Cryptozoology and UFO Sightings w/ Sammy Rae
/We’re joined by singer and songwriter Sammy Rae (of Sammy Rae & the Friends) to chat about her favorite thing besides music: cryptids! We hear about her becoming an honorary member of the Cryptozoology Museum, her love of cryptid documentaries, and the story of the UFO sightings of Varginha Brazil.
Content Warning: This episode contains conversations about or mentions of collective trauma, death, vehicle crashes, gun violence, military occupation, and illness.
Guest
Sammy Rae is a singer, songwriter, and bandleader best known as the creative force behind Sammy Rae & The Friends, a genre-blending project that combines the energy of rock, the groove of funk and soul, the storytelling of folk, and the improvisation of jazz.
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Cast & Crew
- Co-Hosts: Julia Schifini and Amanda McLoughlin
- Editor: Bren Frederick
- Music: Brandon Grugle, based on "Danger Storm" by Kevin MacLeod
- Artwork: Allyson Wakeman
- Multitude: multitude.productions
About Us
Spirits is a boozy podcast about mythology, legends, and folklore. Every episode, co-hosts Julia and Amanda mix a drink and discuss a new story or character from a wide range of places, eras, and cultures. Learn brand-new stories and enjoy retellings of your favorite myths, served over ice every week, on Spirits.
Transcript
[theme]
AMANDA: Welcome to Spirits Podcast, a boozy dive into mythology, legends, and folklore. Every week, we pour a drink and learn about a new story from around the world. I'm Amanda.
JULIA: And I'm Julia.
AMANDA: And we are welcoming— I almost said welcomed by. And we welcome to the show today the great and wonderful Sammy Rae, who is not just a singer that you have definitely heard before, but also, I hear a huge fan of cryptids, UFOs, and the unexplained. Welcome, Sammy.
SAMMY: Hi, there. So glad to be here.
JULIA: We are so delighted to have you. It's not very often that we sort of cross over with music and cryptozoology. That's not usually a combination that we see on the show, but we were so excited when you said, "You know what I'm obsessed with, cryptozoology." And we said, "Well—"
SAMMY: Oh, yeah.
JULIA: "—we simply have to have you on the show."
SAMMY: Oh, my gosh. That's so kind of you. There's a joke and kind of, like, a meme where if you ask a musician, "Wat are your hobbies?" They don't have any, they just do music all the time. And I have always had this bizarre fascination with cryptozoology and the unexplained. And it's kind of, like, a core part of my brand if you follow us on socials or any of that. So it— this was so bizarre when this came up. I was like, "Oh, my gosh. This is the intersection of—" I— I'm only really good at/qualified to talk about two things, and they're these things. So these are the two things I am good at.
JULIA: Uh-hmm. Incredible. For people who for some reason have not listened to you and your music before, can you tell us a little bit about who you are, what you do, what kind of music you create?
SAMMY: For sure. I am the bandleader and front person of Sammy Rae and The Friends. We're a big, ol' band from Brooklyn. We're comprised of musicians from all across the globe. And we do a classic rock, funk, disco, soul sort of thing, very high energy live performances. We always call ourselves a live band, very audience-centric. we kind of built this amazing word of mouth grassroots audience, which is now kind of spanned all over the globe. And we just kind of show up on tour in a city and throw a huge party and make some really great music. And, yeah, that's it. And I— the primary songwriter for the project. I also play a little keys, banjo, ukulele, guitar.
JULIA: Well, if you are interested in hearing more of Sammy's music and also maybe seeing them on tour when Sammy Rae and The Friends is visiting a city near you, you'll have a link in the episode description to go check out the website and see when those touring dates are happening.
AMANDA: But the thing I have to know, Sammy, is how did you get into cryptozoology and UFOs?
SAMMY: You know, I have this very vague— and I'll have to talk to my dad about this afterwards, of this vague memory of my dad having these, like, rusty falling apart little books from his childhood about UFO encounters.
JULIA: Hmm.
SAMMY: And I also remember one about like astral projection. And they were my dad's books from when he was young. And I remember really getting into the UFOs. To be honest, I had— I always had this, like, weird soft spot for Sasquatch and was super interested in Bigfoot. And then in early high school, I went on this trip with a friend to go see a concert in Portland, Maine. And I stumbled across the Cryptozoology Museum. Are you familiar? Have you been?
JULIA: No. Sammy, I'm actually really mad because I was just in Portland over the holiday season and I did not know the Cryptozoology Museum existed. And now I'm mad at myself and have to go back immediately.
SAMMY: It's fantastic. It's— basically, there's this gentleman named Loren— I'm forgetting his last name right now. I'm so embarrassed. He's sort of the godfather of modern cryptid research, big Bigfoot guy, maybe the premier scholar in, like, Sasquatch research. And it's his private collection of artifacts, footprints, and also just like kooky stuff that he likes. And it covers all of cryptozoology. So we're talking cryptozoology, the study of creatures that may or may not exist. And there's evidence for their existence. There's also no scientific evidence that can confirm their existence. So we're talking Bigfoot, Mothman, Dover Demon, Loveland Frogman, Chupacabra, a lot of, again, like folk creatures that I'm sure you all talk about. Some of them maybe are urban legends, some of them are something like the Sasquatch or Bigfoot, which is it's quite plausible that this creature exists. And because there is so much uncharted forestry, especially across North America, you cannot definitively tell me that he doesn't exist. So I just sort of, like, loved the museum, got super into all of that, started like watching all these documentaries. And there are some bad B and C-level cryptid docs. And when something is so bad it's good, that is where— that is my heart's content. So I just sort of, like, got really into it since high school, have been reading and watching docs and there's— it's such a cool community on, like, Reddit and the internet. So I think it all comes down to like, who's to say? I love the idea of who's to say. Again, you can't definitively tell me these things don't exist, so I love the kind of open-endedness of all of it.
JULIA: I will say on the topic of B and C-level documentaries, my husband is also a huge cryptozoology fan and particularly loves Bigfoot and Sasquatch. And I have walked in on many a bad documentary that he was watching. There's one about, like, the Russian menk that I, like, will tease him about constantly. And he watched it maybe six or seven years ago. But I'm just like, "So is that like—" we'll be walking through the woods on a hike and I'll be like, "Was that a menk call?" And he's like, "Stop it."
