Encounter Atlas
On the night of October 15, 1957, Antônio Vilas-Boas, a 23-year-old farmer, was ploughing his family's fields near São Francisco de Sales in Minas Gerais, working at night to avoid the heat. He said a light he took for a red star came closer until it became an egg-shaped craft with a red light at the front and a rotating dome, which landed on three legs. When he tried to drive off, his tractor's engine and lights died.
He said he was seized by a helmeted being about 5 feet tall in grey coveralls, and three others helped drag him aboard. Inside, he said, he was stripped, covered in a gel and had a blood sample taken from his chin, and was made ill by a gas. He then said a small woman with pale hair and slanted blue eyes came in and had sex with him, afterwards pointing to her belly and upward. He was shown around the craft, failed in an attempt to take a device as proof, and watched the craft leave. He said about four hours had passed.
Vilas-Boas later contacted journalist João Martins, who brought in physician Olavo Fontes. Fontes interviewed and examined him in 1958, recorded skin lesions and other symptoms, and believed he had mild radiation sickness. No hypnosis was used. There was no government investigation. The story circulated among researchers for several years before appearing in print in the early 1960s.
Researcher Peter Rogerson doubted the account, noting that a similar story had been printed in the magazine O Cruzeiro a few months before Vilas-Boas first told his own, and that Vilas-Boas, far from being an unworldly peasant, was an ambitious young man taking a correspondence course. Vilas-Boas, who later became a lawyer and raised a family, stood by his story until his death in 1991. It was one of the first modern abduction claims to get wide attention, four years before the Hill case.