My book UFO DANGER ZONE is about some of the more harmful UFO encounters that have occurred in Brazil. I personally investigated all but a few of the happenings reported in the book. I have also included several other incidents that were investigated by Brazilian researchers whose work I trust. Here are thumbnail sketches of the book's contents:

PART ONE – UNDER ATTACK

Chapter 1. ASSAULT ON MOISES. A 39-year-old farmer walking home one evening is hit by a beam of light coming from an object in the sky. He feels tremendous heat and is pulled five feet into the air, numb and paralyzed. After three minutes, he is lowered to the ground and the UFO moves away. Frightened and unable to walk, he crawls toward home – only to have the UFO come back and pull him up again, this time in a crawling position. Again he is paralyzed and this time stays levitated for about 15 minutes. Then the UFO moves away and he falls to the ground, hard. He crawls on home and isn't able to speak for some time. Later, he peeks out the door and sees the UFO in the sky half a mile away, now red and rocking like a pendulum. Moise's left eye is swollen and for days he can't sleep because he's unable to close the eye. He still suffers from eye trouble, and won't go outside by himself at night.

Chapter 2. HORROR IN THE NIGHT. A tough old rancher walking home after dark lights a cigarette and encounters a nightmare. A large object suddenly appears just above him, opens a door on the bottom and shines a bright, hot light on him. He sees a man and a woman inside and feels himself being pulled upward. He grabs a small tree and wraps his arms and legs around it to keep from going up. Still, he's pulled off his feet five times, each time sliding back down and scraping his chest almost raw. The light is so hot he's afraid he's going to die. When he won't let go, drops of hot liquid fall on his arms, burning him but he still hangs on. The UFO then closes its door and vanishes. The old patriarch, who rules over 13 families, is sick for two days and afraid to go outside at night anymore. His health is never the same.

Chapter 3. A FAMILY AFFAIR. A few months later a short distance away, one of the farmer's sons, 39, has an almost identical experience. He too is walking home in the dark and lights a cigarette. An object suddenly appears just above him and he's pulled upward. He squats under a large bush and hangs on to it. Through an opening in the bottom of the UFO he can see two men and a woman. As with his father, hot liquid is dropped on his arms to make him let go but he's too scared and hangs on. The UFO goes away. It is two months before he'll go outside after dark and he never smokes outside at night anymore.

Chapter 4. UPLIFTING BUT TERRIFYING. Accounts of seven other people who felt themselves being pulled upward by UFOs. Most resist by grabbing a fence or lamppost. One man is also hit in the leg by a ray of light and is crippled for six months. Another man crawls away from a "wind" that is pulling him up just before a UFO lights up overhead. In another case, a woman feels downward pressure at the same time she's being pulled up.

Chapter 5. THE 'ANIMAL' HAS GOT ME! A 45-year-old woman and her teenage daughter are walking home late one night when "The Animal" appears at the top of a hill. That's what the mother calls it. It is a bright light shaped like an open umbrella moving toward them. The mother is caught in a beam of light that pulls her off the ground. The daughter pulls her back down but the mother feels captured and tells the daughter to run and save herself. As she does, a silent "tornado" swirls around the mother and propels her 65 feet into the air and more than 100 feet toward the UFO. Then she is lowered back to the ground. The wind dies and the UFO, after rocking like a pendulum for several seconds, goes away. The woman suffers severe headaches for two weeks and is deathly afraid of going outside, even in daylight.

Chapter 6. IT'S COMING AFTER US! A mother and two daughters, 13 and 15, take the family dog out for a walk before putting him in the kennel for the night. As they stand in the yard, a "star" moves toward them. The younger daughter screams that it is coming after them. The "star" becomes a big bright light resembling a fishing net and in seconds is right above them. The younger girl runs into the house but the mother, older daughter and dog are caught up in a strong, silent "wind" and are levitated five feet off the ground. The mother tries to push the daughter toward the house while still holding the cowering dog on his leash but fails. She also tries to run but her feet aren't touching the ground and she peddles in the air. Less than a minute later the light moves away and the mother, girl and dog fall to the ground. The two aren't able to speak for half an hour but otherwise suffer no ill effects.

Chapter 7. I FELT IT TOUCH ME. A young wife drags her husband back to the ground after a UFO pulls him off the ground. They had been walking home in the dark when the UFO lights up and quickly comes close. The husband feels something pressing on his shoulder. At the same time he rises about two feet off the ground and is carried about 35 feet forward parallel to the ground. His wife screams, grabs him and pulls him back down. The UFO moves off a short distance and the wife faints. The husband carries her until she revives. He suffers chest pains and insomnia for a year, isn't able to drive for months because of eye problems and has had headaches ever since. It is three years before he'll go outside at night again.

