The José Antônio da Silva Abduction (Caso Bebedouro)

Bebedouro was an old English-owned farm beside a small lagoon in Matozinhos municipality, near Pedro Leopoldo, about 30 miles north of Belo Horizonte. José Antônio da Silva was 24, a Military Police soldier serving as orderly to Major Célio Ferreira. On Sunday, 4 May 1969, around 3 p.m., he went fishing there. He was the only witness to what followed.

He heard voices behind him, then a deep groan. A burst of fire from a partly hidden figure hit his leg. It cramped and went numb. Two beings dragged him through the swampy thickets to a craft resting on a dirt road. A grey vertical cylinder, with black lenticular structures at top and bottom. They fitted him with a helmet.

There were about a dozen of them, around 1.20 m tall, in shiny, light-coloured garments and dull grey masks. Their leader went unmasked. Reddish hair to his waist. A beard to his abdomen. Large green eyes and pointed ears. Their mouths, he said, looked like fishes' mouths. "I didn't see a tooth in any one of them."

Inside, one lever brought a hum from above. A second brought a hum from below and a sense of vertical acceleration. The craft seemed to rotate 90° on its lateral axis. The light grew stronger and pulsed. He kept his eyes shut for about an hour.

Blindfolded, he was led into a square, stone-grey hall. Four human corpses lay on the floor. The beings kept his identity card and one of each item he carried in duplicate. With circles drawn on a white board, the leader proposed a plan. Three years gathering information on Earth. Seven years studying with them. Then a return, as guide for a landing. He refused, holding his rosary. At one point a bearded man about 1.70 m tall, in a dark monk-like robe, appeared and spoke to him in clear Portuguese.

He blacked out in darkness. At dawn on Friday 9 May 1969 he woke beside a stream, about 32 km from Vitória, in Espírito Santo. Afraid no one would believe him, he made his way to Colatina and took the train to Belo Horizonte. His family found him thin, burnt by the sun, bearded, and lame in one leg. Major Ferreira noted his extremely poor physical condition and cared for him at his own home. He had three open wounds on his shoulders and below the nape.

Húlvio Brant Aleixo, founder of CICOANI in Belo Horizonte, had trained as an Air Force pilot and graduated in psychology. He first interviewed the soldier on the night of 11 May. Repeated interviews found no significant variations. About a week later the team staged a reconstruction at Bebedouro, and José Antônio used drinking glasses to model the craft. Aleixo's account reached English readers through Flying Saucer Review in 1973. No government or military conclusion appears in the record.

Jacques Vallée saw an initiation rite: costume, blindfold, rough route, windowless chamber, a master, a test. Jerome Clark and Loren Coleman read a Jungian descent into hell, noting the beings never claimed to come from space. David Halperin argued it could not have happened literally and called it essentially a religious experience. A fisherman, he noted, fished by beings with fish-like mouths. He compared them to the beings of Pascagoula in 1973. Others suggested a dream or a dissociative fugue. None explains how he reached Vitória.

In 2007 José Antônio da Silva told his story again on camera. In 2025, Spain's Cuarto Milenio reported he was still alive.