STATEMENT BY THE CPU INVESTIGATORS OF
THE INCREDIBLE UFO MANOEUVRES OVER
CEARÁ (NORTH-EASTERN BRAZIL)..

© Exclusive Repoprt No.2 by Reginaldo de Athyayde, (Translation from Portuguese: G.C.) (Source: Brazilian UFO Magazine No. 34, Nov/Dec 1994

By 11.00 am the whole place was full. More folk were arriving with supplies of water. On foot, on horseback, on bicycles, on buses, they were streaming in, many coming from the most distant parts of the land - Maranhão State, Piauí State, Pernambuco State, State of Rio Grande Do Norte etc., etc., and from many other cities. It was a mad scene: more than 5,000 people anxiously awaiting the hour predicted by the visionary, - precisely 1400 (2.pm). According to him, the Virgin would descend then from the sky before the devoted believers.

The precinct was roped off and guarded by the Baturité Boy Scouts, who had received express orders to permit nobody to approach the spot - not even the Press. At precisely ten minutes before the 1400 hours deadline, a procession arrived. Leading it is the 25-year-old visionary José Ernani dos Santos, with two assistants. He prays, and takes up position at the spot where the BVM is to appear.

He calls on everyone to be calm and asks those around him not to touch him, and then continues (in his own words) that he "is only a sinner chosen by the Virgin to transmit her message and that he will perform no miracles."

At five minutes before 2.00 pm he kneels down and starts to pray. Speaking into the microphone, he tells the faithful that, in consecrating them, the Holy Virgin will be consecrating all the objects and all the animals that are there. On this second visit the Virgin would bless all those present, and on the third visit, she would be blessing the town of Baturité and particularly the monks of the Jesuit Monastery there.

It was a dazzling spectacle.

At two minutes short of 2.00 pm., the crowd were gazing at the sky and awaiting the signal from the visionary. High above them, in a very curious way, some clouds appeared to be being propelled by the wind towards the site for the apparition. Two of the biggest of these clouds, as though controlled "by something superior", were moving towards each other, and finally joined together as one, seemingly as though fashioned for it. This mysterious resulting single cloud was dark and charged, and blotted out the Sun, which was at that moment right overhead. This cloud seemed to go on slowing down in its movements, while the rest of the clouds were sailing along in their normal course. An agreeable breeze sprang up, charged with electrical energy, and we felt our hair beginning to "stand on end".

This breeze circulated among the crowd as though desirous of refreshing the tired and sweaty faithful.

At this point, with the phenomenon of the abrupt change of temperature, all were praying and shouting hysterically, imploring the Virgin’s pardon for their sins.

Some were dropping to their knees, or rolling on the scorching hot ground with their eyes still fixed on the sky and glazed as though in trance.

The cloud now seemed to have halted, and right above the spot known as the Sitio Labirinto. From around the edges of the cloud the Sun sent multicoloured beams onto the treetops.

Alongside of the Sun, a silvery circle, of the size of the Moon, began to form and showed itself normally and then slowly vanished, throwing everyone into an emotional tumult. The hysteria was total. The screams for pardon, the weeping and the singing blended together to create an indescribable and disturbing mystical atmosphere.

The visionary, in trance and on his knees, with his head thrown back, was rapidly writing down the message that - so he said - was being dictated by the Mother of Jesus.

Around 2.05 pm, everything returned to normal. However, the crowd remained hysterical, while the visionary rose again to his feet, and started to read out the message that he had received.

Then, suddenly, a new cloud formed itself, and it all began to happen once more. At this point, even though anxious about burning our retinas, we fixed our gaze upon the area of sky. And there, fantastic and disturbing, was to be seen - right beside the Sun - a silvery disc of the size of the Moon, while the flashes of light coming out around the edges of the cloud imparted an artistic touch such as could never be imagined.

Then, in a matter of minutes, it all slowly vanished and the sky was normal again, adorned by a few clouds.

Then Father Andrade from the Monastery at Baturité says the Mass, and the crowd of devotees break into songs of praise to Mary while still watching the skies to see if anything further might occur.

It was all over. After the Mass, the visionary declared that the Virgin had promised that she would be there again once more on November 5, 1994 to confirm the powers of God over this world’s unbelievers.

[Note by Editor A.J. Gevaerd of the CBPDV UFO Magazine: this edition of our journal should have gone to press by November 5, 1994, so if anything significant happened on that date we will publish the full details in our next number, UFO 35 (January 1995)] *

When, at the climax of events, someone pointed to the sky and shouted "Look! The beads of the Virgin’s Rosary!", our investigators Paulo César Távora and Hélio Loyola aimed their cameras and secured shots of four camouflaged UFOs which, having calculated the distance, we subsequently estimated to have been about 30 metres or so in diameter. Three of them were ranged in a row, while the fourth one, apart, was less covered by cloud and could be seen to be a disc, and metallic and solid, and clearly outlined. From its left side this fourth UFO was emitting a kind of smoke. All four UFOs were stationary, as though observing events - or, maybe - who knows? - perhaps they were producing the phenomena.

The clouds then moved further apart from each other, in the same sort of strange and questionable motion, and revealed the four objects clearly, with all the features of authentic "flying saucers."

Then natural clouds began to cover them once more, and the UFOs were lost to sight, no doubt making use of these natural clouds to take their departure from the reach of our cameras, but nevertheless leaving us anyway with the photographic proofs that they had indeed been there!

The event was witnessed by more than 5,000 people, and some of them, when questioned by us afterwards, said it was the Virgin Mary who had descended from the sky and that the phenomenon which they had seen could never have been caused by flying saucers. By the "true-believers", the UFOs were identified sometimes as "tears of the Virgin" and sometimes as "strings of beads from her necklace".

