Report on UFO Expedition into the Amazon

By A.J. Gevaerd, 23 May 2011

I have just returned from a new trip to the Amazon Rain Forest, where I spent several days at the Anavilhanas Islands, some 50 miles west of Manaus, collecting new UFO cases. I concentrated my work at a location called Acajatuba, a great lake formed by the Negro River. Some 30-40 families live there in two small villages – São Tomé and Perpetuo Socorro – nothing more than a bunch of humble shacks by the rivers. An estimated 200 people live, fish and plant crops for their own consumption in that vast area.

I was invited by 78 year old Francisco Ritta Bernardino, the owner of the jungle hotel, Ariaú Towers to go to that area and investigate UFO cases. Fransisco was very impressed with the number of sightings of unusual objects being reported and asked me to look into the phenomena. He is also a witness to several interesting observations. On this trip I was accompanied by Amazonian UFO author, Umaia Farid Ismail.

Back in 2001, I had been investigating cases in this same location, where I randomly interviewed dozens of locals, amongst whom I found several interesting cases. At that time, it was easy to find some 7 or 8 UFO witnesses out of every 10 people I spoke to – and some 2 to 3 very significant cases among them. My “modus operandi” was very simple: I roamed all day long in a small boat through remote parts of the Amazon jungle, looking for local residents. I used appropriate interviewing techniques to communicate with the local natives. It was exhausting under the high humidity and severe sun light of the Amazon, but it was well worth the discomfort.

Amongst the several UFO cases I examined, some were intriguing, citing Luminous and metallic artifacts, which were seen regularly by the natives living in that area of the rain forest. Some were just balls of lights, but others were structured discs or cylindrical shaped objects, all named the same, by the natives as; “swamp gas”. They don’t know the difference as to whether it is really swamp gas, or not; a phenomena that is abundant in that area. These artifacts emerge from rivers and soar high in the sky. They follow or seem to observe the maneuvers of the little boats. They are so bright that at night you can see the jungle as clear as if during the day etc.

It is very interesting to see how the natives, in their simplicity, always refer to what they see in terms of things or objects that are known to them. They refer to the different UFO shapes observed as “boxes”, “plates”, “ovens”, “cooking pans”, etc. If a particular sighting is significant and/or recurrent, it is absorbed by the people as part of their folkloric traditions. Curious names are given to different types of UFO and occupants seen, such as “Mother of Gold”, “Big Worm”, “Ghost Ships”, “7-Meter Virgin”, “Running Light”, etc. So, “Swamp Gas” is just another folkloric name for UFOs.

About a thousand photos and 3 hours of footage were obtained from interviewing or talking to some 2 dozen people, many of whom gave me very serious accounts of UFOs seen at very close range. Most interesting was that I learned about a new area in the Amazon where the so called Suck-Suck phenomena (know locally as Chupa-Chupa) was regularly seen in the late 70s. At that same time this phenomenon was investigated in another Amazonian State, Pará, by the Brazilian Air Force’s Operation Saucer , all of which are in the public domain.

However, the vast area of Acajatuba has a relatively low population, which was even lower during the 70s, so there were fewer reports of the Suck-Suck phenomena, therefore the rare cases of attacks against people were few and far between. I will embark on further trips to the region to collect more cases in the near future. The area was never under investigation by the Brazilian Air Force’s Operation Saucer and the local natives have never spoken with a UFO investigator before, other than me.

There isn’t anything as fascinating to a UFO researcher as direct contact with people who have had experiences with phenomena that changed their lives. Doing field investigation in that area of the Amazon Rain Forest is simply the best thing one can do to really feel the alien presence. Now, the next important step is to evaluate properly the results of such work, because, of course, one is dependent upon the other.