The heavens over the coffee-producing capital in the south of Minas Gerais became as black as charcoal. Then followed the down-pour, which was unusually fierce, even by the standards of tropical storms. That, locals say, was the start.
A city that now boasts of being the UFO capital of Brazil, Varginha, in January 1996, experienced a cascade of events that attracted international attention, military conjecture and decades of unsolved mysteries. Thirty years later, the supposed spectacle involving a weird smelly monster called the 'ET of Varginha' is one of the hottest paranormal events in the country.
"It really was something unique," Marco Antonio Reis, a 71-year-old zoo director, recalled from his ranch on the outskirts of the city. Reis was there when, according to local lore, an otherworldly visitor arrived.
The storm, Reis and others believe, heralded more than just flooded streets. On a nearby wasteland, three young women, Liliane Fátima Silva, Valquíria Aparecida Silva, and Kátia Andrade Xavier, reported spotting a peculiar being with a heart-shaped face, three lumps on its head, cowering beside a wall. Witnesses described a strong, unpleasant odor. "I've seen the devil," one of the women later told her mother.
Around the same time, strange events multiplied. At Reis's zoo, at least six animals, including a spider monkey, a tapir, and a raccoon, died mysteriously after a woman who stepped out for a smoke reported seeing a horned interloper with bulging red eyes in the vicinity. When a veterinarian examined the corpses, Reis claimed, "they were all black inside."
Soon after, rumors spread that a police intelligence officer had died from an unexplained infection after grappling with the oleaginous unidentified being.
A new witness breaks silence
Now, on the 30th anniversary, the story has taken fresh turns. A neurologist, Ítalo Venturelli, has come forward after nearly three decades of silence. Speaking in a recent documentary series, "The Mystery of Varginha" and at a Washington press conference organized by investigative filmmaker James Fox, Venturelli described a startling encounter at a Varginha hospital in 1996.
"It was like a child, neither green nor brown, as they said. What I saw was white, with a teardrop-shaped skull and lilac eyes. I looked at it, it looked at me, it looked out the window and back at me," Venturelli said, adding that the creature seemed "very calm, it seemed like an angel."
He explained that fear of ridicule kept him silent for decades, but a serious illness that nearly killed him prompted him to speak publicly.
Other new testimonies emerged at the Washington conference. A Brazilian man, Carlos de Sousa, claimed he witnessed a cigar-shaped UFO crash near Varginha, describing a strong smell of ammonia and rotten eggs, followed by army vehicles arriving and soldiers ordering him away at gunpoint.
Official investigation: 'It was fiction'
But as Varginha commemorated the 30th anniversary of the enigma that turned the little-known agricultural city into a household name, Brazilian authorities released official documents offering a definitive conclusion.
An inquiry conducted by the Superior Military Court, completed in 1997 and made fully public to mark the anniversary, runs more than 600 pages and concludes the story was a sham. The investigation, which formally heard from all military personnel cited in ufology accounts, found "no evidence of involvement by the Army or any military operation related to the so-called ET of Varginha."
"Not having had the creature, it cannot be believed that there was the capture or transport cited, which gives the work the stamp of fiction," the official text states.
According to the military inquiry, the "creature" seen by the three young women was likely a local man with mental disabilities, known to wander the city and often remain crouched. The presence of army trucks in Varginha was explained by routine maintenance schedules, not a secret capture operation.
One remorseful former soldier, who had once sensationally claimed troops captured an alien, admitted in the recent documentary to spreading fake news after being offered a bribe worth thousands of dollars. "There's no such thing as the ET of Varginha," he said, calling claims of a military cover-up "one of the biggest farces ever."
Even Ubirajara Rodrigues, the ufologist who first propelled the story to national fame, has reversed his position. In the Globo documentary series, he admitted having "committed the great mistake that ufologists make," believing and promoting alien theories without concrete evidence.
'To this day, it's being covered up'
Yet for Reis and many others in Varginha, the official conclusion changes nothing.
"To this day this business is being covered up," Reis said during a tour of the sites where the interplanetary sojourner is said to have been seen.
He remains convinced Varginha received a non-human visitor. The only question lingering is where it came from.
"We don't know if it was extraterrestrial or intraterrestrial," the 71-year-old says as he climbs a staircase to the veranda where the smoker claimed her sighting. A 2ft statue of a two-toed alien now marks the spot.
"It's possible it was an intraterrestrial, from inside the Earth... They don't just come from space," Reis says. "It might have come from the depths of the Earth, too. We don't even know what it's like at the bottom of the sea, do we?"
Tourism boom consoles many
Regardless of what happened, or didn't, the saga has been remarkably good for business.
Varginha's tourism secretary, Rosana Carvalho, claims 200,000 visitors from nearly 40 countries have visited the city's flying saucer-shaped ET museum since it opened in 2022. The gift shop offers a cornucopia of themed merchandise, from ET mugs to T-shirts stamped with cartoons of green aliens and the words "humans are terrible."
In January, the city hosted a two-day international UFO conference to mark the anniversary. The government has also acquired the weed-covered wasteland where the three young women supposedly saw the ET, with plans to build a monument. Carvalho said American investors have visited with proposals for a theme park.
"We really see the chance to turn this into a substantial economic activity for the municipality," Carvalho said, citing the multimillion-dollar tourist industry that grew up around the Loch Ness monster in Scotland.
A divided city
On the streets of Varginha, opinion remains split.
José Reis, 71, scoffed at claims his hometown had received a visit from beyond. He supports the official version, that the three young women confused a scrawny man with an alien as he sought sanctuary from the rain. "I don't believe any of it, but it's not for us to judge," he said.
Another commuter, Helena Narciso, 47, furrowed her brow in disapproval. "Young people don't lie," she insisted, declaring the story 100 percent true. What was more, Narciso believed the aliens would one day return to Varginha. "I think they are looking for me," she said, with a conspiratorial glance.
For Reis, now 71, the truth remains both close and elusive, buried somewhere beneath the soil, or perhaps far beneath it.
"I've seen the devil," the witness once said. Three decades later, Varginha is still looking for answers.
