More sightings occurred in Brazil. On August 14, near Joinville, Brazil, a Varig airlines pilot saw a domed disc which affected the aircraft engines. Humanoid reports continued, including a July 25 incident by a professor at the Catholic Faculty of Law in Sao Sebastiao, and a September sighting of a domed disc and three normal-sized humanoid occupants who collected samples. Then, on September 10, 1957 (approximate date), according to an anonymous letter sent to a Brazilian journalist, there occurred another “crash” incident. Near Sao Paulo, in the town of Ubatuba, several people saw a disc dive down and explode, showering the area with flaming fragments. The anonymous correspondent mailed some small samples, which were soon analyzed by associates of Brazilian APRO member Dr. Olavo T. Fontes. The tests showed the fragments to be of apparently pure magnesium. The Condon Committee later rejected the fragments as not pure and determined that they “could have been produced by earthly technology known prior to 1957.” No one explained where the fragments could have come from, however.26
During the final phase of a U.S. Air Force training flight on September 19-20, 1957, an amazing UFO encounter occurred, reminiscent of the RB-47 case from two months earlier. Many of the details of this encounter are unavailable, as the incident never made it to the Blue Book files. While in flight, a B-25 crew practiced locating ground radar and turned on their ECM (electronic counter measure) equipment. They were surprised to learn that it was being jammed, first on one frequency, then another. Just then, a glowing white UFO was seen from the cockpit and played “tag” with the aircraft for several hundred miles. Ground radar picked up the B-25 and UFO separately, with visual maneuvers matching what was seen on radar—both of the plane and on the ground. Upon landing, the entire crew was questioned by Air Defense Command intelligence personnel, who confiscated all ECM equipment and in-flight wire recordings. The story only surfaced ten years later, when the University of Colorado, under contract to investigate the UFO phenomenon, stumbled across it during a meeting with air force personnel. One of the attendees happened to be the plane’s pilot (now a colonel); project investigators checked with the copilot and radar operator, who confirmed the story.27
Mankind formally entered the space age on October 4, 1957, when the Soviet Union launched
The first incident of the wave is perhaps the most remarkable of all. It involved a series of incidents involving Antonio Villas-Boas, a twenty-three-year-old farmer living near Sao Paulo, Brazil, and culminated in the first unmistakable alien abduction report. On the night of October 5, in the bedroom he shared with his brother, Boas saw that a bright light from an unknown source had lit their room. He saw a silvery glow in the yard, but no object. The light moved and passed over the house. On October 14, Boas was plowing the field at night with his brother. Between 9:30 and 10 P.M, the two saw a light as large as a “cartwheel,” about three hundred feet above the ground. It shined an extremely bright, pale red light over the field, so bright that it hurt their eyes. Then, suddenly, the light moved “with enormous speed” to the opposite end of the field and stopped. Apparently not in a state of terror, Boas followed it, but the light returned to its original position. Boas said this maneuver happened at least twenty times. Then, the light simply disappeared “as if it had been turned off.”
