Date of Sighting: May 6, 1994

Time of Sighting: 0330 (3:30 AM)- 0415 (4:15 AM) Local Time
Location of Sighting: near Guarantingueta, (20 KM)
Closest town: Cachoeira Paulista (5 KM) State of Sao Paulo, Brazil

Number of witnesses: 4
Number of objects: 1
Shape of objects: Domed disk.

Full Description of event/sighting: Background: I am an airline pilot (now retired) and I am also a qualified meteorologist and air traffic controller. I consider myself an excellent aircraft observer. A group of us were returning from flight simulator training in Rio de Janeiro on the road to Sao Paulo, Brazil.

We departed Rio late at night and drove along the main highway and at about 3:15 I was sleeping in the rear of the car which was traveling at high speed. The car was being driven by a local chauffeur and inside it was me, a senior airline captain at the time, an older flight engineer from the U.S. and my girlfriend who was a flight attendant and a pilot also. I was awakened by my girlfriend who pointed out a light in the sky which had been following us for a while, according to her. It was a bright red light in the sky and my first impression was that it was a radio antenna obstacle light high on a mountain. However we were traveling fast on a flat area and there were no mountains around and the light was keeping up with us. (Initially the light was at our 7 o'clock position on the left side of the car and then advanced to a 9 o'clock position) The light was moving erratically in a side ways and up and down motion but keeping its relative position to us, impossible for a stationary object. I thought of a helicopter flying out there, but there were no position lights or strobe visible and the light was moving in a very odd way for a helicopter. I am a helicopter pilot as well. The lights started to change from red to yellow to white, green and even blue. The lights were of changing intensity and reminded me of a dance room rotating light sphere or "disco ball."

This continued for at least five more minutes and we slowed down from 80-90 miles per hour to 40 and the light kept its relative position to us. Traffic on the highway was light but we reached a point where there was a bus, two or three trucks and several cars parked on the side of the road and people were outside of their vehicles watching the object in the sky. It was a clear but dark night with no moon, there was a cloud cover but it was high probably over 10,000 feet and apparently the object was initially flying at 3-4000 feet and a mile away from us. I asked the driver to pull to the side of the road and I came out of the car, followed by my girlfriend. The object was now descending and at a much lower altitude and closer. After a few minutes it was real low and hovering to the south side of the highway. The top lights were dimmed and the object was hovering but moving closer to our position.

I could not hear any sound and the lights were now dimmed but still changing colors and I could see the shape of the object and it was the familiar "flying saucer" dome shaped object. I walked two hundred feet on the side of the road towards the object which was hovering low, no sound came from it and the night was absolutely still except for an occasional vehicle passing down the road. There were several vehicles stopped on the side of the road further down and I walked back to the car quickly to get a camera.

We had an excellent professional Nikon camera with us. I opened the trunk to get the camera but we had taken many pictures in Rio and we had no film left. My girlfriend joined me and we walked back towards the object which was floating three or four hundred feet away from us, dimly lit now and probably at less than two hundred feet above the ground.

She stood back frightened by the sight but I was not afraid and walked quite close to the object maybe within two hundred feet. I actually crossed the dangerous highway to get a closer look. I walked into some grassy area until I was stopped by a barbed wire fence. At this point, my closest approach to the object I was probably two hundred feet away. There were a few dim lights on the edge of the object which pulsed slowly every few seconds, the lights looked square and they grew bigger when the brightness increased and smaller when they dimmed.

The object was not illuminated but the bottom emitted some kind of bluish vapor and when I got the closest to the object, I felt like a soft breeze was blowing into my short hair, though it was not windy at the time. It felt like an electrical charge was coming out of the object which moved slowly with a rocking motion not unlike that of a boat going through small waves. My girlfriend had walked back to the car and was standing behind the car. Even though the object was not lit other than the small lights pulsating on the edge, I could see its outline and its top clearly. In the darkness, the color looked like a reddish gray. The object was quite large and I estimated it to be at least 70 feet in diameter and about 30 feet high. It was just hovering in the air at about 120-150 feet high.

Some of the other spectators, probably a truck driver, shone a powerful spot light on the object and there were a couple of flashes of light, maybe someone using a camera flash. The second group of people was quite distant probably over 800 feet.

Shortly after the spot light illuminated the object, which looked metallic gray, not unlike the color of an aircraft when illuminated, the object started to move more noticeably and the slight rocking motion built up to become a swinging movement which reminded me of the movement of an aircraft coming in for a landing on a crosswind. There was a change of position and the object was not totally upright but rather listing about 20-30 degrees to one side.

Suddenly, there was a few flashes of multicolor lights from the top of the object and a faint bluish-greenish glow showed from the bottom part and the object started to float away quietly towards the south gaining altitude slowly at first and then increasingly fast. When the object started to move I felt some vibration and heard a faint, low pitch humming sound.

After another multicolor light display the object climbed straight up very fast and still silently. It changed direction several times in a series of sharp, right angle turns and then disappeared. While I was close to the object there was a faint smell of ionization, not unlike that smell present in high power radio station transmitting rooms, when they used vacuum tubes and there was also a taste of metal in my mouth. The cars and trucks started leaving after the object flew away and we climbed in the car and drove on until we reached a truck stop restaurant further down the road were several other witnesses who had stopped for coffee. Our driver, who had stayed inside the car, told me that there was a lot of static in the car's radio while the object was nearby.

Some people at the restaurant told us that sightings are common in that area. I also remembered that in 1972 I was flying near the same area one night and an airliner ahead of my airplane reported a U.F.O. I did not see the object myself but listened to the radio conversation between the airliner, the air traffic controllers and other airplanes on the area. There was a U.S. military aircraft in the area that night in 1972 and after landing I talked to the crew which had seen the object. The subject never came up again after that night. In 30 years of flying and being a control tower operator for some time, I heard many UFO stories but had never actually seen one until that night in Brazil in 1994. Upon my return to the U.S. some weeks later, I filed Reports of this sighting to every possible government agency but never received any reply.

The next day after arriving in the city of Sao Paulo I was at the airport and after identifying myself as a visiting airline pilot I reported the sighting to the Brazilian aviation authorities who listened to the report and took some notes. I made a couple of sketches of what the object looked like and its apparent path of flight in the area of the sighting.

 

Source: http://www.ufoevidence.org/cases/case1115.htm