VILLAS BOAS

Opening

On the night of 15 to 16 October 1957, a 23-year-old farmer named Antônio Villas Boas was ploughing his family's land near São Francisco de Sales in Minas Gerais, Brazil, working at night to avoid the heat. He said a red, egg-shaped craft landed in front of his tractor, the engine and lights died, and small figures in tight grey suits and helmets dragged him aboard.

Inside, he said, they took a blood sample, and he was left with a woman unlike any he had seen, with whom he had sex before being released. He came back out into the field about four hours later. Four years before Betty and Barney Hill, it is the first widely known modern abduction account, and its most unusual.

Timeline

5 October 1957Villas Boas and his brother see a bright light shining down on the farmyard from the sky.

14 OctoberWhile ploughing at night with his brother, he sees a very bright light hovering over the field. He approaches it and it moves away.

15 to 16 October, about 1 a.mAlone on the tractor, he sees a red star-like light descend and land: an egg-shaped craft with a rotating dome and three metal legs. The tractor's engine and lights fail. Four figures, a little over five feet tall and wearing grey suits and helmets that showed only their eyes, seize him and pull him aboard. They communicate in sounds he compared to barks or growls.

InsideHe is undressed, washed with a liquid, and has blood drawn from his chin. A gas makes him vomit. A small, fair-haired woman with large, slanted eyes and a pointed chin enters, and they have sex. Before leaving, she points to her belly and then to the sky. He is given a tour of the craft, tries to take a clock-like instrument as proof, and has it taken from him. He is returned to the field at about 5:30 a.m. and watches the craft leave.

Following weeksHe feels sick, sleepy and nauseous, with sore eyes, and develops small wounds on his skin.

February 1958After writing to journalist João Martins of the magazine O Cruzeiro, he travels to Rio de Janeiro, where Martins and physician Dr Olavo Fontes interview him and Fontes examines him.

1960sThe case becomes known outside Brazil, notably through Flying Saucer Review in the mid-1960s.

Key figures

Antônio Villas Boas was a farmer with little formal education when it happened. He later studied law, became a lawyer, married and had four children. He told the same story throughout his life, including in a television interview in 1978. He died in 1991.

Dr Olavo Fontes, a Rio physician and researcher, examined him and recorded the account. He noted the healing marks on his chin and skin and wrote that his symptoms were consistent with radiation exposure, and that he did not show signs of mental illness.

João Martins was the journalist who brought him to Rio and, with Fontes, carried out the first interviews.

Physical and documentary trail

The record is Villas Boas's own statement, taken in detail in early 1958, and Fontes's medical notes describing marks and symptoms. Martins and Fontes reportedly held the story back for years, partly because of its sexual content. There is no photograph of the craft, no witness to the landing that night, and no object from inside it: the one thing he tried to take was removed from his hands.

Things you might not know

• Even the date is disputed. English-language accounts usually give 15 October 1957. Portuguese and Spanish sources usually give the 16th.
• He was 23. Antônio Villas Boas was born on 7 May 1934, so he was a young farmer of 23 on the night in the field.
• A military intelligence agent was reportedly in the room. A Brazilian account says that when he was brought to Dr Olavo Fontes in February 1958, a military intelligence agent was present too, and the investigation was kept secret for years.
• It reached print through a leak. The story first appeared, in part, in Flying Saucer Review in January 1965, after the information leaked and was picked up by the ufologist Walter Bühler.
• He never changed his story. He kept to his account for the rest of his life, and died on 17 January 1991, aged 56.

Competing explanations

A physical abduction. His own account, given consistently for more than three decades by a man who gained little from it, backed by a doctor who examined him and recorded physical symptoms.

A dream or false memory. A long night alone on a tractor, after days of seeing lights, could have produced a vivid experience that felt real. Fontes, who examined him, did not think he was unwell.

Invention. Some sceptics have pointed to similar themes in magazines of the time. Against that is his reluctance, the years before the story spread, and the fact that he never recanted, even after becoming a lawyer with a reputation to protect.

Later life of the case

Villas Boas's account shaped decades of abduction stories that followed: medical examinations, samples taken, and the theme of breeding between humans and visitors that later became central to the work of researchers such as Budd Hopkins and David Jacobs.

Finding

A young farmer told a doctor and a journalist in 1958 that he had been taken from his field, and he told it the same way for the rest of his life, as a respected lawyer with nothing to gain. The account can't be tested against anything physical, but it has never been shown to be false.

What still will not resolve: what landed in that field near São Francisco de Sales. The one object that might have proved it was taken back before he left the craft.