What happened
In 1977 people in the fishing communities around Colares, at the mouth of the Amazon, began telling of lights that came down at night and attacked them. Fishermen spoke of a cone-shaped light that fixed on them with a thinner beam; others said they were struck while asleep in their hammocks. Residents called the thing 'chupa-chupa', the sucker, believing it drew blood. The island's health post, run by a Dr. Wellaide, saw people complaining of weakness, numbness and small burn-like marks, sometimes with paired puncture spots. Families gathered in single houses for night vigils, lit bonfires and banged pans, and some fled. The mayor asked for help, and the Brazilian Air Force sent a team under Captain Uyrangê Hollanda. Over roughly two months of night watches in late 1977 the team logged sightings and photographed and filmed lights they could not identify. The files stayed secret for two decades and are now held by Brazil's National Archives.
The official explanation
According to the summary of the released files, the Air Force closed the operation after roughly four months without identifying any unusual phenomenon, and the military was described as remaining skeptical of the photographed lights. No detailed official explanation of the reported injuries was published. Commentators who doubt the anomalous reading point to the island's isolation, the fear that spread through vigils and press coverage, and the local name 'chupa-chupa' itself, which framed ordinary night lights and skin complaints as attacks before investigators arrived.
The anomalous case
The investigators were not civilians but a military team, and their own reports record unidentified objects. Logs by agents on the ground note luminous bodies passing at medium altitude on 22-23 October 1977, and two objects seen by a team on 1 November; Captain Hollanda later said the operation produced more than 500 photographs, about 16 hours of film and some 2,000 pages of reports. In a 1997 interview with ufologists Ademar Gevaerd and Marco Petit, Hollanda, by then a retired colonel, recounted repeated sightings, described a brilliant blue object that could be looked at without hurting the eyes, and admitted he had feared being abducted. The town doctor documented similar symptoms in patients from different villages who did not know each other. Hollanda died within months of that interview, apparently by his own hand, a death conspiracy theorists have treated as suspicious.
The strongest argument that this was something genuinely unknown or classified, with each claim attributed to the person who made it.
Sources
- Operação Prato Wikipedia
- OVNIs na Amazônia: conheça o caso das aparições alienígenas em Colares, no Pará Portal Amazônia
Witness reports elsewhere
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