Much has been written about the first alleged “alien abduction.” It took place in Brazil in October, 1957 on a farm outside the village of Sao Francisco de Sales near the Paraguay River.
The abductee in question, Antonio Vilas-Boas, was a 23-year-old ranchero plowing his family’s fields at night to avoid the heat of day. After the incident, he went on to become a successful lawyer, married, raised four children and died in 1992 at age 58. He stuck to his story for the rest of his life.
Before looking further into his remarkable tale, I searched for other events in Brazil that might provide helpful perspective and context. In the same Paraguay River basin, a UFO was sighted and reported by a highly reputable naval officer. This occurred nearly one hundred years before Vilas-Boas was born. The location was 1,000 miles up the 1,629 mile long river, near the deep water port of Asuncion.
On July 18, 1846 Brazilian Naval Frigate Captain Augusto João Manuel Leverger, later to become an admiral, was in command of two warships sailing to Asuncion, the Paraguayan capital. His mission was to “flex some muscle” to intimidate Paraguay, then in a border dispute with Brazil. Nineteen miles south of Asuncion, Captain Leverger saw the following (as reported in a contemporary Brazilian newspaper and translated by UFO researcher J. Antonio Huneeus):
“I observed tonight a phenomenon never seen before. At 5 hours 57 minutes, while the sky was perfectly clear and calm, thermometer [temperature] 60° [F], a luminous globe performed with instant speed a 30 degree curve in a NNW direction. The direction made on the horizon angles of approximately 75 and 105 degrees opened by a steep west side.
“A light band 5º or 6º long and 30º to 35 ° wide remained, in which one could see three bodies whose brightness was much more lively than the band, and equaled if not exceeded in intensity the full moon in clear weather. They were superimposed and separated from each other. The middle one had an almost circular appearance; the bottom one seemed like an arc of a circle of 120 degrees with broken rays at the end; the form at the top was an irregular quadrangle; the larger dimension of the disks would be from 20 to 25°. Finally you could see above them a ribbon of very faint light in the form of zigzag about 3° wide and 5 or 6º long. The angular height of the big band on the horizon appeared to be of 8º (afraid of losing some circumstances of the phenomenon I did not go to get the instrument to measure these dimensions).
“Everything was lowering with no apparent velocity greater than the stars in their twilight, but the globes of light changed aspect, taking an increasingly flat elliptical shape, and in a mist began to look like small clouds. The big band leaned N [north] until becoming almost horizontal, but the zigzag always retained the same direction. After 25 min. it was all gone, and there was not the slightest sign of disturbance in the atmosphere.
“In the city of Asunción, I talked to the Minister [Ambassador] of Brazil [the marquis of São Vicente] and several other people who [also] witnessed this singular appearance.” (3)
The Paraguay is South America’s second longest navigable river, after the Amazon. The sightings of UFOs above or near such a large, deep body of water are not unusual.
Fast-forward to October 5, 1957. Within the same river basin north of Asuncion, 23 year-old Antonio Vilas-Boas and his brother were awakened in the bedroom they shared by a bright light – a silvery light illuminating their room and yard. But, they saw no object and the light slowly passed over. Coincidentally, the day before, the Soviet Union had launched Sputnik, the first satellite.
A few nights later Vilas-Boas and his brother were again plowing their fields at night. They both saw a circular cart-wheel in the sky, shining a red light so intense it hurt their eyes. Then, it disappeared in an instant, as though a light switch had been thrown.
The following night, October 15, Vilas-Boas was plowing the field alone. At about 1 a.m., he saw a distant red light in the sky. There are many narrative versions of what happened next. Wikipedia provides a good summary and I cited it in my Navy report:
“[While riding his tractor] he saw a ‘red star’ in the night sky. [T]his ‘star’ approached his position, growing in size until it became recognizable as a roughly circular or egg-shaped aerial craft, with a red light at its front and a rotating cupola on top. The craft began descending to land in the field, extending three ‘legs’ as it did so. At that point, Boas decided to run from it.