Chapter 8. UFO BAIT. UFOs seem to possess unbelievable technology, yet in two cases they resort to seemingly crude attempts to snatch someone. In one, a small creature slides down a cable dangling from a UFO and tries to attach a hook to a man's leg. He fights back but the creature manages to put a hook on his ankle and he's quickly reeled up as the UFO begins moving away. As he goes up, his free foot hits the bottom of the UFO, jarring him loose. He falls into a yucca plant, getting cut and scratched all over. He's hysterical most of the night and sore for days. In the second incident, an old man working in a garden at dusk sees a bright light coming toward him in the sky. He's frightened and lies face down on the ground. Suddenly he's yanked up and he grabs a plant to keep from going farther. Looking over his shoulder, he sees a UFO above him with a cable hanging down and a hook caught in the back of his shirt. Two women and a man are in the UFO. He's afraid they're going to take him away. After 15 minutes his shirt tears, he falls to the ground and the UFO goes away. The farmer's health deteriorates and he never works again because he's afraid of being outside after dark.

PART TWO – HIDE AND SEEK

Chapter 9. SUDDEN DAYLIGHT. Accounts of victims who have to run and hide when UFOs chase them. One has to stay hidden for three hours, waiting for the UFO to go away. In each case, every time the victim tries to slip out of his hiding place, the UFO turns a spotlight on him. One man is so traumatized that years later he still sometimes hides under his bed, no longer fishes at night and never goes outside alone, even in daytime. Also included are reports from several Amazon villages where men stopped fishing at night because in fleeing from UFOs they have to run into the jungle, and they're afraid of stepping on poisonous snakes.

Chapter 10. RUN FOR YOUR LIFE. Incidents in which people sometimes risk their lives to get away from UFOs. One dark night a man runs across the narrow top of a 300-foot-long dam with a railing on only one side and a sheer 55-foot drop onto boulders on the other. In other accounts, a man and his son going to a farm on bicycles before dawn are chased by a UFO; two women talking in a backyard have to hide from a UFO searching for them; another man suffers a severe headache when a UFO tries to flush him out of his hiding place, beaming a light at him from time to time; one man is badly cut up when he runs into a barbed wire fence in the dark while running from a UFO; and, in a truly weird incident, another man is covered by a yellow, greasy substance dropped by a UFO.

Chapter 11. THE BURNING TREE. A 19-year-old farmhand riding home on his bicycle at dusk sees a big ball of light coming toward him in the sky. He throws his bicycle down and runs under a tree. The light stops and hovers over the tree. The frightened youth stays there for 20 minutes but it gets so hot he believes the tree is going to burn up. He dives under a nearby fence to get away and as he does, the upper half of the tree breaks off and falls across the fence. The UFO then moves away. The boy runs to a neighbor's house. A woman who lives there has seen much of what just happened. She had been watching a soap opera on TV when her dog started barking. She went to a window to see what was wrong and saw the boy under the tree and the UFO above it. The next morning they find the tree had been burned and the top twisted off, with two large limbs split open by the heat.

PART THREE – SNATCHED

Chapter 12. ZAP ME AGAIN... PLEASE. Late one night, a deaf farmer with poor eyesight is walking into the city. A greenish-blue light suddenly appears in the sky and chases him 200 yards, then circles in front of him and hovers over a bush. He shines his flashlight at it and immediately gets zapped by a burst of light. He feels as if he'd had an electrical shock and passes out. He has vivid memories of being in a strange city with strange people and strange machines. Then he falls asleep again and wakes up the next morning beside a highway near the state capital nearly 70 miles away. His kidneys, spine and right side hurt so much he thinks he's going to die. For eight days he has no appetite and it is two months before he can work again. But he's pleased with his experience because when he woke up that morning after the encounter he discovered he had lost his thick glasses and can see clearly without them. Now he wants the UFO to come back and zap him again so he can recover his hearing as well.

