object, which, according to them, “started shaking and suddenly disappeared”.
Late last year, a resident of Caraguatatuba also spotted a UFO from the window of the building where he lives in the city center.
The intense light was hovering over the sea on the beach avenue. For almost 20 minutes, the object remained stationary in the air, making movements eventually.
Miranda had enough time to take videos and photos of the UFO. The images show a whitish light hovering over the city.
UFOLOGISTS BELIEVE IN AN UNDERWATER BASE
“There is a high incidence of these unknown objects entering and leaving the sea, which suggests the existence of some underwater base of operations in the region.”
“This hypothesis gains strength when we come across dozens of cases of witnesses who describe the entry and exit of these devices in the waters of the beaches on the northern coast,” explains ufologist Edison Boaventura Júnior, director of GUG (Grupo Ufológico de Guarujá), who has been researching the phenomena in the region for about 40 years.
According to residents who live on the islands of Búzios and Vitória, which belong to the Ilhabela archipelago, the objects frequently enter and leave the sea in a stretch of the sea about four kilometers east of Sumitia Island, located near the first two islands.
The GUG says that it has already registered and cataloged approximately 400 cases that took place along the northern coast and in some municipalities of the southern coast, involving various degrees of contact that occurred from the 1920s on.
Not included are the apparitions witnessed by locals and tourists that were not reported to ufologists.
Boaventura says he believes that many sightings are not publicized because witnesses fear being ridiculed.
UFOs frequently appear in the northern coastal region, with several witnesses, but they end up not divulging it so as not to come across as crazy.
Generally, they only tell relatives and close friends.
APPARITIONS AND WITNESSES
Although the records of ufologists indicate the appearance of UFOs since the 1920s on the northern coast of São Paulo, it was in the 1950s that the reports began to be registered, including by the national press of the time.
One of the oldest and most emblematic cases of Brazilian ufology occurred in 1957, when a flying saucer exploded on the beach of Toninhas, in Ubatuba, in broad daylight, in front of several witnesses.
Fragments of the craft were collected and researched by various national and international bodies, which concluded that the material did not exist in the periodic table.
In the neighboring city of Caraguatatuba, a flying saucer allegedly landed early in the morning on the beach of Porto Novo, one of the most populated neighborhoods in the city, on June 21, 1996.
It was around 00h15 when former Embraer designer César Miglioranza and his wife Marisa reportedly saw the craft.
According to him, minutes before, he had seen an intense light coming from Ilhabela toward the beach.
The craft would have landed a few meters from where the couple was. He said the object was discoid and luminous, approximately five meters in diameter.
The object would have floated silently over the beach, descending slowly vertically until it touched the sand.
During the descent, the craft turned off the bright white light about 50 meters up the beach and then turned on four faint orange lights.
It was a saucer, and suddenly two beings of about 1.20 meters tall, head disproportionate to their bodies, wearing baggy silver clothes, appeared.
One bent down at a particular moment as if picking something up from the ground.
The saucer stayed on the beach for 10 minutes, according to him, who gave the statements to the GUG ufologists.
In November 2009, José Aparício de Oliveira photographed a strange flying saucer in the skies of Ubatuba. He was spending a weekend in the city center when he observed a strange object flying in the skies, with no clouds.
“When I looked at the sky, I soon realized it was something different because the shape was that of a flying saucer. It had a white light on one side, giving the impression that it was spinning on its axis.”
“It flew from one side to the other and stayed for a few seconds when I took the camera and took the first picture. The saucer seemed to have realized my intention and was moving away vertically and gaining height, rapidly disappearing into space.”
Another witness who saw UFOs on the northern coast was writer Lygia Fagundes Telles, who died in April last year.
She was on Matarazzo beach in Ubatuba on Feb. 5, 1979, accompanied by her then-husband Paulo Emílio Salles Gomes.
The couple was on the terrace when Gomes saw an intense white light, at around 3 pm, moving in various directions over the sea.
The writer dedicated a chapter entitled “Flying Saucer” in her book “The Discipline of Love” to recount her experience.
Still in Ubatuba, on April 14, 2017, around 6 p.m., resident Marcos Ferreira reported a UFO on Perequê Mirim beach.
“We were at home when suddenly a ball of intense red light appeared in the sky and slowly descended as if it was going to land and disappeared into thin air.”
According to him, there were two apparitions with intervals of 30 minutes.
UFOs IN THE SANTOS-RIO REGATTA
Crew members of the ocean-going Montecristo sighted and filmed a UFO for two consecutive days, on Oct. 27 and 28, 2007, during the Santos-Rio Regatta that year.
The first sighting occurred around 7:20 pm, between Bertioga and São Sebastião, heading towards Ilhabela.
According to the 12 crew members, the object varied in color from yellow to orange had a lenticular shape (from round to oval) and was static. It would then appear and disappear, according to the sailors.
“The second apparition occurred around 7:40 pm the next day, and we were about 20 miles offshore (32 kilometers away), between Ubatuba and Paraty.
