"Did he give you any details about that trip?" I inquired, knowing that that information would confirm the involvement of the United States in UFO research and the controversial possession of extraterrestrial craft.

"Very little. Only that he had seen a device similar to the one that appeared here, but it wasn't the same. Antonio was a reserved person who rarely discussed the subject. What I do know is that one day he locked himself up in the house and didn't come out until he had finished carving the flying saucer from his experience on a piece of wood. He covered it in tin foil, the kind that used to come in cigarette cartons. Then he sent it off to Sao Paulo or Rio de Janeiro. I saw it, it was very pretty."

"What was Sao Francisco de Salles like back then?" I asked, hoping to put the events into a context.

"It was a small, practically isolated place. I know that in 1947 there were only ten houses. But the Villas-Boas family and I lived at Hacienda Aldeia o Mata, some five kilometers from here, on the banks of the Grande. If you'd like, we can go up there in my car."

Claudio and I didn't think twice: we boarded the vehicle, excited at the prospect of being on-site at one of world ufology's mythical locations. We stopped under an enormous, hundred year-old fig tree and Joao Queiroz pointed to the spot where the flying saucer emerged in 1957.

"It was more or less over there, where the Grande River now covers part of the hacienda. A dam was built in 1977, the Agua Vermelha, which flooded the property. The house we lived in doesn't exist anymore. They knocked it down, it was a little further up."

The loneliness of that location, the green fields, the leaves of some scattered trees, gave us a sense of trepidation. There was something strange about that place. It was perhaps that sensation or intuition that made me ask Joao:"

"Aside from what Antonio saw, did strange things take place here?"

"During the night, right there at Hacienda Aldeia o Mata, we would all listen in terror to the sound of a hand beating the handle of a large corn-grinding mortar inside a shack. When we went to check, there was no one around and the handle remained tied, suspended, and the mortar's opening was covered by a large clay urn."

Click on the 'NEXT' arrow for page 4