Chapter 13. THEY TOOK HIS TEETH. A teenager missing three and a half days is found lying in the jungle in a state of shock. Carried to his town's small hospital, the boy is examined by the doctor. His head appears to have been shaved, and four teeth have been broken off. The doctor discovers his hair had been burned off without singeing the scalp. He doesn't react to sharp pins or any other stimuli. He has no wounds or marks on his body and nothing to indicate what happened to him. Several days later he is transferred to a larger hospital in the state capital. It is a week before he speaks again. When he regains his senses, he says the day he disappeared he was knocked to the ground by a bright light above him and then was pulled up by an invisible force into a UFO hovering above the palm trees. Inside are three small men who take him to a place with no sky, just a blackness above. The little men stick a tube in his nose and put a transparent ball in his mouth. The youth passes out and remembers nothing more until he comes to his senses many days later in the hospital. At least half a dozen doctors examine him, including a neurologist and two psychiatrists, but none of them can determine what happened to him.

Chapter 14. A BROKEN MAN. A farmer goes out one morning with two other men to cut down trees. The other two stop to eat and he continues on. As he walks in a dry riverbed, a shadow covers the ground around him. Looking up, he sees something black and passes out. Four hours later he wakes up sick and dizzy with a terrible headache and not knowing where he is. He starts walking and realizes he is on a neighbor's farm. He staggers back to his own farm and finds the other men, who had been looking for him. They had seen his tracks going into the riverbed but not coming out. The man doesn't know what happened to him. That night his wife discovers a puncture wound in his back above the right hip. He has a dull pain in his right leg, is partially deaf for a month and has chest pains for 45 days. He's never been able to work since then. He's in constant pain as if all his bones have been broken and he can't stand up very long. He gradually has to sell off his animals one by one and eventually the farm itself.

Chapter 15. MISSING FOR A DAY. A 20-year-old miner living in a small village next to a mine walks off to work one morning with a snack of bread and cookies in his pocket, intending to come home for lunch. When he doesn't return at noon, his father goes looking for him and learns he didn't show up for work that morning. The father and ten other men search everywhere but can't find him. At 8 o'clock that evening he comes walking into the village at the same time that everyone in the village sees a flying saucer rise up into the sky from behind a hill behind him. The UFO is bright red, silent and flies within 300 feet of the villagers before going out of sight. The young man collapses at the front door of his father's house, with his snack still in his pocket. His tongue is swollen, he can't speak clearly and has no idea where he'd been all day.

PART FOUR – A HARMFUL PHENOMENON

Chapter 16. THE 'FIRE' IS COMING! Almost every night for four months UFOs are seen in the sky near one small city, and the mayor estimates 50,000 people in the region have seen it. Sometimes it hovers above the town for long periods of time. Occasionally it shoots straight out into the atmosphere and disappears among the stars. Sometimes it will just as suddenly come right back down and again hover over the town. Many people are chased and a number suffer burns.

Chapter 17. THE INJURED. Brief accounts of other victims who have been injured by UFOs and how they got hurt. Some are burned by the light from UFOs while being chased. Several are badly cut when they run into barbed wire fences while fleeing in the dark. One man loses his voice after being abducted and never speaks again.

Chapter 18. PERMANENTLY ZAPPED. Two men are permanently disabled in attacks by UFOs. In one case, a merchant is going to his farm in a two-wheel buggy drawn by a donkey before dawn one morning when a UFO appears overhead. A door opens and hot light pours down on him. He passes out and is found several hours later by a cowboy, who takes him home. Both the man and the donkey are in a daze. When the man regains his senses, he tells his wife what happened. He is sick and goes to a doctor. When he does not get well, his wife takes him to the state capital, and over a two-month period he's examined by a dozen psychiatrists and psychologists. No one knows what is wrong with him and none of them believes his story. By the third month the man's hair turns white and his mind begins to deteriorate. By the end of the sixth month, he has regressed to the age of a one-year-old and is totally helpless. Since then he needed a full time nurse to take care of him. In the other case, rays of green and yellow light from a UFO hit a 22-year-old farmhand as he climbs over a fence and he is knocked to the ground. He looks up and sees a round object 30 feet above him. It then goes away. He tries to get up but falls down again and is unable to move. He lies there for three nights and two days until a teenage boy passing by finds him. The man is left with garbled speech and unable to control his arms and legs, and now needs a wheelchair to get around.

PART FIVE – A DEADLY PHENOMENON

Chapter 19. DEATHS ON CRAB ISLAND. Four men sail a boat to an uninhabited island in the middle of a large bay, go into one of the island's rivers and tie up next to a bank. They cut poles that they will sell for building houses. Their custom is to cut the wood, stack it on the bank, go to sleep, awaken when the tide comes in, load the boat and sail back to the city on the outgoing tide. They had done this 100 times before and had never failed to awaken when the tide came in. On this night they knew the tide would come in at midnight. They go to sleep when darkness falls but no one wakes up until early the next morning. Two men are burned, one seriously, and a third is dead. The men do not know what happened. Police investigate but cannot find any reason for the death and injuries. The badly burned man, while in a coma in a hospital, mumbles something about “o fogo,” or "the fire," a common term for a UFO. This happens during a time of numerous UFO sightings in the area. Strangely, the same thing happens again in almost identical detail to four other men who sail to the same island exactly nine years later. This time, all four men pass out from unknown causes. The first to awaken 24 hours later discovers one man dead and another burned. Port authorities then forbid boats from going to the island.