The object was also yellowish and orange in color and lenticular in shape,” explained crew member Mário Bueno, who died last year.
According to him, the UFO appeared on the horizon, east of the vessel, heading north and northeast “at speed faster than an airplane.”
According to Bueno, the device would constantly decelerate and accelerate.
“At times, it would almost come to a complete stop and make some short, rapid ascents and descents. Moments before it disappeared, it emitted an intense flash of opaque yellow light, causing amazement and euphoria in all the crew.”
“It then disappeared completely, only to reappear a few minutes later in another position well to the left of the original position.”
“This is when we captured just a few seconds on the video. We preserved the original audio so that everyone could understand the reactions of the people on board.”
LAWYER RECOUNTS ABDUCTION: TELEPATHY AND INVITATION
Besides the UFO and OSNI sightings registered all over the planet, there are several cases of people abducted by the craft, that is, against their own will.
But in São Sebastião, also on the northern coast of São Paulo, there is a curious case in which a human being was “invited” to enter and travel in a flying saucer.
It is one of the most essential and famous records in the ufological literature due to the wealth of details told by the “guest” himself.
The case happened to the lawyer and professor at the Catholic Law School in Santos (SP) João Freitas Guimarães, on June 16, 1956, one year before the flying saucer explosion in Ubatuba.
The case gained national repercussions at the time because Guimarães was a well-known, renowned and respected professional in the legal environment.
On that day, he said he left Santos and traveled to São Sebastião to go to the Forum but found the building closed late afternoon.
So he decided to stay in a hotel in the city center facing the sea, one block away from the courthouse.
Around 7:15 pm, after dinner, he decided to walk along the beach when he noticed a stream of water coming out of the sea.
At first, he thought it was a whale, but then a strange and bulbous device emerged from the water and headed toward the sand.
According to Guimarães, two men exited the ship and positioned themselves before him.
“Did an accident happen with the machine? Are you looking for someone? Who are you? Where did you come from? Where are you going?”
The lawyer reportedly asked the two alien beings in English, French, Spanish and Italian, languages he mastered, to no avail.
There was no response.
Although they did not speak, the lawyer explained that he thought those beings were inviting him to enter the flying object.
“It seemed they were communicating by telepathy,” said Guimarães, who felt an irresistible urge to accompany them and see inside the object.
Turning his back on the lawyer, one of the crew members went toward the ship. The other followed behind. A third being awaited him at the opening of the device.
The door closed, and the ship took off.
Guimarães also said that inside the object, at the entrance, he noticed handrails similar to those found on domestic stairs but made of a material he could not identify.
“I noticed three more crew members, five in all, wearing greenish overalls, simple, without any decoration or identification, closed at the neck, cuffs, and ankles. They were all tall, light, had long blond hair down to their shoulders, and their eyes were clear and serene,” said the lawyer.
When the aircraft took off, the lawyer said he felt slightly uneasy and noticed water on the ship’s windows and asked if it was raining.
He was telepathically told that it was not rain and that the water was coming from the “counter-rotation of the parts that made up the ship”.
‘THE CLOCK STOPPED’
The lawyer said he remained in only one compartment of the ship, although there were other similar and illuminated ones.
“I noticed at a certain point of the trip, through the windows, that we passed through an intensely dark zone, where the stars shone extraordinarily bright, succeeding regions swarmed with stars.”
“New dark areas followed until we passed through a glowing violet layer when the apparatus suffered strong shaking. At this moment, with great fear, I was informed by one of the beings that the ship had just left the Earth’s atmosphere,” said the lawyer.
The lawyer asked several times where they were from but got no answer.
The beings said the device was “driven in the direction resulting from the composition of the magnetic forces of that place.”
“I saw the earth the size of an orange!”
After this vision, the apparatus turned and a short time later landed in the same place, on the beach in downtown São Sebastião, now called Rua da Praia, by the residents.
He said he noticed his watch had stopped but calculated that the trip lasted between 30 and 40 minutes.
The building where the Praia Hotel used to exist to this day, where a coffee shop now operates.
The Forum facilities also exist; the headquarters is one of the city’s postcards. Today it functions as the base for the Public Prosecutor’s Office.
THE RETURN OF THE FLYING SAUCER
Still, inside the object, a new meeting between the extraterrestrial beings and the lawyer was scheduled for August 12, 1957, one year later, at the same place and time.
Guimarães said he did not attend the location on the scheduled date for various reasons.
“I did not go by a death in my family because intense curiosity and enormous sensationalism were created at the time, which would certainly cause a great uproar. Besides, my activities as a lawyer didn’t allow me to leave Santos that day”, he justified.
As the case gained repercussions in the media, even caravans were organized to go to São Sebastião, with hundreds of curious people wanting to watch the ship’s arrival.
Probably the main reason ended up being revealed by him after being summoned to testify at the Aeronautics after the matter leaked.
