# The Lights that Hunted Colares [View on uap.fun]() CASE FILE 020 · 1977 Night after night, lights came in low over the Amazon estuary. Fishermen abandoned the water, families crowded around bonfires, and patients arrived with burns and tiny marks. Then the Brazilian Air Force came to Colares with cameras, doctors, and a mission named Operação Prato. ![Original cinematic illustration of an Amazon estuary village at night, with residents gathered near a bonfire while an unresolved blue-white light hangs beyond dark palms over the water.]() Not a real photo. Maintained by uap.fun · Last updated at September 17, 2026 at 5:16 PM CDT. Sources reviewed September 17, 2026 · Reviewed annually or when Brazil’s National Archives releases additional Operação Prato photographs, film, medical records, or mission papers. ## AT A GLANCE - **DATE:** September–December 1977, within a wider official record extending to November 1978 - **LOCATION:** Colares, Vigia, Santo Antônio do Tauá, and other communities along the Pará coast and Amazon estuary - **REPORT TYPE:** Mass nocturnal sighting wave with claimed injuries and a dedicated military field investigation - **ENCOUNTER KIND:** [Second kind (CE2)]() — Residents and physicians reported burns, puncture-like marks, weakness, and temporary paralysis after encounters with luminous beams; the causal connection remains unestablished. - **RECORD STATUS:** Operation documented and archive released; lights and reported injuries remain disputed, with no verified extraterrestrial conclusion ## The story ### The rumor moved west along the water In the second half of 1977, stories of dangerous lights spread through fishing settlements in Maranhão and Pará, following the coast and river country toward the Bay of Marajó. The names changed from place to place—aparelho, the apparatus; luz vampira, vampire light; and finally chupa-chupa, the sucker—but the core story remained: a luminous body approached at night, projected a narrow light, and left the person beneath it weak, numb, burned, or marked. Colares, an island municipality reached across estuarine water from Belém, became the episode’s most famous center. Sources: [Operação Prato mission material and SNI intelligence summary]() · [Óvnis no Brasil: o que foi a Operação Prato, investigação da ditadura sobre fenômenos ufológicos]() · [Arquivo Nacional libera relatos de brasileiros sobre supostos Ovnis]() ### A town began waiting for an attack Fear reorganized the nights. Residents stopped fishing after dark, gathered in groups, lit bonfires, made noise, and fired rockets toward the sky. The SNI summary describes crowds making noise and setting off fireworks to frighten away what they called the beast. The rituals were improvised civil defense against something nobody could define. Sleep became communal; every light over the water arrived already loaded with the previous night’s stories. Sources: [Operação Prato mission material and SNI intelligence summary]() · [Óvnis no Brasil: o que foi a Operação Prato, investigação da ditadura sobre fenômenos ufológicos]() ### The patients at Wellaide Carvalho’s clinic Dr. Wellaide Cecim Carvalho, then responsible for the health unit in Colares, became the case’s crucial medical witness. In a confidential 1977 intelligence summary, she described four patients who presented not only acute fear but weakness, dizziness, tremors, headaches, superficial first-degree burns, and minute openings in the skin—near the neck in the men and above the left breast in the woman. She found no evidence that blood had literally been removed. The phrase chupa-chupa expressed what frightened residents believed the lights were doing, not a laboratory result. Sources: [Operação Prato mission material and SNI intelligence summary]() · [Óvnis no Brasil: o que foi a Operação Prato, investigação da ditadura sobre fenômenos ufológicos]() · [Arquivo Nacional libera relatos de brasileiros sobre supostos Ovnis]() ### Claudomira and the green light Among the accounts preserved in the military material was that of Claudomira Rodrigues da Paixão. She said she awoke on October 18 to a greenish light entering her room, felt heat and a needle-like sensation near her left breast, and found herself unable to call out or move normally. A relative’s scream broke the spell of the moment. Her story became one of the rawest examples of the chupa-chupa pattern: an ordinary room abruptly flooded with color, paralysis, a small wound, and the conviction that the light had selected a person rather than merely passed overhead. Sources: [Registros de Observações de OVNI — Pará, September 1977 to November 1978]() · [Operação Prato mission material and SNI intelligence summary]() ### The doctor looked up Carvalho’s role did not end at the examination table. She told Air Force interviewers that on October 16 and 22 she had watched a silent luminous metallic object maneuver over the waterfront between six and seven in the evening. She described it as cylindrical, almost conical, moving rapidly and irregularly. The