SAMMY: The best part about those is like the budget is so low and it's somebody's passion— again, it— I don't— nobody really can call themselves, you know, I have an interest in cryptozoology or I've been interested in cryptids without being obsessed and super passionate. Exhibit A is, like, how excited I am right now in this moment. So the thing about those docs that I love is like there's so little budget that there's virtually no budget for, like, the recreations and the animations.
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
SAMMY: So those are just atrocious.
AMANDA: Hey, hey, Ernie. Ernie who's doing sound. Ernie, come here. Come here. Cast a shadow real quick.
SAMMY: Just like a— an atro— like atrocious cartoon of a Sasquatch and the scale is all off. I live— I love it. I love it.
JULIA: And I know you are so much of a fan not only of cryptozoology, but of the Cryptozoology Museum—
SAMMY: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: —that you were named an honoree at the museum, is that correct?
SAMMY: Sort of. We were playing a show just across the street at this enormous venue called Thompson's Point. It's a beautiful outdoor venue in Portland. And we were opening for our friends' Lake Street Dive. We're playing two nights, and I was so excited because there was talk for a second about the whole museum moving to Bangor. So the last time I was in Portland, I was like, "Okay, that's the last time I ever saw it." And then going back to Portland, it was still open and it was right across the street. So as I'm loading in to soundcheck, I see this giant wooden figure of a Sasquatch, which is out front. And I'm like, "It's still here." So after soundcheck, I ran and I went and I took every member of the band, I think, that I hadn't already convinced to go with me. And then on stage that night, in front of— there were like, I don't know, maybe, like 7,000 people there. I was like, "Across the street, there's this place that you all need to go to and check it out." And I love it. I, like, dedicated precious set time to talk about this museum.
AMANDA: Be like, "Yeah, forget the streaming, forget the, like, pre-orders. You gotta check out this museum."
SAMMY: Yeah. No, no, literally. So the next day, I show up for sound check and I— of course I was gonna go again. I'm in town. I may as well go to the museum again. And it's slant. There's a line. It's slant. And I was like, "Yes."
JULIA: Who can say why?
SAMMY: I was so psyched. And so I went in and I was like, "Wow, you got a lot of people here today." And the guy was like,
"I guess this artist is in town and they shouted us out." And I was like, "That's me." And he was, like, so excited. They gave me a bumper sticker. They have, like, this little list of, like, honorees if you're making, like, donations or you contribute a large sum of money and they, like, put me on that list. And then I was walking through that museum and, obviously, getting stopped a hell of a lot by fans who were like, "Oh, my God, this is so cool." But that was a cool experience for me because I was— again, as I mentioned, so much of our audience experience is about, you know, friendship and a sense of community. So I was hanging out in the Cryptozoology Museum with Sammy Rae and the Friends fans. And we weren't talking about our music. We were talking about cryptozoology. And it— I peaked, actually. Maybe I peaked. Really, really big special day for me.
JULIA: Oh, amazing.
SAMMY: And I know that— and they made— they had a lot of business that day, so that makes me happy that we can lit— literally keep the doors open at the museum.
JULIA: Artists supporting artists. That's what that is.
SAMMY: Yeah.
AMANDA: We love to see it.
SAMMY: Literally.
JULIA: Now, Sammy, in booking you for the show, in talking about what you wanted to talk about, you had some great suggestions. Obviously, Sasquatch. I have a million questions about the Abraham Lincoln documented run-in with Sasquatch. We can save them for another time, perhaps.
SAMMY: For sure.
JULIA: However, there was one in particular that you expressed special interest in and you, like, touched upon it very briefly in talking about what got you into cryptozoology.
SAMMY: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: And one of the things that we ha— actually haven't talked that much about on the show is UFO incidents.
SAMMY: Hmm, hmm.
JULIA: Here you have a juicy good one to tell us about today.
SAMMY: I have a very juicy good one to tell you about today. We're gonna talk about the 1996 Varginha Brazil UFO incident.
JULIA: Ooh.
SAMMY: I wanna give a little heads up that this is how deeply I care about the science, right? So there's this whole debate in the Cryptozoology Museum whether or not extraterrestrials are considered cryptids. Me, personally, I think they follow that, like you can't definitively prove to me they don't. And there is evidence for their existence, so I think they're cryptids.
JULIA: I think they are a separate category because I think, like, scientifically, there has to be because the universe is infinite other beings that have similar levels of intelligence to humanity and similar levels of technology and perhaps have created a level of technology that allows them to travel inter-solar system and inter-universe. But I think that they are, like, in my mind, a separate category from cryptid. That's my hot take. That is my alien update for our listeners here.
AMANDA: Like being gay and loving crystals, they do co-present very often. They're not causal.
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
AMANDA: But I think they are siblings. You know what I mean?
JULIA: Yes.
SAMMY: Yes, yes.
AMANDA: You know what I mean?
SAMMY: The thing is, like, could you find me a bisexual that doesn't have at least a rose quartz on her desk? Yes. You would have to really look for it, though. And like, could you spend your whole career proving to me that aliens don't exist? I guess, but why would you want to?
AMANDA: Not me.
SAMMY: You know? I love that analogy. That's beautiful.
JULIA: Shout out. Amanda tries every episode to say at least one phrase that AI could never come up with, and I think that was our one for this episode. So good job, Amanda.
AMANDA: Thanks.
SAMMY: Wow, I like that a lot. That's great. Nice.
AMANDA: We try. All right. So take me back to 1996. I'm four years old, probably working really hard on reading and/or writing. What's going on in Brazil?
SAMMY: Okay, so in January of 1996, in this little town called Varginha Brazil, which is sort of like just north of São Paulo, what basically happened was often regarded the most well-documented and credible accounts of an— not only a UFO, so unidentified flying object incident, but an extraterrestrial encounter incident. So the remarkable thing about what all of the townspeople in Varginha have to say, and so many stories line up. This town is not like, "Oh, we're this UFO town," and cashed in on it, right? This entire community, like generationally now at this point because it was 26 years ago, has been really marred by this experience. There's a great deal of trauma because they all encountered something so intense that sort of, like, impacted everybody's lives.
