APRO Bulletin, May 1959, p.7
Article by Dr. Olavo Fontes
It happened on February 24, 1958, in
the state of Bahia, on a road between
the towns of Nazare and Salvador (the
state's capital).
Witnesses: Dr. Carlos
Jose da Costa Pereira, a lawyer, also a
technician of the SENAI's National Department; Mr. Manoel Mendes,
his driver; and Mr. Antonio de Araujo, a
friend.
Sighting Report : It happened when the
observers were traveling between the
villages of Santo Antonio de Jesus and
Conceicao Almeida. They were on a
night trip. At 3:05 a . m., the motor of
their car began acting up-coughing and
missing. Then it abruptly stopped dead.
All attempts to detect the trouble failed.
The next inhabited place was far away.
The travelers decided that the best thing
to do was to sleep at that spot, beside
the road. Next morning they would try
something about the situation, getting
help from some nearby village or farm.
It was then that they sighted a large
luminous object hovering overhead. According to Dr. Pereira's
report, "it
glowed with a strange light, which
seemed fluid-between silver and blue.
It was only a light when first sighted,
but that light approached and we were
able to notice that a body existed inside
the glow. This object was shaped like
two hemispheres placed on top of each
other, but between them there was a
luminous disk (or ring) spinning at high
speed. It was the source of the brilliant
g:ow encircling the whole object."
The UFO came silently toward the car
and stopped in mid-air about 240 feet (80
meters ) from the observers, at an altitude of about 90 feet (30
meters ). Then,
"it came down slowly, in a vertical descent, until it was only 9 or
12 feet above
the ground. At that moment we could
see clearly its outlines: the bottom part
was smaller than the upper dome and
slightly flattened underneath." It remained motionless at that
height, "its
luminosity spreading toward the ground
like a curtain of light-suspended between the UFO and the ground
below."
The driver, scared by the eerie scene,
jumped into the car. The two friends,
on the other side, were not frightened.
They felt a strange sensation, a mixture
of fear and enthusiasm, a feeling difficult to explain. The UFO was
still motionless and appeared to be about 60 to
75 feet in diameter. After a careful analysis of the situation, the
two friends ·
began to walk towards the "unknown."
However, when they came close to the illuminated area ( about twice
the size
of the UFO itself), the object suddenly
took off vertically ( in a straight line).
It stopped again about 600 feet (200
meters ) above the ground-its brilliant
glow illuminating a large area. Then it
described a tight circle in the sky, making its luminous focus on
the ground to
rotate around itself. After this maneuver,
the UFO stopped again in mid-air-tilted
on an angle of 45 · degrees in relation to
the horizontal plane. That position permitted a better angle for the
observation
of the rotating ring around its center.
Dr. Pereira got the impression that this
rotating ring was notched like a cogwheel, but the indentations
appeared to
be oblique in relation to the edge of the
ring.
The UFO started to move again a few
minutes later. It began to perform a
series of high speed maneuvers across
the sky, sometimes moving vertically,
sometimes flying in tight circles around
the car-sometimes moving in a straight
line in several directions. When doing
these "straight-line evolutions" it moved
" more rapidly than the lightning"
changing into a small dot of light lost
in the sky in just a split-second, to come
back later in the same manner. At one
time, the UFO lost altitude in a vertical
plane, dropping to the ground with a
motion compared ( by the observers) to
"the drop of a falling leaf"; it came
down until it was again about 12 feet
from the ground, and stopped in mid-air.
At this moment, for the second time,
the observers attempted to approach the
object walking towards it-but again the
UFO ran away, avoiding any contact
with them. It took off vertically, in a
straight line and at tremendous speed and was gone ... The time was
4:35 a.m.
At 6:30 a.m., the UFO appeared for the
last time. It was not very high in the
sky and showed a silvery color, but
with no gleam or reflections. It was
motionless, and tilted to one side. Then,
it suddenly shot straight up at tremendous speed and vanished in a
split second.
Afterwards, the travelers tried to start
the motor of the car and-to their surprise-the motor functioned
properly. It
didn't stall anymore, and the car was
able to travel all the way to Salvador
City with no further trouble.
Comment : Incident 5 was one of the
so-called "stalled-motor reports ." In this
case, however, the car's engine stopped
first-and the UFO came ( or was sighted ) later. In the usual case
of this kind
the UFO is spotted first, or at the same
time as the trouble in the motor. Because of the different sequence
observed
-i.e., the motor stopped before the UFO
was seen-the witnesses didn't realize
the connection between those two apparently unrelated phenomena . As
a matter
(See The Shadow, page 8)