Operation Plato: Blood Suckers Arrive

WHEN ALIENS INVADED BRAZIL

OPEN

In October 1977, newspapers in northeastern Brazil reported a terrifying story. The region - 200,000 square miles where the Amazon river meets the Atlantic ocean - was being besieged by UFOs.

For months, the sightings were a constant part of life. And they were causing wide-spread panic. Witnesses saw bright lights at night making impossible maneuvers: changes in speed, sudden turns, even hovering mid-flight. Often, the lights came frighteningly close, and witnesses saw disc shaped ships. 

Farmers, police, children - everyone saw them. People were afraid to go out at night. Because these UFOs did more than light up the sky. They caused physical harm.

They emitted intense, lightening-like beams that burned skin. On many victims, the burn area had two mysterious pin pricks. And once you were hit, you lost energy for weeks. Locals called the UFO’s “Chupa Chupa” — literally “sucker-sucker” — because they believed the beams were draining their life force.

The only Doctor in Colares, Wellaide Carvalho, did blood tests on victims. And she found something disturbing. 

They all had low levels of hemoglobin.

That’s when the UFOs got a new nickname: “Vampire lights”.

Because these alien beams were draining their blood.

WITNESS ACCOUNT

The “Colares UFO flap” may be the most documented wave of UFO encounters ever. Thousands of sightings were reported from thirty different villages across the region. Hundreds of witnesses gave first person accounts. Many ended in physical harm.

* * *

In March of 1977, Claudomira Paixao lived smack in the middle of UFO activity: the Island city of Colares. Of course, she heard rumors of the “Chupa Chupa” — they were everywhere. But she hadn’t seen the lights herself. Until the night she was a target. 

She was sleeping in her home by a small airfield. She lived there with her husband and daughter. Around midnight, a bright light flooded her small bedroom, blazing through her window with incredible intensity. The beam focused directly on her.

<VOICE OF PAIXAO> “The light had a green glow. It came down right around my chest, on the left side. I tried to scream, but my voice didn’t come out. I felt hot air. I could see that my skin was burned.”

The beam caused a burn 10 centimeters wide on her chest. 

“The moment it hit me, I felt, like, needles stuck in my chest. After that I felt headaches and a great pain and no energy for several days.”

Doctor Wellaide confirms she saw Paixao the day after the attack. The discreet burn showed no signs of bacterial or viral contamination. This wasn’t caused by infection. And the Doctor confirmed the presence of small points, like needle pricks, in the burn area. They disappeared after 72 hours. The headaches and lack of strength continued for years. Paxiao was interviewed again a decade later.

“My health doesn’t seem to have stayed the same after the accident.”

Local government tried to pass off all these accounts as mass hysteria. They claimed villagers were imagining these Vampire lights. 

Then something happened that wasn’t imagined. Someone died.

THE CRAB ISLAND KILLING

On April 28, 1977 three brothers and a friend sailed to the Island of Caranguejos to cut mangrove trees for lumber. At the time, UFO sightings were constant. The Air Base at nearby San Luis warned people away from the island. They thought UFOs may be landing there. 

But these sailors ignored the warnings. They needed rafters for their homes.

They worked the entire day, cutting wood and loading it on their boat

Exhausted, they decided to spend the night anchored off the island. The plan was to head back the next day in favorable tide. But they would be heading back much earlier than planned.

* * *

Two of the brothers and their friend decided to sleep in the hold of the boat. The entry was covered with a cloth door, keeping mosquitoes out.

The younger brother, Apolinario, preferred to sleep outside on deck.

The night passed uneventfully. Until 5AM.

Apolinario heard a scream from the hold.

He grabbed a flashlight and stepped down into the darkness below deck.

His older brother and the friend were groaning in pain. And they had been mysteriously burned. It made no sense - there was no fire or flammable substance down there. 

Then his flashlight found Jose, the third brother, lying motionless on the floor. He’d lost consciousness.

They raised anchor and sailed fast as possible to Sao Luis for help.

Apolinario took the two burn victims to the hospital. They were semi-conscious and still in pain.

He left Jose on the boat. He was afraid to move him. Instead, he went to the police for help. 

The cops went to the boat and found Jose dead. There was no evidence of attack, no explanation they could see.

The Police Chief had medical exams done, first on the two survivors.

Both had serious burns with “blackened edges” on their upper back. The wounds had tree-like branches spreading from the point of impact. There were no lightening storms,  no electrical activity on the island that night to explain it.

The official autopsy report on Jose left even more mystery.

