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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Science
Tom Phillips in Varginha

‘I’ve seen the devil’: Brazil’s UFO capital marks 30 years since ‘alien encounter’

Statue of a red-eyed alien being
‘ET de Varginha’ statue at the city’s extraterrestrial museum. Photograph: Alan Lima/The Guardian

The skies over this far-flung coffee-growing hub went charcoal black, the heavens opened and one of Brazil’s greatest mysteries was born.

“It really was something unique,” recalls Marco Antônio Reis, a zoo director, who was at his ranch outside Varginha one stormy day in January 1996 when, he says, an otherworldly creature came to town.

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