intelligence file matters because it records this testimony in November 1977, while the wave was still underway—years before later television interviews made her a familiar voice in the legend. Sources: [Operação Prato mission material and SNI intelligence summary]() · [Óvnis no Brasil: o que foi a Operação Prato, investigação da ditadura sobre fenômenos ufológicos]() ### Operation Saucer arrives Local officials appealed for help, and the First Regional Air Command in Belém organized an intelligence mission. Captain Uyrangê Bolívar Soares Nogueira de Hollanda Lima led field operations; Sergeant João Flávio de Freitas Costa became a principal observer and rapporteur. The first formal phase ran from October 20 to November 11, followed by another deployment from November 25 to December 5. They carried cameras, binoculars, radios, and surveying equipment, established observation points, interviewed residents, and spent humid nights watching the same horizons that had emptied Colares’s fishing grounds. Sources: [Registros de Observações de OVNI — Pará, September 1977 to November 1978]() · [Operação Prato mission material and SNI intelligence summary]() · [Os OVNIs no Arquivo Nacional]() ### The lights entered the military log The surviving observation register is not one story but 130 numbered entries gathered across fifteen Pará localities from September 2, 1977, through November 28, 1978. Its pages list times, bearings, colors, apparent shapes, movements, witness information, photographs, and sketches. The drawings include points of light, cylinders, inverted-plate profiles, barrel-like forms, and luminous bodies with colored zones. Some reports came from civilians; others record what military teams themselves watched. The variety is as important as the repetition: Colares produced a family of phenomena, not one consistently described machine. Sources: [Registros de Observações de OVNI — Pará, September 1977 to November 1978]() · [Os OVNIs no Arquivo Nacional]() ### A photograph at impossible speed—and the morning star One early team photographed a light that an observer estimated at about 3,000 meters altitude and roughly 30,000 kilometers per hour. The spectacular figure depended on an assumed distance and visual timing, not a measured radar track. When the film was developed, it showed bright, unresolved blobs. The team chief compared the strongest image with a photograph he had deliberately taken of the Estrela d’Alva—Venus—and found them similar enough to doubt that the frame depicted an unknown object at all. The file preserved both the extraordinary estimate and the investigator’s own deflation of it. Sources: [Operação Prato mission material and SNI intelligence summary]() · [Arquivo Nacional libera relatos de brasileiros sobre supostos Ovnis]() ### What the field team believed it had seen The full first-mission report circulated through a 1991 leak later investigated by I COMAR; portions correspond closely with records that entered the National Archives. In its commentary, the field team argued that bodies and lights had moved at changing altitudes and directions and performed complex maneuvers indicating they were “intelligently directed.” That was the assessment of observers in the field, not a public conclusion adopted by the Brazilian Air Force. Their conviction rested on repeated personal observation and witness consistency, while their photographs remained mostly ambiguous points of light. Sources: [Operação Prato mission material and SNI intelligence summary]() · [Registros de Observações de OVNI — Pará, September 1977 to November 1978]() ### Two doctors, two patients, one placebo A separate two-man Air Force medical-psychiatric team interviewed residents in Colares, Vigia, and Santo Antônio do Umbituba. The doctors examined two people immediately after supposed beam encounters: both displayed rapid pulse and breathing, tremors, crying, heat sensations, speech difficulty, and contracted postures. One received a tranquilizer; the other received ferrous sulphate as a placebo. By the next day both retained only fatigue. The report interpreted the acute symptoms as a normal adrenaline discharge spreading through close communities in a climate of collective hysteria. Sources: [Inside the Operação Prato medical-psychiatric report]() · [Operação Prato mission material and SNI intelligence summary]() ### The order to stop Hollanda later remembered that the mission was halted just as his team felt the sightings had become most revealing. In his 1997 interview, by then a retired colonel, he described lights at close range, larger structured objects, extensive photography, and film that has never appeared in the public archive. BBC reported his estimate of more than 500 photographs, sixteen hours of film, and roughly 2,000 pages. Those quantities came from Hollanda and later researchers, not a complete surviving inventory. The released collection verifies a substantial operation, but it does not verify every object or encounter in his late recollection. Sources: [Ademar José