“At the request of the Police Chief of the 5th Police District of the Capital, we examined a male corpse, medium build, which we were informed was that of JOSÉ MENDES SOUZA, twenty-nine years old, single, manual laborer. A family member of the person examined informed us that he died while he was on a boat trip, on the twenty-eighth of April of this year. Male is wearing black pants and red shorts and is already in a state of cadaverous rigidity. We found absence of any trace of external bodily injury.”

They did find a “deviation of the right labial commissum”. Put simply, one side of Jose’s face was sagging from nerve damage. As if he had a stroke. The report finished:

“We conclude that the victim passed away from cerebral vascular accident caused by arterial hypertension and emotional pain.”

In other words, he was literally scared to death.

ENTER THE MILITARY

By October, things were out of hand. The lights in the sky were relentless. Villagers lit nightly bonfires to keep UFOs away. They created noise makers from cans hoping to drive them off. The Mayor of one city set off fireworks to scare them. Hundreds were getting treatment for burns. 

Local authorities finally demanded help from the Brazilian Air Force. 

Captain Uyrange Hollanda received the request. He was a pilot, a jungle expert, and an officer with the secret Intelligence service. And he thought the UFO rumors were nonsense. All the stories from northern villages were just mass hysteria. But he was in for a surprise. His bosses did not agree. Military Intelligence immediately ordered an investigation to document the phenomena. They called it Operation Prato - Portuguese for dish — describing the shape of the UFOs. And they put Captain Hollanda in charge.

* * *

Hollanda and six sergeants arrived in the area with cameras, tape recorders, and survey tools to measure distance. The Captain’s skepticism didn’t last 48 hours. On his second night in the area, the sky erupted in bright lights - “bright as an arc welder” in his own words. They moved as a group, first in random directions, then with a sharp turn. Then they disappeared. These weren’t any craft Hollanda knew about. No helicopter could manuever like that. And it sure wasn’t lightening. These were intelligently controlled craft. 

Then came the mother ship. That’s what Hollanda would call it later. It wasn’t glowing like the others. It was dark, but so big Hollanda could see the dark silhouette against the night sky. He estimated it was nearly 100 feet in diameter. Suddenly there was a noise - a hum like an air conditioner coming alive. His troops aimed their weapons, unsure if bullets would even have an affect.

They watched the impressive ship hover. Then smaller ships began arriving.

In Hollanda’s words:

“This was near Baia do Sol. Little ships would come out of it and later go back in, three, four, five, six sometimes. We photographed this several nights.”

After witnessing the mother ship, Hollanda shifted Operation Prato into high gear. His team interviewed hundreds of witnesses, and took photos and videos. They frequently saw the lights themselves. Hollanda amassed a treasure trove of evidence. Including more with his own eyes.

CHUPA CHUPA

Hollanda heard the villagers call the UFOs “chupa-chupa”. They believed the intense beams of light suck blood from the victims. He came to believe there was truth in it. That maybe the UFO crews were taking blood samples.

<Hollanda’s Voice> “They were not attacking people. They were collecting material.”

In the most shocking sighting, the creatures inside the UFOs made an appearance.

Hollanda’s team interviewed a young man named Luis. He told them about the strangest night of his life. He was hunting in the forest.

He climbed a tree and sat a hammock to wait and watch for small animals.

A bright light approached and stopped above him.

Luís was frightened. He jumped to the ground and tried to hide. 

The bright light got closer. He could see now it was a saucer shaped UFO. And he saw a hatch open on the bottom.

Luis couldn’t believe what he saw next.

A little humanoid floated down to the tree on a beam of light with his arms and legs spread out. Luis described it as short but muscular and wearing a dark, seamless uniform. It shined a red light over the hammock and then floated back up into the UFO. Luis began to run but the forest was muddy. He looked back to see the humanoid examining his fishing net. Then it rose back into the ship, and suddenly the ship sped toward Luis, leading with its intense beam of light. Luis ran from the disc and made it to the river. His two friends were waiting in a boat.

But the UFO wouldn’t stop. It focused its beam on the boat. The two friends leapt into the water in fear. All three made it to a thicket of weeds near the shore and hid, watching.

The UFO hovered over the boat. And again the little man came floating down. It passed a red light over their boat. He seemed to be searching for something. Then the humanoid rose back into the flying saucer and it went away.

Hollanda persuaded Luis to take him and his team back to where this happened.

And with his own eyes - at about eleven thirty that night - Hollanda and his team witnessed a great ball of fire in the sky.

