A Festival of Absurdities – A GHASTLY DEATH

Alien Base: The Evidence for Extraterrestrial Colonization of Earth – A Festival of Absurdities – A GHASTLY DEATH

It was the late, great French researcher Aime Michel who described the UFO phenomenon as ‘a festival of absurdities’ — which it often seems to be. No matter how diligently we try to define the phenomenon, it resists any single, adequate hypothesis to account for the plethora of craft and their occupants, as well as for their sometimes peculiar behaviour.

Yet there are often parallels; concatenations that provide clues and patterns as to the nature and purpose of some of the encounters, ranging as they do from the deadly serious, to the silly, to the sublime. With few exceptions, the varied encounters selected for this chapter took place during a sixteen-month period in 1946-47.

A GHASTLY DEATH

Of all countries, perhaps none has experienced as many disturbing encounters with extraterrestrials as Brazil, particularly in its more remote regions. One of the earliest known cases dates back to 1946. It is a story which reads like something from a 1950s Hollywood B-movie — or the wildest of The X Files — yet the incident was witnessed by a number of credible people, who were interviewed by several equally credible investigators.

It was Shrove Tuesday, 5 March, in the little town of Aracariguama, in the administrative region of Sao Roque, State of Sao Paulo. At that time, the town lacked electricity and telephones, neither were there any physicians. For some time, strange lights had been seen which darted around in irregular manoeuvres above the mountains and forests of the region. At about 20.00, Joao Prestes Filho, a 40-year-old married farmer and businessman, returned home from a day’s fishing trip on the Rio Tiete. His wife was not in the house: she and the children were attending carnival celebrations in town, and Prestes had arranged for a window to be left slightly ajar so he could get in. Although there was a light mist, the sky was clear.

Suddenly, as Prestes was lifting the window, he was struck by a beam of light coming from some outside source. He put up his hands to protect his head and eyes, then fell to the ground, stunned, for a few moments. Picking himself up, he fled into the centre of town to seek help. He arrived in a state of terror at his
sister Maria’s house and repeatedly explained what had happened. Neighbours were summoned, including Aracy Gomide, fiscal inspector of the Prefecture of Sao Roque, who was the principal witness to the events which ensued. Though not a physician, Gomide was medically knowledgeable; thus he was charged with the job of caring for sick or injured patients in the region.

Gomide noticed that although Prestes’s eyes were dilated and his voice distraught with terror, there were no traces of burn marks anywhere on his body. Then began a scene of incredible horror. According to the witnesses, who were interviewed by Dr Irineu Jose da Silveira, a dental surgeon, this is what happened:

Prestes’ insides began to show, and the flesh started to look as though it had been cooked for many hours . . . The flesh began to come away from the bones, falling in lumps from his jaws, his chest, his arms, his hands, his fingers, from the lower parts of his legs, and from his feet and toes. Some scraps of flesh remained hanging to the tendons . . . Soon every part of Prestes had reached a state of deterioration beyond imagination. His teeth and his bones now stood revealed, utterly bare of flesh.

Amazingly, while all this was going on, Prestes gave no signs of feeling any pain. Then his nose and ears fell off and slid down his body on to the floor. What remained of him was literally carted off to the nearest hospital, Santa Casa, at Santana de Parnaiba. Six hours later, Prestes’ body was brought back to Aracariguama. He had died without reaching the hospital. Right up to the end, said witnesses, guttural sounds continued to come from what was left of his mouth.

The death certificate merely recorded that Prestes had died of ‘generalized burns’; a less than satisfactory explanation. Nothing was ever found outside or inside the victim’s house which might have yielded some clues as to the nature of the beam of light, nor were atmospheric conditions present at the time that might have accounted for the tragedy, such as ‘ball-lightning’

According to a report published in a Brazilian newspaper many years later, the French Government requested the bones of Prestes for test purposes. It is, of course, impossible to establish that Prestes was killed by aliens; nevertheless, circumstantial evidence suggests that he was struck by a beam of light from an unknown source, causing a type of rapid, awesome deterioration. Furthermore, unusual flying lights had been seen in the vicinity at the time.