Varginha — the "ET de Varginha"

OVERVIEW

At about 3:30 p.m. on 20 January 1996, three women aged 14 to 22 reported seeing a being near a street called Rua Dr. Benevenuto Braz Vieira: large-headed, with vein-like spots and three bumps on the head and eyes like two red balls, unsteady on its feet. They ran and told their mother they had seen the devil. Rumours spread: of other creatures captured and taken to a hospital, of military vehicles, of a police officer's death, and of unexplained deaths of a tapir, an ocelot and two deer at the local zoo.

HISTORY

In 1997 an inquiry led by the Brazilian military concluded that the women had encountered a local man with a mental disability, known as "Mudinho" (Luiz Antônio de Paula), who was probably dirty from heavy rain and crouching by a wall. The military vehicles and firefighters seen that night were, the inquiry found, on routine duties that had been read as the capture and transport of a creature.

REPORTED ACTIVITY

Recorded with vetted = false. The sceptic Brian Dunning called Varginha the most compelling example of a case where nothing unusual happened and was magnified into what many regard as proof of alien visitation. The case is kept on the map because it remains, for a large following, the Brazilian Roswell — the subject of books, documentaries and a 2022 film — and because the town itself built a 20-metre saucer-shaped water tower in its central square.

VISITING

Varginha is a city in southern Minas Gerais. The saucer water tower is in the town centre.