“[H]e first attempted to leave on his tractor, but when its lights and engine died after traveling only a short distance, he decided to continue on foot. However, he was seized by a 1.5 m (five-foot) tall humanoid, who was wearing grey coveralls and a helmet. Its eyes were small and blue, and instead of speech it made noises like barks or yelps. Three similar beings then joined the first in subduing Boas, and they dragged him inside their craft.
“Boas said he was then stripped of his clothes and covered head-to-toe with a strange gel; then led into a large semicircular room, through a doorway that had strange red symbols written over it. In this room the beings took samples of Boas' blood from his chin. After this he was taken to a third room and left alone for around half an hour. During this time, some kind of gas was pumped in, which made Boas become violently ill.
“Shortly after this, Boas was joined in the room by another humanoid. This one, however, was female, very attractive and naked. She was the same height as the other beings he had encountered, with a small pointed chin and large, blue catlike eyes. The hair on her head was long and white.”
A direct translation of Vilas-Boas’ story, as reported by journalist Michele Bugliaro Goggia, tells us more (4):
“[Her] big blue eyes, rather longer than round, [were] slanted outward, like those pencil-drawn girls made to look like Arabian princesses that look as if they were slit . . . except that they were natural; there was no makeup.
“Her nose was straight, not pointed, not turned-up, nor too big. The contour of her face was different, though, because she had very high, prominent cheekbones that made her face narrowed to a peak, so that all of a sudden it ended in a pointed chin, which gave the lower part of her face a very pointed look. Her lips were very thin, nearly invisible in fact. Her ears, which I only saw later, were small and did not seem different from ordinary ears . . . and her breasts stood up high and well-separated. Her waistline was thin, her belly flat, her hips well-developed, and her thighs were large. Her feet were small, her hands long and narrow. Her fingers and nails were normal. She was much shorter than I am, her head only reached my shoulder . . . Her skin was white and she was full of freckles on her arms.”
Back to Wikipedia:
“Boas was strongly attracted to the woman, and the two had sexual intercourse. During this act, Boas noted the female did not kiss him but instead nipped him on the chin.
“When it was over, the female smiled at Boas, rubbing her belly and gestured upwards. Boas took this to mean that she was going to raise their child in space. The female seemed relieved that their ‘task’ was over, and Boas himself said he felt angered by the situation, because he felt as though he had been little more than ‘a good stallion’ for the humanoids. He was then escorted off the ship and watched as it took off, glowing brightly. When Boas returned home, he discovered that four hours had passed.”
After this bizarre night, Boas was restless, nervous, had difficulty sleeping and experienced nausea. Worse, lesions appeared on various parts of his body.
He told his story to a local journalist. Eventually Dr. Olavo Fontes of the National School of Medicine of Brazil heard it and examined Boas. According to Wikipedia, Dr. Fontes concluded Boas had been exposed to a large dose of radiation and was suffering mild radiation poisoning. Here’s what the doctor found:
“Among [his] symptoms were pains throughout the body, nausea, headaches, loss of appetite, ceaselessly burning sensations in the eyes, cutaneous lesions at the slightest bruising . . . which went on appearing for months, looking like small reddish nodules, harder than the skin around them and protuberant, painful when touched, each with a small central orifice yielding a yellowish thin waterish discharge. The skin surrounding the wounds presented a hyper-chromatic violet-tinged area.”
But Villas-Boas’ troubles were not just medical. Former British military investigator, Nick Pope, says Villas-Boas was later “interrogated quite roughly by Brazilian military authorities, and yet he never wavered from the details of his story.”
Nick Pope, a former official UFO investigator for the Ministry of Defence of the United Kingdom, concluded “it is inconceivable that everyone is lying” about such alien encounters. (5)
That Vilas-Boas did not change his story in the face of “rough interrogation” by a military not known for being gentle is significant.
Moreover, as Mr. Pope points out, Vilas-Boas’ injuries are difficult to explain:
“How could a Brazilian farmer in the 1950s have come into contact conventionally with radioactive material?”