JULIA: This is not Mothman and them throwing the festival about it. This is not—
SAMMY: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, this shook people to their core. And in a documentary, which I really love that I referenced in doing my research for this called Moment of Contact, they have this brilliant quote. The director's name is James Fox, and he says, "Some of the people of Varginha have a level of confirmation that only a handful of people on the planet have."
JULIA: Oof.
SAMMY: So there are people who look up in the sky and, you know, you're seeing unidentified flying objects and that's one thing, right? But to be face to face with an extraterrestrial and watch it kind of destroy your community.
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
SAMMY: I mean, I don't want to use the word destroy, but this wasn't like a little green man running around and everybody loved it. People have really, you know, had to deal with this over time. Spooky, huh?
JULIA: Yes. I mean, like deeply impactful, I think is a good way to describe it. We don't wanna like say—
SAMMY: For sure.
JULIA: Like you said, the community wasn't necessarily ruined, but there is, like, the collective trauma around a thing that happened that everyone can kind of agree happened, you know?
SAMMY: For sure. It's a pretty unanimous sort of— and that's what I think is interesting. There's like, you know, people of higher, you know, socioeconomic class and folks who are everyday folks, the mayor and all of these people standing across are like, "I'm not necessarily happy that I have to talk about this, but it is what happened." And that I think is almost unifying if we want to flip our language around.
AMANDA: Yeah.
SAMMY: So on January 28th of 1996, there is a man named Carlos de Souza, who is driving near to a large family farm. It's just this area of open land. And he sees this thing flying above his car. When he first noticed it, it was about 400 meters above the road, the size of a mini school bus, silver and sort of cigar-shaped. It is losing altitude, regaining altitude, having a hard time maintaining altitude. And it's billowing—
JULIA: Hmm.
SAMMY: —white smoke which— you know, it's not black smoke, like when a car breaks down. It's a white sort of smoke. And then when it gets to about a hundred meters off the ground, it appears to, as he said, "The engines died," or whatever the power source was, it died and it just hit the ground. It crashed. Carlos tries to get as close as possible and pulls over because he thinks, "People are in this— there's a crash. People are going to need help immediately. I need to go see what's going on." So he pulls off the road, he pulls up to this crash site, which is on a family farm a little while away from a home, a little white home, he remembers. What immediately overpowers him is this smell of ammonia and sulfur, rotten eggs, sulfur, ammonia, extremely powerful.
AMANDA: Ooh.
SAMMY: He says it was stinging his eyes. He had to get out of the car and basically cover his nose with his shirt as he's approaching the crash site. He comes upon the crash site. There was no sound when it hit the ground, no sound as it was running, and the area is scattered with a very thin, shiny sort of aluminum. He describes it similar to aluminum foil. However, he picks it up, he crumples it in his hands, and it immediately springs back into shape.
AMANDA: Whoa!
JULIA: Whoa! That's wild.
SAMMY: So not like aluminum foil where you can't quite get it unwrinkled again. It was all sort of sheets everywhere as if the something had exploded like a vase and you could crinkle it, but it would go right back into its shape.
JULIA: That's really— I— I my first thought is like, "Oh, that's like in Batman Begins. That's not anything, Julia. Don't say that." But that is like so fascinating because, like, it— it's almost like a smart material is how—
AMANDA: Right.
JULIA: —I would describe that.
SAMMY: Hmm, sure.
JULIA: In that it can, like, maintain a certain shape and, like, the fact that it can spring back to it. That's fascinating. I also had a question before we move on, because you are our UFO expert in this situation. Why do you think it is that most UFO sightings happen in mostly— and I'm not— broadly rural places as opposed to, like, more urban places or suburban places?
SAMMY: That's an interesting question. Well, a very simple thing is our— I would say our ability to recognize them, light pollution.
JULIA: Hmm.
SAMMY: So, you know, there's so much air traffic and so many lights and some lights pollution in New York City. They may very well be flying over New York City, but we don't know this technology. They're able to disguise themselves or they appear to us as a plane coming in—
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
SAMMY: —or something. Don't even get me started about how the government covers it all up, right?
JULIA: Hmm.
SAMMY: But I think there's also something to— I— I've heard a lot of, like, theories about extraterrestrials have, like, interest in our land, our terrain, and they want to learn more about that.
JULIA: Hmm.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
SAMMY: And I also think maybe they just don't like people. So they don't really— they're not coming here to— if they want to come and learn about us, they'll come and learn about us. If they want to come and just do their thing and do their research, you find them in rural or really open, really flat places. Another theory is so they can land their ships, which are really big.
JULIA: Hmm.
SAMMY: So I don't know. It's kind of all over the map.
JULIA: Interesting. I just wanted to pick your brain about that. Thank you.
SAMMY: For sure. So Carlos is here with this material, this overwhelming smell, this unbelievable material. And he says, within five or six minutes of his arrival, there are like army trucks arrive. Like the Brazilian military shows up and they're shooing him, "Get out of here, get out of here, get out of here." And he's like, "Well, you have to look inside. What if someone's hurt?" And—
AMANDA: Go, Carlos. Carlos has his priorities in the right place.
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
SAMMY: Come on! Literally. And I guess someone raises one of their guns and looks at him and says, "I— this is an order. I'm ordering you to leave." And in that moment, he realizes, "They don't want me to hurt myself helping someone in this plane crash. They're ordering me to get out of here. I'm not supposed to see this."
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
SAMMY: He gets out of there and he virtually— you know, he does a couple of television interviews, et cetera, shortly thereafter accounting his story. But afterwards, he kind of disappears until this documentary is made 26 years later when he comes and gives a full interview, revisits the crash site. Anyway, so let's table Carlos for a second. So back in the actual town at roughly 3:30 p.m., so it's been a couple of hours since the actual crash. There are three young girls who are just kind of moving around through the city, a day on the town playing, Valquiria Silva, her sister Liliane Silva, and then their friend Maria Xavier. They're between 14 and 16. They're walking past a little area that is sort of where a building was and it's now fallen, so it's just overcome with grass, just a little sort of plot of grass. And the girls are cutting through to go wherever they're going, and they are overcome with the smell of ammonia and sulfur and rotten eggs, and they all get kind of freaked out by it. Liliane kind of looks to the left and she sees, kind of cowering against one of these brick walls, trying to hide in the grass, a creature.
