by UFO History Buff & Author, Charles Lear
This is the fourth part in a series looking at an early Brazilian abduction case. In 1969, José Antônio Da Silva reported that on May 4, in Bebedouro, near the Brazilian town of Pedro Leopoldo, he was taken aboard a craft by three hairy dwarves, one of whom shot a beam of light that hit him in the legs and paralyzed them. He said that he was flown through space, and that they landed at a place where he saw human bodies, drawings of animals on the walls, and answered questions put to him about Earth. According to him, he was taken back to Earth and left off at Colatina, 350km east of Pedro Leopoldo. The case was reported in a Brazilian newspaper article that was quoted in its entirety by Gordon Creighton in the November-December 1971 issue of Flying Saucer Review. In parts 2 and 3 we looked at the report of the principle investigator, Húlvio Brant Aleixo, who formed the very first Brazilian UFO organization in 1954. His report appears in the article “Abduction at Bebedouro” published in the December 1973 issue (page 7 of pdf) of Flying Saucer Review. We noted some major differences in the accounts and got as far as Da Silva being taken off the craft and finding himself in a room where he saw pictures on a wall, four human-looking bodies, and 10-12 small, long-haired, bearded men, one of whom stood five meters in front of him and seemed to be the “chief.”
Da Silva was said to have been on a fishing trip when he was taken, and to have had a bundle with him containing clothes, fishing tackle and provisions. According to Aleixo, the creatures opened it and, “with much animation,” examined each item as they passed it from hand to hand. Da Silva is said to have observed that, after they had examined everything, they set aside one item each of “everything of which there was a duplicate,” which included various types of fishing hooks, a knife, a set of clothing, a box of matches, and a 100-Cruzeiro note from a total of CR$35,000. Everything that was left is described as being put back and bundled up again. According to Aleixo, the one exception was Da Silva’s identity card, and Da Silva got the idea that they determined from it that he was in the military, as one of the creatures gave a demonstration of his weapon by firing a beam at a wall causing a discoloration, and the idea was reinforced by a communication with the chief shortly thereafter.
The communication by the chief is described as a combination of “incomprehensible speech,” “wide-sweeping gestures,” and a sketch with a pencil on a light-colored slate of what Da Silva interpreted as armed individuals around an army camp. The chief is said to have pointed at the weapons in the sketch, at Da Silva, down, and then up, and Da Silva is said to have to have “gesticulated negatively” as he understood that the chief was asking him to help them get some of our weapons. According to Aleixo, the chief “kept insisting on this theme,” and Da Silva started losing hope that he would make it home alive. In an italicized passage in parentheses, Aleixo tells the reader that Da Silva repeatedly refused to reveal other aspects of the “‘conversation’ on this subject.”
One of the creatures is described as coming over to Da Silva carrying a stone cube with a green liquid in a pyramid-shaped cavity, which the chief indicated Da Silva should drink. Da Silva is said to have resisted, but then to have relented and drunk some of the liquid, described as bitter, after having his helmet “raised with a certain amount of violence” and seeing another creature drink some. He is described as having felt weak beforehand (having had nothing to eat) and better afterwards and to have thought he could better understand what the chief was trying to say.
Aleixo describes a series of circles drawn by the chief: two circles, one filled in and one left open that Da Silva understood as indicating one of our days and one of our nights; a mass of open circles that Da Silva concluded represented a year after counting over 300 of them before losing track; nine more masses; and a thick line that separated 3 of the masses from the other seven. The chief is described as pointing to the three masses, to Da Silva, and then down. He is then described pointing to Da Silva, to the seven masses, and then making “still more gestures.”
Da Silva is quoted relating the message as he understood it:
He is proposing to take me to Earth, where I shall remain for three years, collecting information for him. Then he will send for me to come to them, where I shall remain studying for seven years. And then finally they will land on Earth, with me as a guide.