That Vilas-Boas described “strange red symbols written over” a doorway inside the craft may be particularly significant. Years later, investigators of alleged “abductees” have obtained detailed descriptions of exotic symbols similar to hieroglyphs, petroglyphs or other symbolic writing.
Most descriptions, however, have not been published. Certainly there were none in Vilas-Boas’ day. Back then, “alien abduction” had never been heard of.
During a 1992 Massachusetts Institute of Technology conference on abductions and UFOs, John G. Miller, M.D., said symbols such as those described by Vilas Boas give particular credibility to experiencers’ stories. As in good criminal investigations, certain facts about abductions are not made public.
“I won’t discuss what these symbols are because they have not been published; but they aren’t something a person would make up. They are unique and unusual symbols.” (6)
I was left with a credible story of a young man seized by apparent beings from another world who examined him, coerced him into having sex, and then let him go. This is the first recorded kidnapping and sexual assault by an “alien.”
But, it is not the first instance of beings from another world taking advantage of locals. During his first voyage, Columbus seized docile Taino Indians, brought them on board his ships to learn their language and customs; this to better achieve the expedition’s primary objective: bringing back valuable spices, and gold and silver to sell in Europe (of which he personally would receive a generous share). In the end, lacking much treasure, he abducted a few Tainos and brought them back to Spain (along with small amounts of gold) to show off to the Court of Ferdinand and Isabelle.
On that first trip, Columbus ordered his men to treat the Tainos with respect, desiring a peaceful trade relationship. There is no written record of sexual intercourse between Old Worlders and New Worlders. For that, we must look to his second voyage and the discovery of the Virgin Islands.
On a beach in a river estuary on what is now the U.S. Virgin Island of St. Croix, Columbus fought a small skirmish with members of the Carib tribe who were the dominant inhabitants. Unlike the relatively friendly Tainos, however, the Caribs were aggressive and war-like. Originally from the South American mainland, the Caribs had moved outward, island by island, slaughtering and enslaving any inhabitants they found. These, included the more civilized agricultural Tainos whose culture can still be discerned from pottery and other artifacts including petroglyphs carved in stone.
Columbus’ men knew the Carib reputation and had even seen evidence they were cannibals. Indeed, 35 years later in 1528, Italian explorer Giovanni da Verrazano was killed and reportedly eaten by Caribs on the island of Guadeloupe during his third voyage of exploration. Four years before becoming a Carib dinner entrée, Verrazano had discovered New York harbor and today the bridge spanning its entrance memorializes him: the Verrazano Narrows Bridge.
Columbus and crew viewed the Caribs as monstrous barbarians. Here’s how Guillermo Coma of Aragon, one of the handful of noblemen on the second voyage, described them:
“[Caribs] are a wild, unconquered race which feeds on human flesh. They wage unceasing wars against gentle and timid Indians to supply flesh . . . They ravage, despoil and terrorize the Indians ruthlessly.” (7)
Columbus and his men dealt harshly with the first Caribs they saw. That meeting occurred at their Salt River landing on St Croix. Dr. Chanca, physician for Columbus’ second expedition, described the opening events:
“At the dinner hour [on November 12, 1493], we arrived at an island which seemed to be worth the finding, for judging by the extent of the cultivation in it, it appeared very populous. We put in a harbor and the Admiral immediately sent on shore a well-manned barge to hold speech with the Indians in order to ascertain what race they were . . . and gain some information on our [navigational] course. And, some of the men who went in the barge [went] on shore and [entered] a village [from] whence the inhabitants had already withdrawn and hidden themselves. [But, our men were able to capture five or six enslaved Taino women and some boys from whom they] learned that the natives of this place were Caribbees.”