JULIA: Oh.
AMANDA: Oh.
SAMMY: Which is roughly the size of, like, an unclothed child, small. It is cowering in fear, very clearly afraid. They're getting the impression that it's sort of suffering from the heat of the sun, as if it can't deal with the sun, but it can't find shade. It is oily, greasy, slick.
AMANDA: Oh.
SAMMY: So wet, shiny, sort of between a dark gray and a black.
AMANDA: Huh.
SAMMY: Large, pronounced red eyes and no discernible mouth.
JULIA: Ooh.
AMANDA: Oh.
JULIA: Oh, boy.
AMANDA: Those are upsetting details.
SAMMY: Very, very spooky. So these three young girls are kind of, like, frozen in place, looking at this thing, which is maybe three feet tall, dark in color, red eyes. They can't make out more— much more like facial structure, clearly as afraid of them as they are of it. And the smell is overpowering. So the three of them have a couple seconds here, sort of have this encounter, and then they run home to Valquiria and Liliane's house. They run in, they like storm their mom. They're freaking out. They're in hysterics. She thinks they're playing a game. The girls are clearly not playing a game. And she says, "Well, let's go in the truck and let's see what you saw." And the girls refuse to go back. They don't— they, like, don't want to go back.
AMANDA: I love that the mom is like, "Okay, let's take this seriously." Like if, you know, whether—
JULIA: Yeah.
AMANDA: Whether it's to help kind of allay a fear or whether she's genuinely kind of curious. Like, I respect that she's taking their concerns.
SAMMY: Right.
JULIA: This is also giving me real Flatwoods Monster energy, both with the, like, sort of—
SAMMY: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: —like acrid smell situation that's going on.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: And also to your point, Amanda, you'll remember the kids went home and told their mom about the situation. She's like, "All right, let me get the local army guy and we'll go up to the hill and see what's up?"
AMANDA: "Who I may or may not be smooching."
JULIA: Hmm.
SAMMY: I didn't know that. I'll have to watch that episode.
AMANDA: That's my headcanon.
JULIA: That is conjecture. We don't know if they were smooching. It's just odd that he was, like, around.
AMANDA: He was— it's just like, "Oh, helpfully, this guy with a gun is gonna help us."
SAMMY: Yeah, see, conjecture is also some of the best part of passing down these stories.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
SAMMY: So they get over to where they were. Mom is overcome with the smell, she can't deal. She talks in an interview about how it was with her for another two weeks or so on her nose. She tried to wash her nose with water and alcohol, she couldn't get out of her nose. She doesn't see the creature, but she looks down and she does see a footprint, which is sort of an oval shape with three big, little phalanges coming off, two short on either side, and then one big one in the middle. So we're talking like three toes.
AMANDA: Hmm.
JULIA: Okay.
SAMMY: So she sees a couple of these, she's really taken back by it. She takes the girls home and they're sort of like, "We'll see what happens." They don't really know what to make of it. "There's a weird sort of energy about the town. Anyway, let's go home."
JULIA: That foot is giving frog to me. I don't know if that's anyone else, but it does have kind of frog vibe.
SAMMY: Yes, totally. So there's this place not far from Varginha called ESA, which is sort of like a military school. It's where they keep like non-combat military personnel, folks who are training, folks who are not like actively in the field, just to kind of do general stuff. Now, the folks of Varginha talk about— and there's like older folks here talking about how their entire lives they had never encountered army trucks in Varginha. And ESA starts sending trucks out and forms a military blockade.
AMANDA: Oh.
SAMMY: And they block off a huge portion of the town, including where the girls had this encounter. People are so surprised by this. They've never encountered this. "This is a free country. I can come and go as I please." And they're starting to see this sort of like, "We're abolishing the free press, we're abolishing your ability to come and go." You know, guns drawn. And some of these folks have never seen military personnel before. You cannot come over this way. You can't pass.
JULIA: "This is an emergency, so we're going to treat it like an emergency." And everyone's like, "There's never been an emergency around here before. What's going on?"
SAMMY: Exactly. It's a matter of national security. And they're like, "Holy shit."
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
AMANDA: So already this encounter, I see why it's one of your favorites, Sammy, because there are so many accounts. Clearly, something happened. People's way of life, you know, was disrupted. This is not just like a person in a field being like, "I saw some weird lights and like maybe a shadow." Like, there's a lot happening here, which I really appreciate.
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
SAMMY: Clearly, something happened. Like, whether or not there was an extraterrestrial, like we can go to logs and we can go to firsthand accounts, and military vehicles were deployed. They were there, right?
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
SAMMY: So there are two gentlemen who are sort of, like, on— how would you say? Like a special assignment from the military. And they're basically told there is an animal that they need to basically capture and handle. And we have to— it's a threat to the town, and we need to take care of us. So their names are Eric Lopes and Marco Chereze. Eric and Marco kind of come from the military base with very limited information about what they have to do. They're on the special assignment. And as they're looking for whatever this sort of small animal is or creature or whatever, it runs right in front of their path. So Marco gets out of the vehicle, he follows it into another sort of, like, dead-end grassy area, and he captures it with his bare hands.
JULIA: I wouldn't be touching anything, first off, if the military is sending me to go pick up a "animal."
SAMMY: Exactly.
JULIA: And also the military loves saying that things are animals when they're very clearly not. Like, the excuse of the Flatwoods Monster was like, "That was an owl." And everyone's like, "No, it wasn't."
AMANDA: "Bitch, it was not an owl. Come on."
SAMMY: Yeah, I— I've actually seen an owl and it wasn't that. But that's what's interesting too, is like this is essentially like a military school and, like, folks who haven't seen combat and folks who are, you know, sort of, like, new to military assignments, so Marco doesn't know. And he goes and he captures this thing, they get it in the vehicle, it's alive, and they bring it to the local hospital, Humanitas Hospital.
JULIA: That's wild to me because wouldn't you bring it back to the army base?
SAMMY: So the army base is, like, 20 miles away. And I guess at this point, the army is all over the town. And they're sort of like, "We need to get this thing and look at it and get a picture of what's going on with it and what's— what sort of life form it— get it to a hospital immediately."
