The Colares UFO Attacks: Brazil’s Most Documented UFO Incident
Brazil’s most documented mass UFO incident of 1977, the Colares UFO attacks, stands as one of the most extraordinary encounters between humans and unidentified aerial phenomena ever officially recorded.
In the quiet fishing villages along the Amazon delta, residents experienced a terrifying wave of nighttime visitations by mysterious lights that did far more than simply appear in the sky — they actively hunted people, penetrated buildings, and left victims with inexplicable injuries that defied medical explanation. What separates this case from countless other UFO reports is the unprecedented response from the Brazilian military, which launched “Operation Saucer” to document the phenomenon. This 1977 investigation gathered thousands of witness testimonies, hundreds of photographs, and hours of film footage from over 3,000 individuals, becoming the most comprehensive government investigation into UFO attacks ever conducted. The peaceful fishing community of Colares in northern Brazil would never be the same after these extraordinary events that challenged both scientific understanding and official explanations.
The Colares, Brazil UFO Attacks
The terror began when strange lights appeared in the night sky between 7–8 PM. These weren’t distant observations but actively threatening encounters. Villagers reported that colored lights — red, yellow, and blue — would penetrate their homes through walls, roofs, and doors as if solid barriers didn’t exist. The victims found themselves paralyzed as the beams of light touched their bodies.
Dr. Wellaide Cecim Carvalho, the town physician, documented over 40 cases with identical injuries that defied medical explanation. Victims described the sensation as similar to being touched by a lit cigarette, but the burns displayed characteristics that contradicted medical knowledge. The injuries would peel immediately, rather than taking the expected 72 hours. Lesions appeared primarily on the face or chest, often accompanied by triangular puncture marks. As attacks continued, symptoms worsened — hair would fall out around affected areas, and skin turned black. Despite the severity, patients reported no pain, only a slight warmth.
Locals named these lights “Chupa-Chupa,” meaning “suckers,” because victims consistently reported feeling their blood being drawn from their bodies. The phenomenon went beyond superficial injuries. Some victims developed a rigidity resembling rigor mortis while still alive, with their jaws locked and eyes fixed in place.
The Death of Several
According to ufologist Jacques Vallée, at least two deaths were directly attributed to these encounters. One particularly troubling case involved a woman rushed to the hospital with severe chest burns who died that same evening — officially from a heart attack. Dr. Carvalho noted that the death certificate made no mention of the burns she had examined that morning, and no autopsy was performed.
When Mayor José Ildone Favacho Soeiro contacted Brasilia for help, the response wasn’t the armed protection the villagers hoped for. Instead, the military launched Operation Saucer (Operação Prato), sending a team equipped with cameras and telescopes under the command of Captain Uyrangê Bolivar Hollanda Lima. During their four-month investigation, they documented thousands of witness accounts, captured 500 photographs, and recorded 15 hours of film footage.
The story took an intriguing turn twenty years later when Captain Hollanda broke his silence in a 1997 interview with UFO Magazine. He described a personal encounter with a humanoid being approximately 1.5 meters tall wearing a metallic spacesuit. Unlike the aggressive Colares encounters, this being embraced him from behind and spoke in perfect Portuguese with a metallic voice, saying, “Take it easy. We are not going to harm you.” Hollanda claimed to have received an implant in his arm that was visible but undetectable by X-rays.
Captain Hollanda had his own history with UFOs, having witnessed a massive object hovering over his city as a 12-year-old boy in 1952. Despite this, he approached Operation Saucer as a skeptic, initially determined to prove it was collective hallucination. What he discovered changed his perspective entirely.
Dr. Carvalho’s transformation from skeptic to believer provides one of the most compelling aspects of the case. Her scientific skepticism was challenged when she herself encountered one of the lights and experienced the paralysis and heat her patients had described. Under pressure from the military to dismiss the incidents as mass hysteria, she burned all her patient documentation to prevent it from being confiscated and suppressed.
Some residents attempted to fight back. Antônio Acácio de Oliveira, a 53-year-old cabinetmaker, fired his gun at a reddish-yellow light that was emitting blue beams toward the village.
Three months after Captain Hollanda’s revealing interview, he was found dead in his home, allegedly by suicide from the rope of a bathroom robe. However, friends and family insisted he had been excited about sharing his experiences and showed no signs of despair, leading to speculation about whether he had been silenced.
Still Happening Today
The phenomenon may not be confined to history. Between 2013 and 2016, indigenous communities in the state of Acre reported encounters mirroring the Colares incident with striking similarities — the same types of craft, harmful beams of light, and resulting terror. In one case, an indigenous resident fired a shotgun at a descending craft, resulting in immediate retaliation and hospitalization.
Documented and Declassified Files
In 2005, after persistent efforts by ufologists like A.J. Gevaerd, some Operation Saucer files were finally released to the public. These documents contained witness testimonies, photographs, and sketches that corroborated the accounts from Colares residents. Yet much of the material remains classified. The operation documented over 300 cases, with each witness assigned a coding number.
Captain Hollanda revealed in his final interview that the phenomena moved in a deliberate pattern, “covering the Brazilian air space and the Amazon region in strips, like we do in aerial photography,” extending from Maranhão to Colares, Belém, Monte Alegre, Santarém, and as far as Manaus
The Colares incident stands as one of the few cases where a government officially documented UFO encounters that resulted in physical harm to civilians. Whether it represents extraterrestrial contact, secret military experiments, or something else entirely, the extensive documentation and consistent witness accounts make it difficult to dismiss as mere mass hysteria or misidentification of natural phenomena.
Sources
“UFO Danger Zone- Terror and Death in Brazil. Where Next?” — Bob Pratt 1996.
https://documents.theblackvault.com/documents/MUFON/Pratt/prato.pdf
https://andyjwells.tumblr.com/post/140690586087/operation-saucer-the-official-search-for-ufos
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