Varginha, January 1996: The "ET" That the Army Says Was a Local Man

On the afternoon of 20 January 1996, three young women walking through a vacant lot in Varginha, a coffee town in southern Minas Gerais, said they saw a crouching brown creature with large red eyes and bumps on its head. Within weeks the story had grown: firefighters and soldiers had captured one or more creatures, a military policeman had died of an infection, bodies had been flown to a university hospital.

The Army’s file

In 1997 the Brazilian Army opened a military police inquiry, IPM nº 18/1997, into what its personnel had done. The file is now held and published by the Superior Military Court. It records troop movements that week as routine and concludes that the women most likely saw a local man, Luís Antônio de Paula, known as “Mudinho,” who was said to crouch against walls and was dirty from rain.

Two stories

Ufologists, led by local researchers, call the inquiry a cover-up and point to the timing of the soldier’s death. The town embraced the legend, with an ET-shaped water tower and a museum. The documents support an ordinary event; the town’s identity rests on the extraordinary one.

Ledger status

Marked disputed. The official explanation is documented; the capture stories are not.

Sources

• Superior Tribunal Militar, Arquimedes, “Inquérito Policial Militar nº 18/1997” — arquimedes.stm.jus.br
• Wikipedia, “Varginha UFO incident” — en.wikipedia.org

Part of the World Ledger, batch 1. Original text; no images are used.