In Hollanda’s own words, he described the UFO:

<HOLANDA’S VOICE> “It was dark yellow, about two kilometers down the Rio Guajará. We took some photos. It was traveling away from us at a slow speed. At one point, it was only a thousand meters from us over on the right side of the river and maybe two hundred meters high. It was amber colored with many bright white windows. When it passed over us, we heard a small noise like a turbine, but low. It crossed the river and disappeared.”

Hollanda’s team hit the jackpot. In just four months, the official investigation ended. Hollanda proudly delivered a 500 page report packed with photographs, videos, and witness testimony.

He eagerly awaited the Air Force official release to the public. And he was crushed when he read the public statement.

The Air Force concluded after investigating Colares and the surrounding area, they found “no unusual phenomena”.

THE END

All of Hollanda’s work was classified and hidden from public view. Of course, the stories were already in newspapers. The wave of UFO sightings was too widespread to hide. Two years later, UFOlogist Bob Pratt got a tip someone at Belem Air Force Base in Brazil could confirm the stories. In 1979, Pratt showed up in Captain Hollanda’s office. The Captain had been moved to a new role. He was now finance officer for the base. A far cry from leading UFO investigations. At first he told Pratt there was nothing unusual to report. Hollanda’s commander explicitly instructed him never to speak about the sightings. But Pratt insisted he was genuinely interested — he wanted people to know the truth. And the truth was, Hollanda felt the same. All that evidence they were hiding was Hollanda’s work.

The Captain changed his mind. He described in detail some of the many sightings and encounters they investigated.

Hollanda said they'd taken photos of UFOs, which got locked away at Air Force headquarters. But he had a surprise. Hollanda made copies.

He showed Pratt the photos he’d copied. He was excited to finally have someone outside the military see them. But all Pratt saw were bad copies of blobs of light in a black sky. He wasn’t impressed. Until the next day.

Hollanda recommended Pratt fly to Colares and talk to the villagers.

That’s when Pratt heard first hand there were more than strange lights. Hundreds of people were injured.

* * *

Pratt stayed in touch with Hollanda. But Operation Prato remained classified.

In 1991, Pratt caught a major break. Back during the time of Operation Prato, someone on Hollanda’s team leaked documents to local UFO investigators. Thirteen years later, Pratt learned about this through his UFOlogist circles. And he got copies. Suddenly he had in his hand summaries of nearly 300 UFO encounters in Colares and other communities in the area. And there was more. Pratt had detailed maps and twenty photos of UFOs taken by Hollanda’s team.

Again, these were copies of copies of the originals. But they were proof: there was a mountain of evidence out there.

Pratt pushed Hollanda for a new interview. Hollanda refused. He was retired and felt it was dangerous to reopen the case so publicly.

But Pratt wouldn’t give up. And in 1997 Hollanda finally agreed. He admitted the Air Force was hiding enormous amounts of information, including photos and videos. He talked about his direct experience with the UFOs of Colares. Including coming face to face with extraterrestrials.

<HOLLANDA VOICE> “I was terrified. At that moment I didn’t know what would happen. They could have abducted us. They could have done anything they wanted to with us.”

But Hollanda may have been right to feel reluctant about talking. Three months after the interview, Hollanda was found dead in his home. It appeared he hung himself using the belt of his bathrobe. Many doubt that’s the true cause of his death. He was only fifty-seven.

If you believe the stories, the Colares UFO flap is by far the most documented in history. Except that mountain of evidence remains hidden. Despite document leaks and Hollanda’s account, the Brazilian government has not officially declassified Operation Prato.

The lack of transparency from the Brazilian government continues to shroud the events in mystery.

But there was one other person who gave an interview about Operation Prato. The only Doctor on Colares Island - Doctor Wellaide. She’s now head of public health for the Brazilian state of Para. She no longer deals with UFOs. Now its cholera and AIDS. But she lived through the worst of the UFO attacks. And in 1993 she discussed them in an interview in her office.

<INTERVIEWER> “How many people did you treat for injuries connected to the sightings in Colares in 1977?”

<DOCTOR WELLAIDE> “Approximately forty people, mostly adults.”

<INT> “What kind of injuries were they?”

<DW> “Mostly burns on the chest, like sunburns, near the face, the throat and chest. Very interesting cases. I could see two small puncture wounds in the center of these burns.”

<INT> “A ray of light hit them? They told you it was from a UFO?”

<DW> “Yes.”

The military’s insistence on hiding the information seems pointless. Clearly something was happening to these people. And like Bob Pratt and Captain Hollanda both said, people deserve to know the truth. 

One possibility? It wasn’t UFOs at all. Maybe it’s something the military itself was doing. Or a government agency that got out of hand. 

Something they don’t want anyone to ever find out.