“As [our] barge was about to return to the ships with the captures they had made, a canoe came along the coast containing [several Caribs]; and when they saw [our] fleet [which Dr. Chanca says consisted of 17 ships and almost 1,200 fighting men] they were so stupefied with amazement that for a good hour they remained motionless at a distance of nearly two cannon shots. In this position they were seen by those in the barge and also by all the fleet.” (8)
At this point, the commander of the barge and landing party, Count Michele de Cuneo, a childhood friend of Columbus (both grew up near Genoa, Italy) saw the Carib’s canoe. De Cuneo, whom Naval historian Samuel Eliot Morison describes as a “jolly dog and good raconteur in contrast to Columbus and the rather solemn Spaniards,” explains what happened next:
“[The canoe had on board] three or four Carib men with two Carib women and two [male Taino] Indian slaves, of whom they had recently cut the genital organ to the belly, so that they were still sore; and we having the flagship’s boat ashore, when we saw that canoe coming, quickly jumped into the boat and gave chase to that canoe.” (9)
No doubt, Count Cuneo had seen de-neutered male slaves before. Indeed, in his day, slavery was common in Genoa, where merchant sailors traveled to Muslim and Slavic lands in the East and brought home captives sold as servants. Castrated Taino males could serve Carib women without worry of unwanted sex. Eunuchs served the same function in the Middle East of Columbus’ day.
Also, males would fatten-up more quickly without genitals, if destined for Carib dinner tables.
Dr. Chanca continues the story of Count Cuneo’s canoe chase:
“Meanwhile, those in the barge moved towards the canoe, but so close in to shore, that the Indians, in their perplexity and astonishment as to what all this could mean, never saw them, until they [our men in the barge] were so near that escape was impossible; for our men pressed on them so rapidly that they could not get away, although they made considerable effort to do so.
“When the Caribbees saw that all attempt at flight was useless, they most courageously took to their bows, both men and women; I say courageously because they were only four men and two women [and two slaves, according to de Cuneo], and our men numbered twenty-five. Two of our men were wounded by the Indians, one with two arrows in his breast, and another with an arrow in his side, and if it had not happened that [our men] carried shields and bucklers, and that they soon got near [the Indians] with the barge and upset the canoe, most of them would have been killed [by] their arrows.”
One of the wounded Spanish soldiers did have a shield, but an arrow went through it and penetrated his chest three inches. He died in a few days.
Dr. Chanca continues:
“[The Indians, even while in the water were] still using their bows as much as they could . . . [so that it was very hard for our men] to take them; and [of all of the Indians] there was one of them whom they were unable to secure until he had received a mortal wound with a lance, and whom thus wounded they took to the ships.
“[The Caribbees we took had] curly designs drawn with sticks on their faces and foreheads and had their eyes and eyebrows stained, which I imagine they do for ostentation and to give them a more frightful appearance. . .”
De Cuneo next describes his special conquest after the battle:
“While I was in the [barge], I captured a very beautiful Carib woman, whom the Lord Admiral [Columbus] gave to me, and with whom, having taken her into my cabin, she being naked according to their custom, I conceived a desire to take pleasure. I wanted to put my desire into execution but she did not want it and treated me with her finger nails in such a manner that I wished I had never begun. But seeing that (to tell you the end of it), I took a rope and thrashed her well, for which she raised such unheard of screams that you would not have believed your ears. Finally, we came to an agreement in such manner that I can tell you she seemed to have been brought up in a school of harlots.”
Columbus also gave captured Carib women to other officers, while the remaining Carib and Taino captives were sent to Spain.
Now part of Virgin Islands National Park, Salt River is described by the Park Service as a “dynamic, tropical ecosystem home to some of the largest mangrove forests in the Virgin Islands” as well as coral reefs and an underwater canyon. (10)
Gone are the Carib/Taino cultivated fields and village. Even later European sugar plantation clearings are gone, covered with more than 100 years of tree and bush growth. Today, this river basin may be more heavily forested than at any time after Indians first arrived a thousand or more years ago.
The “first contact” experiences of Columbus and his men provided context, as I tried to understand alleged “alien abductions.” But, the Vilas-Boas story and other incredible reports suggested something beyond our own history of exploration and conquest. As former British Defence investigator Nick Pope put it:
“There are a number of sightings [he uncovered] that defied all rational explanation. Something very strange was going on.” (11)
And, Mr. Pope candidly added:
“Several of my colleagues in the MOD [Ministry of Defence], military and in intelligence believe we have been . . . [visited by an extraterrestrial civilization].” (12)
All of this, of course, had to be reported to the Navy. I boiled down the research and presented Lt. Taft with the two stories of kidnapping and sexual assault in the very different “first contact” dramas played-out on St Croix in 1493 and in Brazil in 1957. I stuck to the facts, where they could be ascertained.