Chapter 20. VAMPIRES IN THE SKY. In villages at the mouth of the Amazon River, UFOs are frequently seen for months, bringing an official investigation by the Brazilian Air Force. Residents tell of seeing UFOs sitting in the sky at night and shining beams of red light down on the houses. The beams penetrate the roofs and move around inside as if searching for something, sometimes burning people. The doctor who ran a small hospital in the village says she treated about 40 people who were burned by beams of light from UFOs, most of them around the chest or throat. Two victims died within hours after being treated. A pregnant woman hit by a beam of light from a UFO loses her baby.

Chapter 21. THE DEADLY ‘THING.' A 30-year-old man and two old women walking home on a deserted country road one night start running when a bright light in the sky comes toward them. The strap breaks on one of man's sandals and he bends down to try to fix it. The women keep running. The object comes down so close it nearly touches him. He can't run because of sharp stones in the road and tries to roll away from the object. He feels intense heat as well as a cold wind and although the light is very bright he can see two or three small men inside the object. He feels a shock and is lifted off the ground a short distance. The UFO then goes away. He runs home and is sick for several weeks. He never recovers and two months later he dies.

Chapter 22. HUNTING THE HUNTERS. Four hunters reportedly die in separate encounters during a one-month period near a small, remote city. The cause of death is not known. In one confirmed case, a landowner says the hunter and a companion saw a UFO one night, the companion ran and hid, and when he returned he found the other man dead.

Chapter 23. STILLBIRTH BY TERROR. Four other cases in which pregnant women lose their babies after being chased or menaced by UFOs.

PART SIX – A WEIRD PHENOMENON

Chapter 24. SILENT EXPLOSIONS. A couple going to their farm on a motorcycle at 1:30 in the morning see a light in the sky. It suddenly comes toward them. The motorcycle quits running and a UFO hovers over them for two minutes, shining a light on them. Both feel paralyzed. The UFO disappears rapidly. Minutes later it appears a second time and again disappears. They get the motorcycle started and continue on. Two miles down the road the UFO comes at them a third time, passes over and drops a transparent ball that looks like it's on fire just in front of them. The wife screams and the husband slams on the brakes just as the fireball explodes silently one yard in front of them. Silent explosions have been reported in at least three other instances. One night two salesmen are driving on a highway when something in the sky shines a light on the car. The driver loses control and the car skids sideways before stopping. A UFO lands in front of them. Two robot-like creatures emerge and move toward the car. Both men get out. One has a rifle and shoots at the two little men. Suddenly a massive but noiseless explosion occurs where the UFO had been. The salesmen are blinded for ten minutes. When they can see again, there is no trace of the UFO or the little beings. In the second case, a city councilman is driving to a farm one night. Just as he enters his property he spots a lighted, oval-shaped object sitting on the ground off to his left. A small man is standing in a hatchway and two are on the ground. Twice the men on the ground float up into the object and then back down. After several minutes there is a tremendous explosion like a flash bulb only a million times brighter. There is no noise. For three minutes the man can't see. When he can see again , the object is gone. The third case occurred in Puerto Rico and is included for comparison purposes. In it, witnesses see an enormous triangular UFO come down low, blow up in a tremendous silent explosion and then separate into two smaller triangular objects that rapidly go off in different directions.

Chapter 25. A PUSHY PHENOMENON. In addition to pulling people into the air, UFOs can pull or push horizontally and exert force in other ways. In this chapter are accounts of people who are pulled sideways; another in which a man is hurtled painlessly 30 feet away from a UFO; another in which a UFO buzzes two fishermen, leaving their boat rocking; a case in which a UFO zigzags over a diesel locomotive, causing it to slow down each time the UFO passes over it; yet another in which the roof of a building collapses as a UFO flies over it; a case in which a UFO is seen sucking up leaves and debris like a vacuum cleaner; and one case in which a UFO is seen sucking up ocean water.

