The Mirassol abduction (Antônio Carlos Ferreira)

Mirassol is a town in São Paulo state, 15 km from São José do Rio Preto. In 1979 a furniture factory was going up there. Sources name it Transmóveis Fafá. Its night watchman was Antônio Carlos Ferreira, 21. He had to punch a time clock every 15 minutes. He patrolled with a police-trained German Shepherd.

The night of 27 to 28 June 1979. About 03:00. Ferreira punched the clock and carried on his rounds. A red luminous sphere descended near the factory, about 60 metres away. It was a small craft, standing on a tripod. Antônio Nascimento, a guard at another site 350 metres away, also saw it come down.

Coming back from the washroom, Ferreira found three small beings at the door. One aimed a device that gave off red light at the dog. The dog fell. The same light paralysed Ferreira, and he floated to the craft. Inside, he lost consciousness. He woke in a much larger ship, with multicoloured lights and about 10 to 12 crew in white suits.

He was shown images on a large "television-like device." A naked female crew member touched his hand. When the crew tried to undress him, he fought back. They sedated him, rubbed a "dark, amber-coloured oil" on his body and made him have sex with the female. Then came a telepathic message. They would not harm him. They came from another planet. They needed a son from him for future experiments. His next clock punch was at 05:00.

Hypnotic regressions followed on 5 and 19 August 1979, the second led by Dr Walter Karl Bühler, president of SBEDV. Through August and September, Mirassol saw a wave of sightings. Soldiers of the local Tiro de Guerra watched a red object moving "in zig-zag pattern over municipal woods." On 7 August 1982, at a railway crossing, Ferreira met a red light about 8 m across. He came away with about 90 minutes of missing time and a puncture mark in his left arm. In 1986 colleagues searching for him found only his hat and revolver. The last contact came in 1988 or 1989.

Police investigator José Zanovello Neto checked the time clock and the site. Prof. Ney Matiel Pires of the AURA group was first on the case. On 18 August 1979 his magnetometer found the steel beams reading about 7 gauss or more. New beams from the same supplier showed nothing. A circular patch of the dusty yard was "completely clean 'as if swept'". Ferreira had a burn on his left arm. The dog stopped eating and was afraid to go back. A National Enquirer correspondent and a Japanese television crew came to town. No Brazilian military investigation is known.

No source accuses Ferreira of a hoax, and he never retracted. Investigators judged that he lacked the cultural background to invent the story. Some ufologists still questioned the paternity claim. Much of the account came through hypnosis, and over ten years it grew to include Nordic beings, androids and "hairy" figures. Sleep paralysis and confabulation are general explanations offered for abduction reports, though no published sceptical study targets this case. Some sources date the first night to 28 July 1979.

Bühler, Guilherme Pereira and Ney Matiel Pires published UFO Abduction at Mirassol: A Biogenetic Experiment in 1986, translated by Wendelle C. Stevens. The case is often set beside Antônio Villas Boas and his 1957 encounter. Brazilian podcasts still retell it.