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
SAMMY: And then later that day, it's actually transported back to the base. So Marco captures this thing, they bring it to the hospital. We're gonna fast forward in time a little bit. That night, Marco is— can't get this smell off of him. He lives with his wife. They're kind of like, "Something's off." Marco starts to develop this really, really ravenous infection and starts to suffer organ failure.
AMANDA: Oh, no.
JULIA: Oh, no.
SAMMY: I know. So they bring him to— and this is— he's kind of suffering from this at home. Again, we're fast-forwarding. Roughly like 10 days to two weeks later, he's admitted to the hospital. They're having a hard time pinning down what's going on. His body is shutting down. It's an infection they can't get under control, and he ultimately succumbs. He dies of this unknown infection.
AMANDA: Oh, Lord.
JULIA: This is why you don't touch animals without— any sort of unknown animal without, you know, proper equipment.
AMANDA: Yeah.
JULIA: Just saying.
AMANDA: Good Lord.
JULIA: Even unrelated to UFOs and aliens, don't grab animals that you don't know without gloves.
SAMMY: For sure. And Marco's sister and wife have both reported for the entire— you know, for the last 26 years, their story's been straight, which was, "We kind of had to beg for the medical records to be released. They took a great deal of time to release them. They asked for us to buy them. They wanted money for them. So they were trying to bribe us."
AMANDA: What?
SAMMY: "And when we did finally get them, there was quite a lot of information and quite a few pages missing."
JULIA: Hmm.
SAMMY: Basically, he went into the hospital, he died very quickly. When they were made aware, it seemed to kind of be the hospital's primary concern that he was cremated as quickly as possible.
JULIA: Hmm.
AMANDA: Never great.
JULIA: Spooky.
SAMMY: Spooky.
AMANDA: God, that's so sad. Fuck.
SAMMY: It is. It is so sad. The other gentleman in the car, Eric Lopes, he disappears into anonymity for his entire year— for his entire life. And to this point, no one has been able to get a statement from Eric Lopes. And more than just sort of going back to his natural sort of regular life, from that point on, Eric sort of lives in seclusion and doesn't really interface with all that many people at all.
JULIA: Hmm.
AMANDA: Man.
JULIA: Or was paid to not say anything to anyone. Who can say?
SAMMY: Hmm. Uh-hmm. Witness intimidation, perhaps.
AMANDA: Brutal.
SAMMY: We're going back to January 20th, it's the middle of the day. Turns out there was another creature that had sort of escaped. There was the one that Marco had captured with his bare hands. There was another one that before the army arrived, someone in the town complained of maybe it's a dog or there's something. This before the army even arrives. The fire department is deployed and they end up capturing another one with like a lasso, like a noose, how one might catch like a stray dog. We're not touching it.
JULIA: Okay.
AMANDA: There you go.
JULIA: We’re not touching things.
SAMMY: Unfortunately, it is killed in the capture.
AMANDA: Oh, God.
SAMMY: When the army shows up, they basically grab the fire department immediately and they're like, "Okay, bring this one to the hospital as well." So at this point, we have one deceased and one living extraterrestrial in Humanitas Hospital in Varginha.
AMANDA: Wild, man.
JULIA: It's a bad time for anyone else also in that hospital for unrelated reasons.
SAMMY: Yeah, and it's like 5:00 p.m. Like, all of this has happened in the course of like—
JULIA: Just a normal day.
SAMMY: The army's taking over the whole town. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Meanwhile, while this is sort of happening, these couple hours that these creatures are running around, there were multiple accounts from townspeople who saw a similar craft to the cigar-shaped craft, a little bit smaller and a little bit more round, but still of that silvery material, making absolutely no noise as it's traveling around, doing sort of like a grid search. And they were all sort of like, "This was— this thing was looking for something."
JULIA: Hmm.
SAMMY: Kind of searching the town, doing a lateral grid search, looking for something. So we can assume—
JULIA: Looking for maybe its lost occupants.
SAMMY: Exactly. We can we can assume they were looking for their besties. Kind of like in ET, when his mom comes back—
JULIA: Yeah.
SAMMY: —for him at the end, It's so cute. So, yeah, that sort of thing. So we're at this— we're at the—they're at the hospital at this point. There's an account from one individual who was basically sent back out from this ESA place to transport these two things and has no idea what they are. He goes into one room with the one that is deceased, and there are doctors standing around, military personnel standing around, everyone's sort of, like, concerned. They're not clear what's going on. And he sees— first of all, he's overcome with the smell, obviously.
JULIA: Again.
SAMMY: And he sees poking out from under the blanket these two feet, which are almost identical to, basically, what the mother of the two young girls had seen, which is it's sort of like round and ovular. It's got like a V-shape and then three big sort of phalanges.
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
SAMMY: These things go up into his trip. He brings it back to the ESA base, which is only, like, 20 miles away. And he talks about being sort of, like, very pointedly spoken to, "What did you see?" "I think maybe I saw a burned person." "No. You know, what did you see?" And they're really trying to get out of him, trying to coerce him to say what he saw. It doesn't work. He kind of realizes what's going on. And they're basically like, "Whatever it is you saw, if you ever talk about it, the consequences will be very severe." Yeah, he doesn't come back around and talk about it until 26 years later when they make this big, old documentary.
AMANDA: I'm sure for, like, a military professional in particular, I don't know how, like, Brazilian military culture is compared to the US, but I imagine there is an awful lot of not saying what you do and following orders. And like that is why these specific organizations are created in part so that people can't individually kind of piece together what the whole is. And so even for somebody who is used to that environment to find this upsetting or remarkable or unusual, to me, kind of points out really how not the usual run of things this was.
SAMMY: Oh, yeah. For sure. For them even to get a sense of something is very wrong and I'm— you know, a handful of people here seem to know what's going on, but I'm supposed to be the person who knows what's going on and I don't know what's going on.
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
SAMMY: It's gotta be really spooky. I mean, I can't even imagine being one of the people who had to interface with it. And this poor fire department.
AMANDA: Yes.