Gevaerd’s 1997 interview with Colonel Uyrangê Hollanda]() · [Óvnis no Brasil: o que foi a Operação Prato, investigação da ditadura sobre fenômenos ufológicos]() · [Os OVNIs no Arquivo Nacional]() ### The colonel breaks twenty years of silence Hollanda spoke at length to ufologists Ademar José Gevaerd and Marco Antônio Petit in 1997. He presented himself as an initial skeptic who expected birds, reflections, or collective suggestion, then became convinced that the operation had confronted intelligently controlled technology. He died by suicide later that year. The timing fed stories of silencing and hidden evidence, but no demonstrated link connects his death to the interview. His testimony remains indispensable and difficult: the commander’s own voice, recorded two decades later, moving far beyond what the released photographs can establish. Sources: [Ademar José Gevaerd’s 1997 interview with Colonel Uyrangê Hollanda]() · [Óvnis no Brasil: o que foi a Operação Prato, investigação da ditadura sobre fenômenos ufológicos]() ### From classified dossier to national archive Beginning in 2008, the Air Force transferred UFO records to Brazil’s National Archives after years of public pressure. The Colares material now sits inside the official OVNI fund alongside reports from across the country. The archive’s own guide identifies Operação Prato, the 130-entry register, military photographs, and the 1977–1978 geographic spread, while warning that an unidentified object is not automatically extraterrestrial. Colares endured because its folklore eventually acquired a filing code: BR DFANBSB ARX.0.0.184. Sources: [Os OVNIs no Arquivo Nacional]() · [Aeronáutica libera documentos sobre aparição de óvnis]() · [Registros de Observações de OVNI — Pará, September 1977 to November 1978]() ## The evidence ### What the archive establishes Operação Prato was a real Air Force intelligence deployment, not a later invention. Military personnel interviewed residents, conducted vigils, took photographs, made sketches, and compiled observation records. The National Archives preserves the 130-entry register and related government files. These papers establish the investigation and the reports; they do not by themselves establish the distance, dimensions, mechanism, or origin of every recorded light. Sources: [Os OVNIs no Arquivo Nacional]() · [Registros de Observações de OVNI — Pará, September 1977 to November 1978]() · [Aeronáutica libera documentos sobre aparição de óvnis]() ### The medical evidence has two incompatible layers Carvalho’s contemporaneous testimony describes visible burns and tiny skin openings together with neurological and constitutional symptoms. The military medical annex, after examining two acutely frightened patients, attributed its symptom cluster to adrenaline and social contagion. Neither layer proves that a beam caused tissue injury: the public record lacks controlled exposure measurements, pathology, dosimetry, complete laboratory series, and a traceable set of individual clinical files. The documents preserve a genuine medical dispute, not a forensic verdict. Sources: [Operação Prato mission material and SNI intelligence summary]() · [Inside the Operação Prato medical-psychiatric report]() · [Óvnis no Brasil: o que foi a Operação Prato, investigação da ditadura sobre fenômenos ufológicos]() ### Venus, meteors, aircraft, and expectation The investigators themselves observed satellites and meteors and discovered that a supposed UFO photograph resembled Venus. Nighttime judgments of range and speed without a known scale can inflate an ordinary light into an impossible maneuver. Once attack stories circulated, fear and expectation could shape bodily reactions and subsequent descriptions. These mechanisms plausibly explain part of the wave. They do not automatically identify every military entry, especially reports of low, moving, structured, or repeatedly maneuvering lights. Sources: [Operação Prato mission material and SNI intelligence summary]() · [Os OVNIs no Arquivo Nacional]() · [Inside the Operação Prato medical-psychiatric report]() ### The missing-film problem Later accounts repeatedly cite hundreds of photographs and hours of motion-picture film. What is publicly accessible is far less decisive: photocopied black-and-white light images, sketches, forms, summaries, and testimony. The Air Force has said that the material available to it was transferred to the archive, while researchers and Hollanda insisted that major visual holdings remained absent. Without an authenticated inventory and original negatives or film, the strongest visual claims cannot be independently tested for date, exposure, sequence, or content. Sources: [Óvnis no Brasil: o que foi a Operação Prato, investigação da ditadura sobre fenômenos ufológicos]() · [Aeronáutica libera documentos sobre aparição de óvnis]() · [Os OVNIs no Arquivo Nacional]() ### Classification This archive classifies Colares as a documented mass-reporting and panic episode containing unresolved luminous observations, claimed physical