According to Aleixo, Da Silva responded with “a gesture of negation, indicating his refusal,” as he fingered the Rosary he was wearing around his waist and prayed aloud. The chief is described as “displaying irritation for the first time,” grabbing the Crucifix and pulling it off. The creatures are said to have passed it around, with great curiosity, along with one of the beads that had fallen from it.
At this point, Aleixo describes a human figure 1.7 meters tall with a beard and long, fair hair who was dressed in something resembling a friar’s cassock appearing in front of Da Silva, talking to him in Portuguese, and relieving him of the despair he was feeling up to that point. According to Aleixo, this individual, unperceived by the little men, gave Da Silva some revelations that were not to be passed along to anyone else until instructions were given in what might possibly be two to three years. He describes Da Silva as having “displayed tremendous resistance to questioning” regarding the revelations. He adds that when Da Silva was asked if the person was Jesus, he said no, and when asked if the person was a saint, he smiled and changed the subject.
According to Aleixo, the man vanished, and just as he did, the little men appeared to become irritated with each other. He says the chief came over to the two creatures who had never left Da Silva’s side, that Da Silva’s eyeholes were covered, and that he was taken back onto the craft in the same way he’d been taken off. Aleixo describes the journey back as being similar to the initial trip.
According to Aleixo, the creatures removed Da Silva’s helmet, and he immediately became semi-conscious and perceived that they were dragging him out of the craft into the darkness of night.
Da Silva is described as waking up around dawn with an intense thirst, crawling to a stream where he estimated he drank one and a half liters of water without totally quenching his thirst, catching some fish to eat, and seeing by the light of the rising sun that he had been left at the edge of a quarry. He is said to have made his way to a road where he found someone who informed him he was 32km from Vitória on the road to Minas Gerais and that it was May 9th.
According to Aleixo, Da Silva was alarmed when he realized he had been gone for four and a half days and considered going back to the woods to live off fruit and fish, as he had no identification and could only account for his absence with an unbelievable story. He is said to have reconsidered and to have gone to the train station at Colatina to get the train back to Belo Horizonte. According to Aleixo, Da Silva befriended a station agent, ate with him and met his family, and gave him a knife to thank him for his kindness. Aleixo tells the reader that Da Silva “was very insistent” that the investigators should go with him to where he said he was dropped off, as they would probably find a small fish he threw back in a pool in the rocks and that the station agent would know him and show them the knife he’d been given.
There is a follow-up article by Aleixo in the Volume 21, 3 & 4 1975 issue (page 33 of pdf) of FSR headlined “Bebedouro II: The Little Men Return for the Soldier.” In it, Da Silva is described as being the caretaker of his family, and his father is said to have noted that he had no weaknesses or vices. Aleixo reports that, in addition to Da Silva’s swollen right knee and marks on his shoulders and neck, he complained of constipation and “a burning sensation in the eyes and a reduction in the sharpness of his vision.”
According to Aleixo, Da Silva reported that at around midnight on May 21, he got an impulse to go out and check on his goats and encountered three little men in flight suits. He is described as going back into the house without saying anything and expressing to the investigators that he wasn’t going to work against his own people. Da Silva is said to have told the investigators that the world was in great danger (as revealed by the robed apparition) and that there might be intervention by “unknown beings,” although calamity might be avoided if humans “changed their present behavior.”
Da Silva is quoted as asking “Can there be a machine that isn’t a machine?” After this, a sighting he reported of a mysterious light that seemed under intelligent control is described.
The rest of the article concerns investigation of other reports in the area and the discovery of Antônio Rodrigues, a 60-year-old deaf mute who managed to tell a story of an encounter almost identical to the one reported by Da Silva, except that he reported he was left behind by the little men, who decided not to take him.
As for Rodrigues possibly getting his story from the accounts in the papers of Da Silva’s story, it is explained that Rodrigues lived in the middle of the bush with very little access to the media. It is then that the differences in the newspaper account and the report by Aleixo are addressed for the first time. Aleixo argues that even if Rodrigues had read the newspaper accounts, “the newspapers had given an incomplete and entirely faulty version of the Bebedouro case.”