A shortcut through the rain
On Saturday afternoon, January 20, 1996, sisters Liliane Fátima Silva and Valquíria Silva were walking home through Jardim Andere with their friend Kátia Andrade Xavier. Near a vacant lot and masonry wall, one of them noticed a crouched figure. The three later described a small, unsteady humanoid with dark brown, shiny-looking skin, a large head, prominent red eyes, and raised forms on the head. They did not call it an extraterrestrial in that first terrified moment. They ran home saying they had seen the devil.
Sources: Conheça a história da aparição do ser do espaçoTale of Stinky Extraterrestrials Stirs Up UFO Crowd in BrazilET de Varginha, 30 anos: o que se sabe e o que nunca foi explicado
The look that sent them running
The women’s accounts centered on a brief exchange of attention: Kátia screamed, the figure turned or moved its head toward them, and they fled. Liliane told Folha de S.Paulo that she saw no clear mouth or nose and compared the skin to something coated in oil. Their mother, Luiza Helena Silva, went back to the lot and later reported a strong odor and marks on the ground, but she did not see the figure. No photograph, biological sample, measured track, or contemporaneous instrument record preserved the encounter itself.
Sources: Conheça a história da aparição do ser do espaçoTale of Stinky Extraterrestrials Stirs Up UFO Crowd in BrazilET de Varginha, 30 anos: o que se sabe e o que nunca foi explicado
From frightened witnesses to an alien story
News traveled through family, neighbors, radio, television, and local investigators. Lawyer and ufologist Ubirajara Rodrigues interviewed the women and framed the event as an extraterrestrial encounter. By February, Fantástico had carried the story nationally. In June, The Wall Street Journal described Varginha as a destination for the international UFO crowd; in August, Folha reported visitors still stopping at the wall. The story’s public identity formed quickly, while most later claims remained dependent on recollection, rumor, or anonymous testimony.
Sources: Tale of Stinky Extraterrestrials Stirs Up UFO Crowd in BrazilVarginha vira meca ‘ETmaníacos’The ‘ET of Varginha’ captivates Brazil 30 years after the sighting
A second story grows around the first
The women reported a figure in a lot. Investigators and storytellers then connected that episode to other events: farmers’ reports of a low, smoke-trailing object, firefighters and military vehicles in the city, unusual hospital activity, a supposed creature capture, and an alleged transfer through the Army’s Sergeants’ School at Três Corações to Campinas. Those elements created the familiar recovery narrative. They were not one continuous observation, and the public record does not contain an authenticated photograph, specimen, transport order, hospital chart, or chain-of-custody record proving that a nonhuman being was recovered.
Sources: As pegadas do ET de Varginha em 20 anosThe ‘ET of Varginha’ captivates Brazil 30 years after the sightingInquérito Policial Militar n. 18/1997
The death folded into the mystery
Military police officer Marco Eli Chereze died on February 15, less than a month after the sighting. Ufologists later alleged that he had handled a captured being and become infected. Contemporary and later reporting instead described a severe infection following treatment for a cyst or abscess, and no public medical record establishes contact with an unknown organism. His real death became the story’s darkest and most emotionally charged strand, but the alleged connection to a creature remains an attribution, not a demonstrated medical finding.
Sources: As pegadas do ET de Varginha em 20 anosBrazil’s Roswell: The Varginha UFORequerimento de Informação n. 3.515/2018
The Army investigates the accusations
After a 1996 book named military personnel and accused institutions of participating in a capture and transport, the Escola de Sargentos das Armas opened Military Police Inquiry no. 18/1997. The Superior Tribunal Militar catalog describes 357 folios in two volumes, produced between February 13 and June 19, 1997 and archived that August. Its subject was the published allegation of military involvement. It was not a same-day forensic investigation of the vacant lot, nor did it turn every civilian report into a tested case file.
Sources: Inquérito Policial Militar n. 18/1997Requerimento de Informação n. 3.515/2018
Routine movements, extraordinary interpretation
The inquiry compared testimony, duty schedules, routes, and vehicle movements. Its conclusion rejected an extraordinary Army operation and treated the trucks associated with the story as routine maintenance movements. The former EsSA commander later said the unit had conducted an internal inquiry, questioned those named, and found no participation by its personnel. Researchers who allege a cover-up reject those denials, but no publicly authenticated operational record has surfaced to establish the claimed recovery convoy.
Sources: Inquérito Policial Militar n. 18/1997De ‘casal de anões’ a ‘Mudinho’: como autoridades contestaram o suposto ETThe ‘ET of Varginha’ captivates Brazil 30 years after the sighting
The man called Mudinho
For the figure in the lot, the official inquiry proposed Luís Antônio de Paula, a local man known as Mudinho who was often seen crouching. Its theory was that rain, mud, posture, distance, and fear transformed a familiar resident into something uncanny. The three witnesses reject that identification. Liliane and Valquíria told a 2026 documentary that they had known him since childhood and were certain the figure was not him. The hypothesis is documented and plausible in broad outline, but it was developed after the event and is not a positive identification made by the witnesses.
Sources: De ‘casal de anões’ a ‘Mudinho’: como autoridades contestaram o suposto ETThe ‘ET of Varginha’ captivates Brazil 30 years after the sightingBrazil’s Roswell: The Varginha UFO
Claims change while the core persists
The case did not freeze in 1996. New witnesses appeared, alleged insiders spoke anonymously, documentaries linked separate events, and some participants later revised or withdrew claims. A 2026 g1 review noted retractions from an ex-soldier and a firefighter and reported that Ubirajara Rodrigues, once a leading promoter, no longer believed evidence established the larger story. Other witnesses continued to defend it, and new hospital testimony arrived decades later. The original three women have remained consistent on the narrow point that they saw something frightening and did not recognize it as a normal person or animal.
Sources: ET de Varginha, 30 anos: o que se sabe e o que nunca foi explicadoDe ‘casal de anões’ a ‘Mudinho’: como autoridades contestaram o suposto ETThe ‘ET of Varginha’ captivates Brazil 30 years after the sighting
A city adopts the visitor
Whatever stood by the wall, the ‘ET de Varginha’ became a civic character. The city staged anniversary celebrations, built or decorated public structures with saucer and alien imagery, sold souvenirs, and eventually opened an ET memorial. Folha documented the first wave of visitors in 1996; the municipality itself organized a fifteenth-anniversary event in 2011; later reporting found the imagery embedded in Varginha’s tourism and visual identity. The cultural legacy is visible and verifiable even where the recovery narrative is not.
Sources: Varginha vira meca ‘ETmaníacos’Prefeitura comemora 15 anos do ET de VarginhaAs pegadas do ET de Varginha em 20 anos
What remains beside the wall
Varginha endures because the case contains two different mysteries. The first is intimate: three people saw a crouched figure at close range and were deeply frightened. The second is expansive: a crashed craft, captured beings, hospitals, soldiers, and concealment. The first rests on named witness testimony and contemporary reporting but lacks physical evidence. The second accumulated from many separate and often late claims, while the official record rejects military participation. Keeping those layers apart preserves both the witnesses’ experience and the limits of what the archive can prove.
Sources: Conheça a história da aparição do ser do espaçoInquérito Policial Militar n. 18/1997ET de Varginha, 30 anos: o que se sabe e o que nunca foi explicado