Chapter 26. FALLING FISH NETS. In a number of cases witnesses see what looks like a huge fish net falling out of the sky as a UFO comes down toward them. A police officer who has seen this says the pattern of the light is similar to a camera shutter, opening and closing. Another witness likens it to a lighted umbrella and a third to a "big tub."

Chapter 27. WINDOW IN THE SKY. A truck driver who has seen UFOs more than thirty times since 1990 says that on one occasion he and two helpers were watching a red ball of light when another emerged from it and came toward them, jumping up and down in a wavy motion. Then, behind the original light, something like a large TV screen suddenly appears in the sky, dull yellow in color and separate from the light. The smaller ball then returns to the mother ball, which is gyrating, with the "TV screen" still sitting in the sky. Suddenly everything simply turns off and nothing more is seen.

Chapter 28. SEEING THE LIGHT. Light that comes from UFOs does odd things, showing how complex this phenomenon is. Light shined onto water travels along as a UFO moves, leaving a moving trail of luminescence behind it. A ray of light is beamed down to the surface of a lake in bursts or pulses, like a parade of hyphens, then spreads out and goes across the surface to the shore. Other witnesses tell of being drawn up in their cars into UFOs on beams of light. One couple sees light flowing out of a UFO like a billowing cloud until the light fills the entire area. A hunter in the Amazon is "imprisoned" inside a cone of light shining down from a UFO, unable to break out of it until a companion shoots at the UFO and the UFO goes away. Still another man sees a beam of light coming down from a UFO as straight and narrow as a pipe, but half way to the ground it flares out like a normal headlight beam.

Chapter 29: WEIRDER STILL: THE VARGINHA ETs. In one of the most bizarre events ever in Brazil, the military captured two and possibly as many as six strange humanoid creatures in the city of Varginha. Shortly after, an intelligence agent who grabbed one of the creatures died of a toxic infection, and five animals mysteriously died in the city’s zoo, where another creature was spotted. The “ETs” were captured just hours after a farm couple watched a submarine-shaped UFO stampede their cows as it drifted slowly overhead, with smoke coming out of it as if it were in distress. A similar object allegedly crashed and was retrieved by armed soldiers. Throughout all this, armed soldiers were seen in many areas and the military was very secretive, say civilian investigators who claim the creatures were spirited away to another city for study and later turned over to American authorities. (In the original version of the book, this chapter was the final one and described the Varginha case in much less detail.)

PART SEVEN – ONE PHENOMENON OR MANY?

Chapter 30. SHAPES AND OCCUPANTS. Eyewitness accounts of more than a dozen encounters in which UFO occupants were seen; what the occupants looked like and what they did. Also discussed is the variety of UFOs reported in Brazil and a comparison with those reported elsewhere.

Chapter 31. THE GOVERNMENT. The Brazilian government, much like governments in the United States and elsewhere, has at times shown an overt interest in UFOs but mostly turns a deaf ear to requests for information. In a yearlong series of sightings at the mouth of the Amazon, air force officers spent four months conducting an official investigation. They gathered data on hundreds of incidents and took hundreds of photos of UFOs themselves. The findings have never been officially released. In 1986, at least 21 UFOs were tracked on radar all over Brazil. Jet fighters chased and sometimes were chased by UFOs. The military promised to release details of its investigation in a month. Since then the government has said nothing more.

Chapter 32. THEY'RE STILL HERE. Recent sightings show the phenomenon is still very active in Brazil, carrying on business as usual, and nothing has changed.

Chapter 33. THE CHALLENGE TO SCIENCE. The UFO phenomenon is real and is not going away. Some day science will have to deal with it. When it does, we may come closer than ever to understanding the secrets of the universe. Until then, scientists can start by finding the answers to ten provocative questions posed by the phenomenon.

Chapter 34. THE CHALLENGE TO INVESTIGATORS. Ufology – the study of UFOs – is in disarray and threatening to self-destruct. Many researchers and investigators are bogged down in endless quarrels with one another. Now is the time for this to end and for ufologists to get back to the basics: good research.

Chapter 35. THE WAY IT IS. Conclusions and speculation about what UFOs are, where they come from and what they're doing here. The answer considered most probable by the author: Parallel universes exist, perhaps in infinite number, and UFO occupants are aliens who have learned to travel across the universes; we are being visited by numerous races, some are good, some bad, and some indifferent to the pain they cause for Earth's inhabitants.

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HOW TO GET THE BOOK: You can order a copy through any bookstore or you can buy it directly from Horus House Press, P.O. Box 55185, Madison, Wisconsin 53705. Email address: Horus House Press.