SAMMY: It's like, "What the hell happened here?" And now here the army comes and they're like, "Give it to us. Don't worry about it. You didn't see anything." So we've got these two at the hospital. We have one other account from a radiologist who basically— there were some military personnel and some higher-ups from the hospital brought in a black body bag and he assumed it was the body of a child because it was small. He runs all the X-rays that they were asking him to run under close watch. He also comments on the smell, which we'll get back to in a second. What he notes about this is, basically, someone from the military after running all of the X-rays, looks at him and says, "Your job is done. Thank you. Don't ask any questions." And typically with an X-ray procedure, he has to verify all of the images to make sure they came out correctly. He was not allowed to see any of them.
AMANDA: Dang!
JULIA: That's wild.
SAMMY: And they immediately were taken from the hospital and they left. What's interesting about this radiologist's account, and I haven't been able to confirm this anywhere through any of my other research, but he claims that that smell was so strong and overpowering that there were members of hospital staff and patients complaining about it.
JULIA: Whoa.
SAMMY: And when they tried to clean it— when it didn't go away after a couple days of trying to clean it, they ended up shutting down that wing of the hospital.
AMANDA: Whoa.
SAMMY: Because they couldn't get rid of this smell and it lasted just over a week. So I haven't been able to find any more information about this, but this radiologist claims that this smell was so intense coming off of this being that it was causing a disturbance to people who worked at the hospital and the patients, and they had to shut down a portion of the hospital for the— for just over a week.
JULIA: And you have to imagine this probably isn't like a huge hospital or anything that this is like, you know—
AMANDA: Regional hospital, yeah.
JULIA: Exactly. That's— yeah.
AMANDA: Lord. And if a hospital can't get a smell out of a thing, I don't know who can.
SAMMY: I know. If it's not overpowered by hospital smell there, right?
JULIA: Yeah. Well, normally, what I would recommend for a bad smell is spraying alcohol on it, which does remind me that we do need to grab our refill real quick. So let's go do that.
AMANDA: Let's decamp to the kitchen.
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JULIA: Hey, it's Julia, and welcome to the refill. Thank you so much to our newest patron, Jenna, [35:18] who used our seven-day free trial over on Patreon and then signed up to be a full-fledged patron. Jenna, thank you so much. You join the ranks of our supporting producer-level patrons like Uhleeseeuh, Hannah, Scott, Anne, Matthew, Lily, and Wil. And of course our legend-level patrons, Captain Jonathan MAL-uh-kye Cosmos, Audra, Sarah, Bea Me Up Scotty, Morgan, Rikoelike, Chibi Yokai, and Smallov. And hey, if you want to also check out that seven-day free trial, head over to patreon.com/spiritspodcast today to sign up. I'm here to also tell you about another show at Multitude, This Guy Sucked. This Guy Sucked is a history podcast for haters by haters. Join historian Dr. Claire Aubin and a new expert every week to pull back the scholarly curtain on some of the world's biggest bummers. No dead person is safe, and the show's guests proved that the best part of understanding the past is criticizing it. New episodes every Thursday wherever you listen to podcasts from Charlemagne to Carl Schmitt. I really love the episode on Dick Cheney. Check that one out. Every episode gives listeners all of the ammo that they need to win dinner table arguments over why history's main characters were actually kind of the worst. New episodes every Thursday, wherever you listen to podcasts. Check out This Guy Sucked.
PAYNE: They told us it was a weather blip, just a glitch. It was a drone. Now it's just AI, I guess. The explanation keeps changing, but the stories don't go away.
SPEAKER 5: Videos appearing to show UFO is flying through the air are real.
PAYNE: My name is Payne Lindsey and this is High Strange, an investigative podcast about real encounters.
SPEAKER 6: Images of that rotating thing captured by US Navy Aircraft.
PAYNE: Credible people.
SPEAKER 7: We have clear things that we do not understand how they work.
PAYNE: I talk to scientists, military witnesses, pilots, and people who saw something they can't unsee.
SPEAKER 8: There was no other explanation for what we saw that day.
SPEAKER 9: I remember those faces and they weren't human.
PAYNE: This isn't a show about belief. It's about curiosity, skepticism, and investigation into the unknown. High Strange is available now wherever you listen to podcasts. Listen for free on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.
SPEAKER 10: This is The List Podcast.
SPEAKER 11: Each episode we sit down with a person who’s written a list of all the sexual partners they’ve had.
SPEAKER 10: Some lists are long.
SPEAKER 11: Some are short.
SPEAKER 10: But all are an honest recap about the guests’ sexual history.
SPEAKER 12: I'm ready to talk about sex.
SPEAKER 13: I was a kissing slut from [38:00]
SPEAKER 14. It's sinful and it will ruin sex for your future husband.
SPEAKER 15: He had fucked me and it reminded him that he preferred men.
SPEAKER 16: I'm happy to share. It's orgasms all around.
SPEAKER 9: Listen to The List on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
JULIA: And now let's get back to the show.
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JULIA: Sammy, we are back, and one of the things that we love to ask our guests is, what have you been drinking lately? Whether that is cocktails, mocktails, coffee creations? What has been your drink of choice?
SAMMY: I have been really into the Cycling Frog THC seltzers.
JULIA: Ooh. All right.
SAMMY: They are delish, so delish. I think I prefer the black cherry. The grapefruit is also delish. They're five milligrams, but they also make this, like, cranberry raspberry one, which is 10 milligrams. I like a nice, easy five because if I want to have two, I can. You don't get that hoppy weed taste at all, so it's almost dangerous how yummy they are. But, yeah, they're so good. Oh, my God. Cycling Frog THC seltzers, you should come sponsor my tour, come to the merch table or something.
AMANDA: Listen, sponsor us both.
JULIA: My problem, and I've expressed this on the podcast before, is my local, like, beer distributor who sells our THC seltzers only has like at minimum 10 milligrams and I'm a lightweight when it comes to edibles and seltzers and everything like that. So I end up just, like, doing half of one. I'm like, "I want to drink more of this, but I know I'll be on my ass if I do."
SAMMY: Yeah, just like split it and put some, like, regular soda water on it or something. The thing that gets me though is if it's in a can—
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
SAMMY: —then I can't close it.
JULIA: Exactly.
SAMMY: So I gotta commit.
AMANDA: It's gotta be a social experience.
JULIA: Yes. I think—
SAMMY: Yes.
