Sightings in Varginha in 1996 have been dismissed as hoax, but saga continues to draw people from around world
The skies over this far-flung coffee-growing hub went charcoal black, the heavens opened and one of Brazil’s greatest mysteries was born.
“It really was something unique,” recalls Marco Antônio Reis, a zoo director, who was at his ranch outside Varginha one stormy day in January 1996 when, he says, an otherworldly creature came to town.
Reis and other locals claim the unusually ferocious downpour heralded a series of disturbing and seemingly paranormal events.
At least six of the zoo’s animals, including a spider monkey, a tapir and a raccoon, died mysteriously after a horned interloper with bulging red eyes was spotted in the vicinity by a woman who had gone out for a smoke. When a vet examined their corpses, “they were all black inside”, Reis claims.
