Encounter Atlas
At about 3:30 p.m. on January 20, 1996, three young women walking through the Jardim Andere neighbourhood of Varginha, in Minas Gerais, said they saw a strange being crouched by a wall on a vacant lot. They described a large-headed figure with three bumps on its head, veined skin and red eyes, which looked weak or injured. Frightened, they ran home and told their mother they had seen the devil.
The story spread quickly. Over the following months, residents and ufologists made a series of further claims: that UFOs had been seen in the days before, that the army and fire service had captured one or more creatures and taken them to hospitals and then to Campinas, that a police officer had died after handling one, and that several animals at the local zoo had died mysteriously. Ufologists linked these reports into a single story of a crash and a cover-up.
The Brazilian Army opened a military police inquiry (IPM) in 1996. It concluded that the women had most likely seen a local man known as "Mudinho", who probably had a mental disability, and who may have been dirty from heavy rain and crouching by a wall. It said the military trucks and personnel seen that day were on routine duties, such as vehicle maintenance, that had been misread as a capture operation. Brazil's Superior Military Court later made the inquiry's two volumes available online. Ufologists, including the main local investigators, reject that explanation, noting that the women would have known the man.
Varginha has embraced the story: the town has alien-themed bus shelters, a flying-saucer-shaped water tower and souvenirs of the "ET de Varginha". The case has been the subject of many Brazilian books, a 2022 documentary, Moment of Contact, and a 2025 Brazilian documentary.