JULIA: —you could— maybe you could like, I don't know, put it in, like, a mason jar or something so that it's like tight and so you don't lose all of the—
SAMMY: Effervescence?
JULIA: Effervescence, yes. Or my husband likes to just put a little bit of tinfoil on the top to kinda, like, create a disposable way of keeping it intact. So—
SAMMY: That works, too.
JULIA: Suggestions for the people at home.
AMANDA: Just give me a call, Julia. I'll be there in 25 minutes or less.
JULIA: Fair enough. Fair enough.
SAMMY: Yeah, yeah, yeah. 24 hours to crush this 10 milligrams. Who you callin'?
AMANDA: Calling me.
JULIA: All right, Sammy, we left off the hospital is closed. They— we still don't know what's going on with these bodies. What's happening?
SAMMY: So we've got this account from these this military individual who was basically tasked to pick these things up and bring them back to this ESA base, which is a military base that's like smaller, and it's like 20 miles away from Varginha. It's not clear whether or not they both make it there alive or if they've both died at this point, but he talks about very heavy metal boxes being put into the back of this truck. He brings them to this ESA base and then he says that they spend the night there, and then the following day, January 22nd, there are some USAF, so United States Air Force and United States Navy personnel.
JULIA: Never good when you have to call them in.
AMANDA: Never good, not one.
SAMMY: Right, right. So they show up and they arrive without clearance from, like, Brazilian airs— air— what do you say? Airspace control? They basically don't have clearance, they just show up. These are, you know, military airplanes and— from— very clearly the US, US military.
AMANDA: The US does love to do that, but not okay any time.
JULIA: Unacceptable, regardless.
SAMMY: No, not okay. Also kind of, like, these are Brazil's aliens, you know?
JULIA: Let them have it! USA, you have plenty of aliens!
SAMMY: I know, let them have it, for sure. And that sort of area around São Paulo and Rio and down to the coast has also been like a huge hotspot for UFO sightings, so like lights in the sky. And I know there was this— 1956, there was like a Navy vessel off the shore, and they captured some really clear photos of something just over the water. Anyway, I digress. So our story sort of ends where all of these civilians— you know, some of them like Carlos Souza— de Souza saw this crash. The family of Marco Chereze is kind of dealing with the fact that they don't have answers. And Marco was involved in this capture and now he's died. These three young girls who kind of grow up, you know, with their childhoods marred by this experience, and there's sort of these people in the town. They still live there. They all hold an identical story still. There's some accounts of, like, local doctors were kind of inundated with people having, like, sinus issues. Everyone was complaining about this smell. Everybody was kind of— couldn't get this out of their noses for a while or whatever. But basically, once these two creatures leave this town and this crash is sort of cleaned up, the local press is doing everything that they can, but they're hitting a lot of blocks. You know, folks are talking amongst themselves about what happened. There is some press coverage. There's even some national press coverage, but this story generally is people have said sort of, like, noticeably d like controlled by the military. It's one of the best kept secrets in the Brazilian military. They really don't want this story to get out. But it's one of those things where so many people have identical accounts from different sides of the town at different times. Again, we're talking about high-profile families and young girls who were living at the— you know, closer to the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder. Everybody was touched by this experience between January 20th and January 22nd of 1996. But the way the story sort of ends is all of the military personnel that have come forward claim that basically all the higher-ups were like, "We're not equipped to do with this. The USA is gonna come take care of it." US Air Force and US Navy shows up. They load some of the debris from the crash and also the two specimens. I'm not sure whether or not one of them survived, but the two big metal boxes onto a US aircraft. It takes off, and the Brazilian army sort of from there doesn't want to talk about it. There is a very brief press conference held. I can't remember the name of the spokesperson. I'm sorry, I don't have it in my notes, but basically he's like, "We have nothing to hide. Nothing happened." They were like, "Well, why were all these trucks deployed in our town?" They just keep claiming, "It was a matter of national security, which was handled." And that's it.
JULIA: So you have nothing to hide, but also it was a national security thing? I love when they're like, "Here's a press conference for something that definitely didn't happen and we're gonna lay all of your questions to rest. However, we're not answering any questions at this time."
SAMMY: You just nailed it. But that's sort of where our story ends, is we've got now a town full of people, you know, almost 30 years later, who all hold— you know, so many people were impacted and have grown up with these experiences, and have grown up with stories from the elders in their families as well. But what I think is so fascinating, kind of in summary, why I love this UFO incident so much is because it covers all of the bases. There was sightings in the sky from all sorts of different towns people, then there was a crash. So now the, you know the vehicle has landed. We have sightings, we have a crash, we also have extraterrestrials, we have a huge military cover-up operation. So it sort of is, like, the perfect UFO encounter. It's verifiable by countless people, dozens, if not hundreds of people all had a similar experience. But what I think sets this aside in such a unique way is the level of military involvement.
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
SAMMY: This is not, "Oh, I saw some— you know, I saw some military trucks." "No, that was just like somebody's dirty-ass jape." Like, the military was deployed in remarkable numbers. All sorts of vehicles and all sorts of personnel to a town that is very sleepy and never sort of, like, had any sort of interaction with the military in that way. Half of the town is blocked off, and then there's this whole hustle and bustle. The hospital becomes this, you know, very high energy, stressful place. There's all these press conferences. The news is actively, like, being shut down. And then we're all just supposed to fold our hands and go, "Well, that was weird." And I think it's great because there's so much documentation of, like you said, whether or not there was an alien, there was something. Whether or not it was a matter of national security or an extraterrestrial creature, they were there in town. There was some sort of something happening. And we know this not just from firsthand accounts. We have photo, we have video of all this stuff.
JULIA: Hmm. That's wild.
SAMMY: So what happened in January of 1996 in Varginha, Brazil? We don't know.
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
SAMMY: But allegedly a craft crashed, two extraterrestrials emerged and spent some time running around town. They were captured and brought to the local hospital, and then the US showed up and took it away and we're all supposed to not ask any questions.
JULIA: First off, very typical of the US military. I'll say that much.
AMANDA: Fucking classic US, yeah. Ugh!
