Two childhood UFO memories from Manaus, based on a Brazilian interview
On a Brazilian UFO researcher's show, Roberto Ariel talked about what he saw in the sky over Manaus in 1974 at the age of six, and his wife talked about an alleged landing in the 1980s. Both stories are childhood memories told decades later, without independent confirmation.
It was around 6:30 in the evening when six-year-old Roberto Ariel looked up during dinner: his grandmother and his uncle were pointing out the window in astonishment. According to the UFO.com.br article, Ariel then saw a huge, glowing object in the sky. The site describes the case as a group sighting of a spacecraft slowly passing over the city, but it does not name any other witnesses besides the family members.
According to the account, the grandmother said that as a child she, too, had seen two similar objects over the river in Tefé, her hometown in the interior of Amazonas state. Ariel says that for a month after the incident he dreamed of visits from strange beings.
The article's title refers to close encounters of the second and third kind in the Hynek classification. The third kind, in which living beings also appear, fits the story of Ariel's wife, Valdenice. In the 1980s, as a child, she lived with her parents in the workers' housing of a distillery, 136 kilometers from Manaus. According to her, together with her family and several other residents she saw an object emitting colored lights descend in a zigzag onto the distillery's sugarcane field. A door-like opening appeared, and three figures stepped out; she could not see their shapes clearly. Ten minutes later they went back inside, and the object left the same way, in a zigzag.
Both stories are known from a single source, an interview by ufologist and show host Umaia Ismail, which UFO.com.br also published. The same account had already appeared on another Brazilian site in 2022, so it is not a new story. The articles do not cite any contemporaneous news report, photograph or witness outside the family.