effects, and an unusually extensive official response. The released record supports neither the folklore that lights extracted blood nor a conclusion of extraterrestrial attack. It also resists reduction to a story in which nothing happened: trained teams went into the field, recorded sightings of their own, and disagreed internally about what those sightings meant. The mystery is the braid—astronomical misidentification, fear, injury reports, ambiguous photography, and still-unresolved observations woven into one Amazonian season. Sources: [Registros de Observações de OVNI — Pará, September 1977 to November 1978]() · [Operação Prato mission material and SNI intelligence summary]() · [Os OVNIs no Arquivo Nacional]() · [Inside the Operação Prato medical-psychiatric report]() ## Timeline - **MID–LATE 1977:** Reports of aggressive lights spread from Maranhão into coastal Pará; chupa-chupa becomes the best-known local name for the supposed blood- or strength-draining phenomenon. - **2 SEP 1977:** The first date represented in I COMAR’s later 130-entry observation register begins a record extending across fifteen Pará localities. - **8 OCT 1977:** Pará press coverage publicizes frightening accounts from Santo Antônio do Umbituba, helping turn a regional rumor into a full public alarm. - **16 & 22 OCT 1977:** Dr. Wellaide Cecim Carvalho later tells investigators she observed a silent, maneuvering cylindrical or nearly conical luminous object over the Colares waterfront. - **18 OCT 1977:** Claudomira Rodrigues da Paixão reports a greenish light entering her room, a needle-like sensation, heat, and partial paralysis; her account enters the military material. - **20 OCT–11 NOV 1977:** The first formal Operação Prato field mission conducts interviews, watches, photography, and logging in Colares and surrounding communities. - **29 NOV 1977:** The SNI’s Belém agency summarizes the panic, Air Force observations, disputed photographs, Carvalho’s medical testimony, and plans for continued investigation. - **25 NOV–5 DEC 1977:** A second field phase returns military observers to the region; Hollanda later associates this period with the operation’s closest and most dramatic sightings. - **28 NOV 1978:** The last dated event enters the consolidated 130-observation register, showing that official collection outlived the best-known 1977 field phases. - **14 FEB 1979:** I COMAR commander Brigadier Protásio Lopes de Oliveira forwards the folder of 130 records to the Air Staff. - **1991:** A UFO magazine publishes substantial portions of a first-mission report; an I COMAR inquiry into the leak helps tie the circulated material to the military record. - **1997:** Retired Colonel Uyrangê Hollanda gives an extensive interview describing the operation and his later interpretation; he dies by suicide later that year. - **2008–2010:** Brazilian military UFO records, including Operação Prato material, begin entering public custody at the National Archives. ## Sources & interviews - [Os OVNIs no Arquivo Nacional]() — Rodolpho Gauthier Cardoso dos Santos · Arquivo Nacional · April 29, 2021 · Collection guide and historical overview - [Registros de Observações de OVNI — Pará, September 1977 to November 1978]() — 1º Comando Aéreo Regional, Brazilian Air Force · Arquivo Nacional file BR DFANBSB ARX.0.0.184 · 130 observation records - [Operação Prato mission material and SNI intelligence summary]() — 1º COMAR / Serviço Nacional de Informações · 1977–1991 compilation · Arquivo Nacional microfilm ACE 3252/83 - [Óvnis no Brasil: o que foi a Operação Prato, investigação da ditadura sobre fenômenos ufológicos]() — André Bernardo · BBC News Brasil · August 5, 2017; updated July 7, 2021 - [Aeronáutica libera documentos sobre aparição de óvnis]() — O Estado de S. Paulo · August 14, 2010 · Reporting on the Air Force document release - [Arquivo Nacional libera relatos de brasileiros sobre supostos Ovnis]() — Poder360 · August 2024 · Includes the 86-page SNI Operação Prato report - [Ademar José Gevaerd’s 1997 interview with Colonel Uyrangê Hollanda]() — Ademar José Gevaerd and Uyrangê Hollanda · 1997 · English transcript preserved by Internet Archive - [Inside the Operação Prato medical-psychiatric report]() — Document analysis and scans of the two-page I COMAR medical annex · Watch the Stars · August 2026 ## Connected files - [The Varginha Encounter]() — Brazil’s other great UFO legend—built from frightened witnesses, medical and military rumors, disputed official records, and a story that grew beyond what the surviving evidence can carry. - [The Lights of Shag Harbour]() — A coastal mystery where residents, police, fishermen, and the military converged on lights apparently descending toward dark water. - [The Levelland Night]() — Another geographically spreading night of reports in which strange light, physical effects, and a frightened community became inseparable. ## A NOTE ON EVIDENCE Unidentified describes a limit of the available information. It doesn’t identify an origin. [NEXT CASE FILE: The Nimitz Encounter]()