While we did manage to get excellent photos of the entire event, our lady colleague who was in charge of the filming unfortunately did not capture the four UFOs. However, she did record three columns of something looking like dust descending from above behind the two palm trees on which the Virgin was supposed to be.

The fact of the matter is that something unbelievable did happen at the Sitio Labirinto and that we, the CPU investigators, have no doubt whatsoever that we were present at the most gripping ufological phenomenon of recent times, especially when clouds, weather, sky, images and people, were all being controlled by a superior intelligence with over 5,000 persons as eyewitnesses.

It is now our hope that on the next occasion (November 5th,1994) we shall once again be able to make an exhaustive documentation of these phenomena which - according to the visionary Ernani, will once again appear in the skies of the Serra de Baturité.

The electrical engineer Paulo César Távora, one of the CPU members locally resident in those parts, had, scattered about around the area, a number of devices that he had made, with a view to observing the possible existence of electromagnetic interference extraneous to that milieu. These devices were detectors of dynamic magnetic fields, of electrostatic energy, and of infra-red.

At the moment when the visionary said he was conversing with the Virgin (i.e. when the phenomenon of the "breeze" circulating among the eyewitnesses was occurring) there was no alteration in the detectors of dynamic magnetic fields. However, the electrostatic field detector registered 10 pulsations per second, thus confirming the presence of powerful static electricity there. Dr. Paulo said: "What caused the greatest surprise of all was the fact that this electricity was pulsed, and not with a longer intercalation, as it should have been. Before the event, the instruments were silent, without pulsation. The equipment was tested before the phenomenon and also after it, and we found that it was not defective. We do not know how to explain what happened at the Sitio Labirinto!!" Such are his final words.

Colonel José Celso Cutrim Luande, Vice-President of the Alcântara Rocket Launching Station in the State of Maranhão,said that the phenomenon was caused by the launching of Nike Tomahawk rockets in "Operation Guerá". According to him, "at an altitude of 300 kms. these missiles release barium in order to measure luminescence in the upper strata." We have been carrying out these experiements in recent months," he concluded.

And, indeed, in actual fact CPU did, in the days prior to the Baturité phenomena, receive countless phone calls from people who had seen balls of multicoloured light in the skies over Ceará. We explained them as being the result of these experiments with barium, which we ourselves had indeed observed in the company of two staff members of the Herschel-Einstein Astronomical Observatory run by Professor Cláudio Pamplona and his assistants.

The experiments referred to are always carried out at between 6.00 and 6.30 pm, when the sky is no longer lit by the Sun, and they do present a fantastic spectacle. But it is totally different from the phenomenon documented and recorded by the CPU at Baturité.

According to Professor Pamplona, an experiment with barium between 12 noon and 5.00 pm. would be useless in connection with studies of luminescence of the upper atmosphere.

And for us to have a spectacle "high up overhead" and visible in Baturité the launching of the rockets would have had to take place at Barrera do Inferno, in the State of Rio Grande do Norte, because, if launched at Alcântara (Maranhão State) the resulting phenomenon would have to be observed on the horizon towards the N.E. and not right at the zenith, overhead, as was the case at Brejo.

Another detail is that, according to Pamplona, "the phenomenon would be visible at various points in the State of Ceará and would not be localised solely at Sitio Labirinto. We would also have seen it at Fortaleza."

It would be interesting if the person responsible for the launchings of rockets at Alcântara would inform the public in Ceará, and the general public of all Brazil, what exactly were the solid metallic objects which, at a great height, kept camouflaging themselves in the clouds and then re-emerging from them, and which were in due course photographed by our CPU group.

Likewise it would also be very timely if he would explain the joining together of the clouds above Sitio Labirinto, as though "pushed" towards each other, or likewise whether he could explain the agreeable "breeze" that enveloped the site, not to mention of course the necessity of explaining to us the presence of the curious electrostatic field that suddenly arose there, in addition to the three columns of smoke descending towards the ground and seen by all. All these are phenomena that are totally alien to any rocket launchings or experiments with barium.

When I came to examine Issue no 35 of the Brazilian UFO Magazine (January /February 1995) I was surprised to find nothing further about the Marian apparitions and the UFO sightings in the Serra de Baturité, from which I suppose we must conclude that in fact there was no "follow-up", and the Virgin had failed to turn up again at Brejo on November 5, 1994. Instead, however, we find a "Special Edition", consisting of 29 pages is devoted entirely to the "greatest UFO Wave ever yet seen in Brazil," namely the absolute "invasion" of the vast North-East of Brazil, and especially the State of Bahia, with the UFOs appearing daily in great numbers over all the main cities and towns of that State, which lies roughly mid-way between Rio de Janeiro and the State of Ceará where so much was happening just previously.

Having skimmed through Issue No. 35 a couple of times, I think I can say that while the stories of people who saw UFOs or were pursued or swooped down on by them are very, very many, nearly all seem to follow patterns already quite familiar to FSR readers, so I do not think I can spare any room at present for saying more. There is however one exception - the story of a man, Francisco Costa, nicknamed "Neno", who was taken in December 1994 to Salvador (Capital of Bahia) by the UFO Investigators’ Group so that he could be regressed hypnotically by the doctors and psychiatrists there. But the attempt ended in complete failure, because "Neno" showed evidence of having had a tremendously powerful "block" put on him. If anything else is learnt about him later, I will report on it.

One thing seems certain - the current "wave" or "Invasion" of UFOs over the North-East of Brazil is the greatest yet observed in that country, and is being described by their researchers as fully comparable to what has recently been happening in Mexico.

N.B. I have also looked through the next four issues of UFO after No.35 that I have received (No.37 is missing) and find no mention in them of any further happenings in the Serra de Baturité. G.C

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