Varginha Incident

Briefing

The Varginha incident is a January 1996 claim from Varginha, in the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais, that residents saw one or more strange humanoid creatures and a UFO, and that the Brazilian military captured a being [1]. It is described as Brazil’s most heavily documented UFO case [1]. Brazilian Army military-police inquiries into the affair were opened in 1997 and have since been transferred to Brazil’s Arquivo Nacional [3]. As of 2025–2026 the case is the subject of a formal U.S. congressional records push by Rep. Eric Burlison (R-MO), who has pressed the CIA and FBI for any related records [2].

Sequence of events

The twentieth of January 1996

• Documented. Three young women — ages given as fourteen to twenty-two — reported encountering a strange creature on a vacant lot in Varginha, describing “a large-headed biped with spots like veins on the skin and three bumps on the head” and “eyes … two red balls”; they told their mother they had seen the “devil” [1].

The days and weeks afterward

• Reported. Rumours spread of additional creatures seen at local hospitals, military and police trucks in the area, and animal deaths at a local zoo — a tapir, an ocelot, and two gray brockets [1].
• Theory. Ufologists alleged a connected sequence — creature sightings, a military capture operation, hospital transfers, and animal deaths — as evidence of a crash-retrieval and cover-up [1].

1997 — the inquiry opens

• Documented. A Brazilian Army military-police inquiry (Inquérito Policial Militar) was formally opened in 1997 under the Escola de Sargentos das Armas (Ministério do Exército), reference Autos N° 908/1997 [3].
• Documented. Volume 07 was initiated by Portaria 009-Aj G.2 on the twenty-ninth of January 1997, with the volume beginning the tenth of March 1997 in Três Corações, Minas Gerais [3].

Documentary record

Brazilian Army IPM case files on Varginha are catalogued in Brazil’s Arquivo Nacional. Volume 01 (Autos N° 908/1997, opened January 1997, Escola de Sargentos das Armas) covers the investigation into the book Incidente em Varginha and the January 1996 extraterrestrial-creature allegations; Volume 07 is part of the same multi-volume inquiry [3]. A separate Ministry of Defence response of the nineteenth of April 2010 (Ofício 4225-GM/Aspar-MD), signed by then-Defence Minister Nelson A. Jobim in reply to Deputy Chico Alencar, sets out how Aeronáutica’s UFO records from the 1950s to the 2000s are being declassified and transferred to the Arquivo Nacional [3].

On the U.S. side, Rep. Burlison sent letters to the CIA (Director John Ratcliffe) and the FBI (Director Kash Patel) requesting an accounting of U.S. records tied to the January 1996 Varginha/Campinas incident [2][4][5]. A CIA “final response” dated the tenth of January 2025, referenced by Burlison’s office (FOIA Reference No. F-2023-00442), reportedly neither confirmed nor denied responsive records — a Glomar response invoking FOIA exemptions (b)(1) and (b)(3) [4][5]. The congressional press release and FBI-request PDF hosting these details returned errors to direct retrieval; the FOIA specifics are as surfaced via search and corroborated only in general terms by fetched reporting [2]. Former U.S. intelligence officer David Grusch and Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL) also participated in a 2026 Washington press conference calling for the release of files [2]. The principal case researchers are the lawyer Ubirajara Rodrigues, author of O Caso Varginha (2001), and Ademar José Gevaerd, editor of Revista UFO; Roger Leir authored UFO Crash in Brazil (2005), and Brian Dunning is a prominent skeptic [1].

Open questions

1. The declassified Brazilian IPM files establish that inquiries occurred and what they investigated, but the fetched records do not, on their face, substantiate a genuine extraterrestrial capture [3].
2. Whether any U.S. government records exist is unresolved: the CIA’s reported answer neither confirms nor denies [4].
3. Case literature commonly names the three witnesses as the sisters Liliane and Valquíria Fátima Silva and Kátia Andrade Xavier, in the Jardim Andere neighbourhood — these names appear in secondary case sources, not in the primary or encyclopedic pages directly verified for this file [1].
4. Reported, and contested: military police corporal Marco Eli Chereze is said by his family and case researchers to have handled a captured creature bare-handed on the twentieth of January 1996; he was hospitalised on the twelfth of February 1996 and died on the fifteenth of February 1996, aged twenty-three, of a generalised infection [2]. The Brazilian government’s position is that Chereze died of a hospital infection following surgery for a cyst scheduled before the twentieth of January, unrelated to any creature [2]. No fetched primary document establishes a causal link between any handled “creature” and the death of a Brazilian officer [2].
5. The often-repeated figures — that the inquiry runs to “thousands of pages”, and a claimed “1971 military intelligence report placing UFO activity over Varginha” — appeared only in search summaries and could not be verified against a directly-fetched primary page; this archive does not treat them as evidence.

Status

This file is CONFIDENTIAL — admitted to the archive on the strength of the declassified Brazilian Army inquiry files catalogued at the Arquivo Nacional and the 2010 Ministry of Defence response [3], together with the contemporary U.S. congressional records push [2][4]. These documents establish that official inquiries occurred; they do not substantiate the crash-retrieval claim. The Brazilian military account itself concluded the “creature” was a local man, Luiz Antônio de Paula (“Mudinho”), “probably dirty, due to heavy rains and seen crouching by a wall, … mistaken by the three terrified girls as a space creature”, and that military activity was routine [1]. Skeptics such as Brian Dunning attribute the case to media sensationalism and misidentification [1]. As a reported alien-encounter and capture claim, this file sits alongside the archive’s wider record of extra-terrestrial contact reports and the disc and saucer craft accounts, though it is held to the same evidentiary bar as all of them. Updates pending any records return from the CIA or FBI.

References

1. Varginha UFO incident. Wikipedia. Accessed 10th July 2026.
2. What Is the Varginha UFO Incident? Campaigners Demand Files. Newsweek. Accessed 10th July 2026.
3. Brazil findings — Disclosures / UFO Transparency (Arquivo Nacional document catalogue). UFO Transparency. Accessed 10th July 2026.
4. Burlison Presses CIA and FBI for Records Related to 1996 Brazil UAP Incident. Office of Rep. Eric Burlison, U.S. House of Representatives. Accessed 10th July 2026.
5. FBI Investigation Request — 1996 Brazil UAP Incident. Office of Rep. Eric Burlison, U.S. House of Representatives. Accessed 10th July 2026.