“The Aeronautics would send some jet fighter planes to the site.”
He said that days before the second meeting, a colonel from the military agency, identified as Márcio César Leal Coqueiro, warned him, “If I were you, I would not go to this meeting. I will have two squadrons of jet fighters there to receive the flying saucer.”
The lawyer said the Armed Forces informed him they had an entire department to handle that matter.
And the visitors did not miss the appointment. According to several witness statements, including those broadcasted by São Paulo’s TV Tupi at the time, on that date and time, the flying saucer appeared behind Ilhabela, flew over São Sebastião and headed towards the beach of Barequeçaba, located six kilometers from downtown.
Bernardo Ernesto Tavolaro de Siqueira, son of the owner of the Praia Hotel, was one of the people who saw the return of the flying saucer, precisely where the lawyer João Freitas Guimarães noticed the landing craft, receiving the invitation to board a year before.
“I was young in June 1956, and my father owned the Praia Hotel. I was at a coffee table with my mother and brother when my father came in frightened and asked if my mother and I had seen the lights.”
“We said no, and then the kitchen maid came in through the hotel’s back door saying she had just seen the strange lights there on the beach,” Bernardo said in 2017 in a statement to BURN (Brazilian Ufological Research Network).
NEW CONTACT
Ufologist Edison Boaventura Júnior contacted attorney João Guimarães on May 24, 1986, at his apartment in Santos. During the conversation, he revealed that he had had the second encounter with the extraterrestrials without any Air Force fighters to bother them.
The encounter would have happened a year before the June 1985 interview in Santos.
According to the lawyer, he would have seen a different spaceship than the one he had seen in São Sebastião, which approached and from its interior descended three tall beings, this time bald, wearing a damp garment.
The beings were arranged in a triangular shape, with one in front and the other just behind.
The case of the lawyer João Guimarães, who died on July 23, 1996, is one of the most accessed and researched cases in the Sian (National Archive Information System), an agency of the Ministry of Justice and Public Safety, where it is possible to consult photos, audios, and several types of documents about this phenomenon.
FIREBALLS, ‘UNFRIENDLY’ EXTRATERRESTRIAL: THE BEINGS FROM ILHABELA
Besides the UFO sightings, which have become commonplace in Ilhabela, the city is also full of curious facts witnessed by residents and caiçaras in recent decades.
One is about the appearance of “fireballs” on the beaches and waterfalls of the archipelago and small flying objects.
One of the cases registered by ufologists is that of Osmar João Soalheiro, a lawyer and ex-athlete from São Paulo in the 1950s, who was known in Ilhabela for his tireless search for the Trindade Treasure.
Around 2 am one day in 1992, he observed a strange object in “Saco do Sombrio”, a beach on the Ilhabela coast facing the open sea.
At the time, he reported that the phenomenon was the size of a basketball, metallic blue and rounded.
A larger object, he said at the time, went from the north to the south of Castelhanos Bay towards Ponta da Pirabura.
Older fishermen say that the phenomenon has appeared several times in that location. Soalheiro died in 2011.
A merchant from Jabaquara beach also said he had seen the phenomenon several times. In one of them, in the early morning of 2000, Walter de Almeida said he saw a white ball of fire about a meter in diameter in the left corner of the beach.
The object remained still and then moved until it disappeared into the Atlantic forest.
Almeida said another “fireball” followed him during a fishing trip to Ponta de Sepituba years later.
“There was no moon. I walked, and the ball of light followed me. I would stop, and it would stop too. It got to about two meters away. I was terrified. After a while, it went into the woods and disappeared.”
EXTRATERRESTRIAL IN ILHABELA
Caiçaras residents in Ilhabela report that they often see a strange being walking along the beaches, waterfalls, and streams.
One of these residents, Antonio Sacramento, said other people have also seen it.
The being would have dark skin and be approximately three meters tall.
“This being is aloof. Sometimes it disappears diving into the sea or creek, or disappears inside UFOs that appear nearby,” he said
THE ‘ENCHANTED EYE’
The oldest residents of Ilhabela report several cases of objects appearing like fire in various shapes.
Manuel Felipe, who has already witnessed the phenomenon, said that on night while approaching a waterfall, he was surprised by the appearance of something in the shape of a stick of fire two meters high.
As the fisherman approached, the object moved, illuminating the entire area with its bluish light.
Frightened, Felipe said he felt dizzy and fainted. When he woke up, the object had disappeared,
Also, according to testimonials from several residents, something in the shape of an eye is constantly seen emerging from the crystal clear waters of Ilhabela’s waterfalls.
It would be the dreaded “enchanted eye”, called by the caiçaras.
This phenomenon emits a bluish light and clears up all around it. When someone approaches to catch it, it mysteriously moves away, leaving behind a tail of light.
Luminous objects can also be seen cutting through the sky and hovering over the forest.
Many locals nickname these phenomena ”mother-of-gold” and ”fireball,” but there are no explanations for these apparitions.
With information from UOL