Varginha Incident / Hostile UFOs

About the show

In the first half, filmmaker James Fox discussed "Moment of Contact," his new documentary on the Varginha Incident, a 1996 UFO crash in Brazil sometimes known as the "Roswell of Brazil." Residents of the small town of Varginha reported that an alien craft crashed there, and that extraterrestrial beings were found in the wreckage and removed by the Brazilian military. For years, Fox related, he dismissed the case as not credible or substantial. Neither the mainstream media nor the ufology community seemed interested in the incident, which to him was a sign that there was nothing worth looking into. To pursue the case was to put his own reputation on the line, which he wasn't willing to do, he went on.

However, Fox was finally convinced by the eyewitness testimony he heard about the case. Numerous witnesses told the story of seeing a cigar-shaped craft go down in the Varginha area early one morning. One of them approached the crash site to see a large pile of wreckage made up largely of a very lightweight metallic material. Three others—two teenage sisters and a young adult woman—said they encountered one of the crash's survivors at the site: a small, injured creature, brown and oily in appearance, with huge red eyes. A military police officer who allegedly captured one of the beings with his bare hands died mysteriously a short time later. And perhaps most significantly, a figure Fox called Military X claimed to have been involved in the transport of the bodies from the site to a government facility.

Fox also mentioned evidence that government forces, both Brazilian and American, were onsite in response to the Varginha crash. Several residents reported the presence of military trucks blockading and patrolling the area, and those who witnessed the incident firsthand claimed to have been visited by officials who warned them to keep quiet about what they saw, Fox noted.

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UFO researcher Brent Raynes appeared in the latter half to talk about cases of aggressive UFOs, including incidents where people were injured or killed. Citing the reporting of Bob Pratt and Jacques Vallée, Raynes described cases of eyewitnesses' claims that they suffered burns, headaches, and other maladies from their contact with alien crafts. John Keel, author of The Mothman Prophecies, describes dangerous encounters in his writing as well, Raynes noted, such as a birdlike creature that reportedly chased two couples in West Virginia, for example. Controversially, Keel came to regard much paranormal phenomena as not being extraterrestrial, but Earth-based, overlapping, and even religious in nature.

A California caller observed that dealing with paranormal entities requires meeting them within their own dimension, which is accomplished through one's own spiritual development. Raynes replied that he does try to do this in his own work, and that various phenomena seem to take on spiritual qualities. A listener in North Carolina wondered whether the smell of ammonia is ever reported in cases Raynes investigates; ammonia, the caller explained, can be evidence of life in other worlds. Raynes said that while strong odors, particularly sulfur, are sometimes present in encounters, he wasn't specifically familiar with ammonia in his research.