Within a few hours of receiving my e-mailed report, Lt. Taft phoned:
“Dr. Harris, I read your analyses of the Villas-Boas and Carib contact experiences with great interest. Some of my superiors may be unable to accept the Brazilian encounter as a real event. But, that is to be expected. As for me, I found your citings of the official British Ministry of Defence UFO investigator . . . ah, Nick Pope . . . to be persuasive. And, I agree that the experiences of Columbus can shed light on all of this.”
I appreciated Lt. Taft’s open-mindedness. I encouraged him to look more closely.
“There are credible individuals and independent sources providing corroborative information out there. This all must be taken seriously. Your associates are in a better position than me to get the facts. You should contact the Brits and Brazilians to get more.”
“Perhaps, but it’s not that easy for me. You are outside the system and don’t need to go through layers of often openly skeptical authority to get anything done – particularly contacting foreign officials. As an outside, paid academic consultant, your work is more difficult to deny internally.”
“I can understand that. Academia has its own bureaucracies and constraints – especially when looking into these areas. Even Harvard’s Dr. Mack was investigated by the University and had to hire an attorney to defend his position and the validity of his work with abductees.”
Before hanging-up, I finally asked a question that had been nagging me.
“Incidentally, why do we need encrypted e-mails and a secure telephone line? Are you concerned about the media?”
He replied in a strained voice.
“No, Doctor. We are concerned that other agencies may be monitoring our Office of Naval Intelligence’s activities and we do not want interference with your work.”
“What sort of interference?”
“Difficult to say. It depends upon how far you are able to get in your research. Now that Norman Island has become a new, well-documented UFO incident and you are uncovering new information on previous events, others in the U.S. Government would be very interested. They might even wish to step in and take over . . . or even suppress your investigation.
“And, that would be unfortunate and possibly unpleasant.”
“Unpleasant for me?”
“Yes. And, for your witnesses. But, you should all be fine if you follow our protocol.”
How wrong the good Lieutenant proved to be.
Notes
1. “Journals and Other Documents on the Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus,” translated and edited by Samuel Eliot Morison, The Heritage Press, New York, 1963, page 212.
2. His story is told on many Sites and in many books. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonio_Villas_Boas for a summary, and, also “UFOs and the National Security State,” Vol. 1, by Richard M. Dolan, paperback edition, Hampton Roads Publishing Company, 2002, page 202.
3. http://www.openminds.tv/brazils-first-ufo-report/
4. http://www.ufopsi.com/articles/antoniovillasboas.html
5. “Open Skies, Closed Minds,” by Nick Pope, Dell Publishing, paperback, 1998, page 29-33.
6. “Close Encounters of the Fourth Kind: A Reporter’s Notebook on Alien Abduction, UFOs and the MIT Conference,” by C.D.B. Bryan, Penguin Paperback edition, 1995, page 280.
7. “Journals and Other Documents on the Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus,” translated and edited by Samuel Eliot Morison, The Heritage Press, New York, 1963, page 237.
8. Letter of Diego Alvarez Chanca on The Second Voyage of Columbus, American Journeys collection of Wisconsin Historical Society, pages 291 and 292. http://content.wisconsinhistory.org/cdm/compoundobject/collection/aj/id/4408/show/4371/rec/4
9. “Journals and Other Documents on the Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus,” translated and edited by Samuel Eliot Morison, The Heritage Press, New York, 1963, page 212.
10. See Park brochure at http://www.nps.gov/sari/index.htm
11. “Open Skies, Closed Minds,” by Nick Pope, op cit, page 46.
12. Leslie Kean: “UFO’s: Generals, Pilots and Government Officials on Record,” Harmony Books, 2010, page 178.
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