JULIA: I think the thing that really strikes me about this story too, is the fact that it's all during the daytime. Like, this idea that oftentimes when you're looking at UFO sightings, they will most likely be happening at night. You have that sort of, like, people are driving along a highway with no lights, and then they see lights above them and stuff like that. And the fact that it— this was a daytime experience, that the craft was initially spotted, when it was like the middle of the afternoon, those girls saw the alien or the creature while in broad daylight is really, really interesting and makes this stand out to me in a way that some other UFO stories do not.
SAMMY: Totally. That's a great point. And that gave me pause, too, that the girls were really moved by, "We got the impression that it was afraid of us and it was cowering, but it was also very clearly suffering from the sunlight and very uncomfortable in the heat." And you don't think about that all the time. They would have been fine if they were in their craft, but this craft ca— you know, crashes in the early morning and suddenly like the sun is up and, like, day is going about— you know, day— it— it's the middle of the day and this creature who is totally not equipped to handle that is dealing with that. That's a really interesting point. You— I don't think I can point to another extraterrestrial, like, firsthand account during the daytime. It's always, "I was, you know, beamed up at night," or, "I saw them walk out and then they went back on their craft." It's always at night.
JULIA: I think there was maybe, like, one instance related to the Flatwoods Monster where it's like, "I was going through a walk in the woods and I saw this thing and I wasn't sure exactly what it was. And so I just continued on." But that's not nearly on the level of extreme exposure that I would say this story is.
SAMMY: I think it's brilliant. I love it. I love this one.
JULIA: It's a very cool story.
SAMMY: The other thing is the— these girls kind of like— when the police arrive, right, they're like in different rooms, they're all drawing the same thing.
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
SAMMY: You know, they've got the same thing to say about the feet as this mother's got to say about the track that she saw, that a completely separate individual, a per— you know, a member of the military who had to interface with this creature has the same sort of account. There's this widespread account of this smell. Everybody's— it was ammonia, it was sulfur, it was rotten eggs. It's not somebody was, "Oh, I think it smelled like alcohol or anything—" it's sort of like all of these accounts are universal, which I think is wild. And we don't have the— you know, we weren't there, we can't go back and say it. But as people are giving these accounts, it's— someone saying this on one side of town while someone is saying that at the same time on the other side of town, and this is a civilian and this is a member of the military.
JULIA: It's worth paying attention to.
SAMMY: Consistency, yeah.
AMANDA: Hmm.
JULIA: Now, Sammy, if people are interested in learning more about the story, obviously, you did a fantastic recap of the story, but if they wanted to, like, see some of those interviews or read some of the, like, writing that has been done about this incident, is there anything that you would recommend people check out? I know you mentioned Moment of Contact, but are there any, like, other documentaries or books that you highly recommend?
SAMMY: When it comes to this particular story, definitely watch Moment of Contact. I also just love it because I think it's one of the most, like, thoughtfully handled UFO/ET docs of all time that I've ever seen. Because in these really reliable, really credible docs, this one are— there's certain like Sasquatch encounter docks and stuff, like you can re— these people— like why would I make this up? You know, it's like plagued me my entire life. And you can really see the emotion that these people have reliving these experiences. Moment of Contact handled all of those interviews in a really, like, thoughtful way. And, obviously, the— every good documentary wants to be unbiased and just sort of, like, present you with facts and you form your own opinion. But it's clear that everybody on that team believed to their core as much as these people of Varginha did. And so they, like, approach it with this sort of, like, gracefulness and like, "Yes, I believe you." And not sort of, like, an objectiveness that can come off in some documentary as like cold or stern. There's also a fascinating Reddit thread about it, which someone who had even a little bit more time on their hands than I did, kind of went through major bullet points of the story. So Carlos de Souza seeing the crash, people seeing the other vehicle doing the grid search, the fire department, you know, Marco encountering it with his own hands, the girls. Kind of goes through all the big bullet points and does a bunch of research all over the place and sort of, like, rates— that's like one through seven or something, like highly credible and reliable versus like likely untrue.
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
SAMMY: I just— type— just type in 1996 Varginha Brazil UFO incident. You'll find the Reddit thread I'm thinking about, super well-organized. So yeah, but I mean, the doc is really great. Really great. I watched it again last night, getting ready for this, and I was like, "Oh, my God. I believe." I believe, I fully believe.
JULIA: This was incredible. What an amazing story. Thank you for sharing it with us.
SAMMY: Thank you.
JULIA: It's our pleasure. If people want to check out you and your work and listen to some of your music as well as your interest in cryptozoology, where can people find you?
SAMMY: Best place to start is Instagram @sammyraemusic, S-A-M-M-Y R-A-E, music. You can check out our website. We've got some tour dates that are coming up and we've got a cool album dropping pretty soon. And every now and then, you'll see some weird, little personality nugget of me and probably some cryptid stuff. So, yeah, if you want to learn more about me, you can start on our Instagram. If you wanna learn more about cryptids, you can go to the museum in Portland, Maine.
AMANDA: Fab. Well, if we end up up in Maine doing a live show anytime this summer or fall, we're working on it, folks, we'll let you know, Sammy. And next time you're in New York, we will absolutely catch you in Brooklyn or on Long Island.
SAMMY: Cool. Thanks so much. It's been so nice to be here. I feel just, like, so seen. It's just like, "Here, these queers want to talk to you about cryptids—"
AMANDA: Yes.
SAMMY: "—and also honor the fact that you're a musician." And it's just like, "Wow, my people." So—
AMANDA: Aw.
SAMMY: —thank you so much for having me. This has been an absolute joy. Thank you.
AMANDA: Of course.
JULIA: It was a joy for us, too. And listeners, remember, when you're driving down a lonely rural road and you see something metallic in the air above you, remember, stay creepy.
AMANDA: Stay cool.
JULIA: Later, Satyrs.
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AMANDA: Your gay elders are calling, it's time to pick up. Silver Linings with The Old Gays is a podcast hosted by four larger-than-life personalities sharing wisdom, laughs, and a little lovingly earned side eye after decades of life experience. They talk about everything from health and aging to relationships, queer culture, and the moments that shape who we become. It is honest, hilarious, and surprisingly heartfelt. So if you want stories that are as entertaining as they are meaningful, check out Silver Linings with The Old Gays wherever you get your podcast.