by UFO History Buff & Author, Charles Lear
Brazilian UFO cases have aspects to them that, while not unheard of in other countries, come up over and over again giving them a commonality that is unique to Brazil. Lost time, traveling long distances in trucks and cars in far less time and using far less fuel than it should take, humanoid encounters, and injuries are a few of these. A case from 1980 has all of these aspects except injury, and it is described in the cover story of the March 1982 APRO Bulletin.
According to the article headlined “1980 Brazilian Abduction,” the case came to light “during the question and answer period following a UFO lecture by APRO’s Brazilian Representative, Mrs. Irene Granchi.” Granchi later interviewed the people involved, Elias Seixas de Matos, 38; Guaraci Fernandes de Sousa, 47; and Alberto Seixas Vierra, 26. Granchi later wrote about the case in an article (link to original article broken at this time) published in the April 1995 issue of UFO Magazine. There, she says she was lecturing about the work of Rio de Janeiro-based “hypnologist,” Dr. Silvio Lago. According to her, the three men were introduced to her, and it was explained that they wanted to meet Lago as they all seemed to have experienced partial amnesia and couldn’t recall long stretches of time during a delivery run in a truck. Read more
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Coming across contemporary UFO cases of interest these days when government-related UFO stories dominate the news is difficult. Fortunately, there are still some active civilian investigators out there who share their information (without a subscription) on their websites. Stan Gordon is one of those, and he helped bring attention to a case investigated by fellow researcher Jim Brown.
In last week’s blog, we looked at a case involving a 1979 report by a forestry worker in Scotland who said he not only saw a mysterious domed object sitting on the ground, but that he was assaulted by two spherical objects with spike-like protrusions that rolled towards him rapidly, rolled over onto his sides, and seemed to be pulling on his pants. At this point he went unconscious. According to him, when he came to, he heard a “whooshing” noise and then saw that the object was gone. He was extremely thirsty, had a headache, pain in his chin and legs, and couldn’t walk or speak. He crawled back to his pickup truck, which was 300 meters away, found himself incapable of driving it, but was then able to make his way home on foot. Upon returning “with others” the next day, there were physical traces seen that gave support to his claims. This week, we’ll look at the aftermath and the physical evidence.
When a single witness reports an episode of high strangeness involving a UFO encounter, having physical evidence in the form of traces left on the ground, or on the witness, really helps when arguing for the witness’s credibility. This was the case in the 1979 report by a forestry worker in Scotland who said he not only saw a mysterious domed object sitting on the ground, but that he was assaulted by two spherical objects with spike-like protrusions that rolled towards him. The case got the attention Flying Saucer Review Editor Charles Bowen, who made arrangements to have it investigated by members of the UFO Investigators Network, an organization funded by FSR and formed in 1977 with the help of Jenny Randles who had proposed the idea. The resulting three-part report by UFOIN investigators Martin Keatman and Andrew Collins appears in the 
In the late 1960s, Dr. J. Allen Hynek was a key figure in getting members of the scientific community to take flying saucers/UFOs seriously. He was a prominent astronomer who was involved in the mystery at the very beginning as a consultant for the Air Force’s investigation, which operated for most of its existence as Project Blue Book until its termination in 1969. He was born in Chicago in 1910 and worked and lived in Ohio from 1935 until he became chair of the astronomy department at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, in 1960. In 1973, he founded the Center for UFO Studies, which was based in Chicago. Then, in 1984, after spending his entire life in the Midwest, he rather suddenly moved with his family from Chicago to Scottsdale, Arizona. In this blog, we’ll explore what was going on behind the scenes.
In August 1979, a case out of Minnesota that was chock full of trace evidence, including physical effects displayed by the witness in the aftermath, was investigated by Allen Hendry for the Center for UFO Studies. The incident and the related activity are described two days afterwards in the August 29, 1979, edition of the local Warren, Minnesota, Sheaf.
This is the last of a three-part series of blogs covering the case of an Italian security guard (with the company Val Bisagno), Piero Fortunato Zanfretta, who reported a number of encounters with UFOs and their occupants. After the first incident, he described in conscious recall being confronted by “an enormous green, ugly and frightful creature, with undulating skin, no less than ten feet tall.” Under hypnosis the story came out that he was taken up into a craft where he was interrogated and examined by as many as ten creatures “about 10 feet tall, with hairy green skin, yellow triangular eyes and red veins across the forehead” with metal strips over their mouths. He said they told him they were from the “third galaxy,” wanted to talk to the people of Earth, and would return soon in greater numbers. Italian journalist Rino Di Stefano became interested in the case, stuck with it, and wrote a book about it titled The Zanfretta Case, first published in Italian in 1984 and then in English in 2014. The reader can refer to his
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In last week’s