1975 to 1995 - Rio De Janeiro & Cruzerio, Brazil – Sphere, Orb & Unidentified Light Sightings

Birmingham UFO Group Case Report

Author: Dave Hodrien

Release Date: 17/04/2014

For reasons of anonymity pseudonyms have been used

Introduction

Jack now lives down in London, but grew up living at various properties at Rio De Janeiro in Brazil. Since his childhood he has had a number of interesting sightings of unidentified objects in the sky. This report covers each of his sightings before drawing final conclusions.

Fiery Black Sphere

One evening in 1975 when Jack was 6 years old he was in the back of his mother’s car. It was about 7pm and they were driving in the centre of Rio De Janeiro. Jack was looking out of the rear right window. It was a clear evening with very little cloud in the sky. They were in front of Rio Sul shop when he suddenly saw a black spherical object covered in fire, with a fiery trail behind it. He estimates it was about 1500m high, definitely within the atmosphere. It was at a far distance and flew across the sky horizontally at a very fast speed in the direction of the ocean. Due to the speed he only observed it for a fraction of a second.

He immediately told his mother, saying “Look mum, I just saw a meteor or a UFO.” His mother responded “Jack I’m driving. Besides those things do not exist!”

Looking back at the incident Jack believes the object may well have been an optical illusion in the car window, but he has informed me of it anyway for interest.  I would agree that the UFO could have been down to a reflection, but find it more likely that it was a meteorite crossing the sky. This may have looked more impressive to Jack than it actually was due to his young age.

Three Distant UFOs

The following year Jack was lying on his bed round his grandparent’s house in Botafogo, in front of Baia Do Flamengo. It was night time and he was still awake, looking out of the window. It was between 1-2am, and  a warm, clear night with the stars visible. Jack noticed several distant objects in the sky. They were on the far side of Guanabara Bay. The objects were moving then stopping for periods of time. They would move independently and were going up and down as well as left and right in the sky. Sometimes they would vanish from view off the edge of the window, and then come back into view after a short while. They continued to perform these manoeuvres for half an hour.

Aerial map of Botafogo (A) and Guanabara Bay (B):

At first Jack thought they may be helicopters. However they seemed too high altitude for this, and there did not seem to be any purpose for them to perform these flight patterns for such a long period of time. They also seemed to move faster than helicopters would fly at. Jack says that the Brazilian military did not have many helicopters back then, and he does not believe they would have spared this many for so long to perform a nocturnal exercise. While I would agree that the manoeuvres seemed unusual I do not feel that helicopters can be completely ruled out.

Due to his age he did not have a camera at the time, and did not want to wake his grandparents in case they were angry with him. After watching for about half an hour he thinks he must have fallen off to sleep. The following morning he told his family but they did not listen so he soon forgot about the incident.

Glowing Orb

A year later in 1977 Jack had another UFO sighting. At the time he was living in a house in Barra Da Tijuca, close to a hill known as Pedra Da Gavea.