More Brazilian encounters were reported throughout October and November, describing sightings of humanoids and landed craft, in one case a reported healing of a girl near death from cancer by two short beings dressed in white.29 On the night of November 3-4, the day that the Soviets launched
On the next night, a truly remarkable incident occurred, involving Brazilian army personnel at Fort Itaipu. A circular, orange-glowing object about one hundred feet in diameter descended silently. With no visible beam, it gave off intense heat at two sentries, and other soldiers saw it quickly ascend out of sight. The burned soldiers were isolated and hospitalized for weeks with first- and second-degree burns over more than 10 percent of their bodies. The fort was placed under martial law, discussion of the encounter was prohibited, and a top secret report was prepared. The Brazilians contacted the American embassy for help in the investigation, and within days, U.S. Army officers appeared in the company of Brazilian air force personnel. They questioned the two victims and other witnesses. Amazingly, Olavo Fontes learned of the incident and investigated before the month ended. Initially, he found only the two soldiers but within two years had located other witnesses who corroborated the original story in all details.31
Brazil was not the only country claiming a great deal of UFO activity. A close-up sighting of a UFO craft was reported in France on October 31. Several reports came from Korea and South Africa early in November, including a November 1 description of an attempted intercept by a South African air force jet pilot who climbed to forty-five thousand feet, but was still unable to reach what appeared to be a hovering machine.32
In late October or early November—the exact date is unknown—a UFO sighting took place in the Australian outback country of Maralinga, not far from Alice Springs. In the late afternoon, following three recent nuclear detonations, a British RAF team was preparing to return to the U.K. when, according to Derek Murray (later a Home Office photographer), a man rushed in to report a UFO. Others laughed but went outside to see an object with a flat base and dome on top, of silvery blue metal. Because they had an extremely clear view, they also discerned several squarish portholes across the center. The object tilted at forty-five degrees and hovered. “It was perched there like a king on his high throne looking down on his subjects ... it was a magnificent sight.” The sighting lasted for fifteen minutes, until the object shot up out of sight without a sound. The RAF men were astonished. British researcher Jenny Randles wrote:
Murray could, of course, be telling lies, but there is absolutely no reason to suppose so. He says, “I swear to you as a practicing Christian this was no dream, no illusion, no fairy story—but a solid craft of metallic construction.”33
On the eighth, four Australian government astronomers at Mount Stromlo Observatory saw a UFO too slow to be a meteor, and neither Sputnik 1 nor 2. The assistant director, Dr. A. R. Hogg, thought the unknown object could have been circling the Earth like an artificial satellite. The same day, in Edinburgh, Scotland, fourteen people reported to the police that a disc-shaped object followed their truck, dived toward it, came within sixty feet of them, then left toward the sea, leaving a double vapor trail. On November 22, in Gesten, Denmark, a shop owner saw a pyramid-shaped, luminous, transparent object fly rapidly across the road. Although it was over a tenth of a mile distant, he claimed to see two figures who looked like human beings sitting behind one another aboard the craft.34
NOVEMBER 1957: A RASH OF AMERICAN SIGHTINGS
On October 31, 1957, Donald Keyhoe met with Healey again, who informed him that the air force had made “a strong attempt to disprove your claims.” Meanwhile, the UFO wave hit the United States, concentrating mainly in the South and Southwest, especially Texas. An interesting feature of this rash of sightings was the widespread reports of electromagnetic (EM) effects on automobiles. For two weeks in particular, newspapers reported many UFO cases that affected car ignitions, radios, and lights. Less well known is that various sightings of aliens or humanoids occurred through December.35
