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The case of alleged contactee Urandir Oliveira in Corguinho, Brazil, has pitted two eminent UFO researchers on opposite sides. Linda Moulton Howe, an Emmy-award winning filmmaker, author and UFO researcher, says hard scientific evidence supports UrandirÕs story that he was taken aboard an alien craft. On the other side, Ademar JosŽ Gevaerd, editor of Revista UFO magazine and national director of the Brazilian Mutual UFO Network (MUFON), claims Urandir is a confirmed hoaxer and UFO cult leader bent on duping people to make money.
Howe ran a six-part investigation of the case with drawings and pictures on her website Earthfiles. The most dramatic photos are of a scorch-like Òbody printÓ on the bedsheet and wooden ceiling in OliveiraÕs bedroom where he claimed to have been beamed aboard a UFO in Sept. 15, 2002. The photos show discolored areas in the partial shape of legs, arms and torso on the sheet and ceiling as if some sort of energy had transformed UrandirÕs body and transported it through the ceiling.
Howe sent specimens of the affected areas of the sheet and control samples to biophysicist W.C. Levengood of Pinelandia Biophysical Laboratory, Grass Lake, Michigan. Levengood said the samples, examined under a 40X photomicroscope, showed ÒastoundingÓ effects he could not explain.
Levengood says the polyester fiber in the mixed polyester-cotton sheet had been transformed to a vitreous state as if melted while the cotton fibers next to them were unaffected. Polyester melts at 500 degrees F. while cotton scorches at 300 degrees F. ÒThatÕs the astounding thing. The cotton threads are totally undisturbed,Ó he said.
He said it would be impossible to create such effects with a laser or torch. ÒYou can't transform the molecules in a polyester fiber by heating it with a match É. (Whatever the energy is), it has to fingerprint the actual molecular structure of the material itself. É The cotton threads are lying right on the vitreous polyester fibers, over and under. But there is no apparent heat transfer here between the polyester fibers and the cotton fibers. That's what makes this so unique because there is no known method that I know of where you can control electromagnetic radiation, Ðand that's what this is here, to that fine tuned degree in a spatial frame of reference. É It's astounding, yeah!Ó
Through interviews with Urandir, Howe describes his life as highly unusual from an early age. He claims that by age eight he developed the ability to bend and twist metal utensils like the famous psychic Uri Geller and recalls being abducted into extraterrestrial craft at the ages of 13, 23, 27, 35 and 39.
At the age of 23, while making a living by displaying his alleged mental powers in Sao Paulo, he claims to have miraculously healed two victims of an automobile accident by the laying on of hands. Shortly thereafter, tall blond beings approached him and said, 'Now you know what to do with the light energy,'Ó Howe writes.
In 1996, Urandir bought 209 acres of farm land in Corguinho where many UFO sightings had been made over the years. Howe said that in 1998, ÒBrazil Verade TV traveled to his Corguinho farm because Urandir informed the station that the blond beings were coming back to get him again. The crew was videotaping when six lights in an arc appeared in the night sky and descended toward the ground. As the arc of lights seemed to lower toward Urandir, he walked through them into a small beam of light that lifted him into a disc-shaped craft while the Brazil Verade television camera rolled. Howe says some of that video was broadcast in Brazil and the tape was sent to CNN for international broadcast, but apparently CNN never aired any of it and the tape.Ó
While inside the craft, ÒUrandir claimed the tall, blond humanoids showed wall screens containing moving images of Earth destruction by nuclear missiles and nuclear power reactors. Urandir understood that the destructions will be caused by changing Earth magnetic fields which affect the electronic systems in the missiles and reactors. The blond beings also showed Urandir that three Ôfully functionalÕ pyramids currently covered by sand will be uncovered for the world to see,Ó Howe writes.
Gevaerd, however, presents a totally different picture of Urandir. In a
Òdear colleagueÓ letter to UFO groups dated Nov. 28, 2001 that appeared in Diario Las Ultimas Noticias, Gevaerd says Urandir Òwas publicly exposed five years ago as probably the all-time most successful 'UFO hoaxer' in the world.Ó
Urandir is the founder and ÒguruÓ of Project Portal Òwhich has been relentlessly criticized in Brazil for its fanatic behavior,Ó Gevaerd writes. ÒProject Portal has become the largest 'UFO Cult' in the world today. Urandir and a few of his 'co-workers' have gathered a considerable fortune in money and properties with their hoaxes.
The Brazilian UFO community has frequently exposed their actions and national press has largely published negative material on him, but he still continues his 'activities'.Ó
Gevaerd says Urandir and his associates charge high prices for visits to his farm. ÒIt is estimated that over 50,000 people have been to the place, and more than 200,000 have attended to his so-called 'Contact Classes' in many parts of Brazil. He was caught many times using laser pointers and special type of lights to fool tourists and other people who go to his farm.Ó
He say that in March 200, Urandir and an associate were arrested and jailed briefly in Porto Alegre Òfor selling parts of a farm that didn't belong to them. Over 6,000 people, who were induced by him to believe that they would be safe from Armageddon and rescued by ETs if they move to the property, purchased the land. They never saw a piece of it!Ó
Gevaerd established a website for people who feel they had been duped by Urandir to post denunciations of him. Many of the comments compare him with Peoples Temple leader Jim Jones, who led the suicide of 900 people in Guyana. One writer says, ÒThe bathrooms were clogged to the point of invading the lodgings; the food was prepared with filthy water from a dam constructed by Project Portal. In this dam Urandir bathed the people and asked to the skies that they be good and be treated of their evils, always alerting that the cure will only happen if the blessed have a lot of faith. If the person has little faith the charm will not work É I think it shameful that we do not intervene. Will nobody remember the tragedy of Guyana, has everybody forgotten about Jim Jones?Ó
Another writes, ÒWe spent $400.00 per person to be in a precarious camp, and what we only witnessed was a show of lights with lasers accomplished by Urandir and his followers. The foolish followers, in ecstasy, screamed while his monitors -- all well paid, it is obvious -- motivated such delirium. Jim Jones-Urandir promises to build, in February 2,000, a flying disk and to evacuate from the Earth 1,500 people, in a ridiculous attitude that everybody knows is utopian.Ó
Howe took notice of GevaerdÕs criticism on March 5 in an article on her website entitled ÒCensorship by omission and comments by MUFON Director John Schuessler.Ó She said she had been ÒdisinvitedÓ as speaker at a May 2003 conference in Seattle because of the controversial nature of the case. When she complained this was Òcensorship before even the physical evidence from the scientists has been reported,Ó a spokesman said Òwe just don't want to be a battleground.Ó
Howe replied, ÒI'm not doing battle with anyone. I was invited to go to Brazil to collect physical evidence and have it analyzed in American labs that I trust, with the goal of science insights about what happened to the bed sheet and ceiling in Urandir Oliveira's bedroom on September 15, 2002. It is A. J. Gevaerd who is doing the attacking.Ó Howe did not, however, respond specifically to GevaerdÕs reports of fraud by Urandir.
Schuessler said, ÒFor the record, if you are doing an investigation where you collect samples and you take them to the laboratory, the results should stand on the results of the laboratory, not on somebody's opinion.Ó
The question remains, if Urandir hoaxed the imprint in his bedroom, how did he do it? And if he is a genuine contactee, why the previous hoaxing with laser pens? The case points out the difficulties and the pitfalls of separating fact from fantasy in the high-strangeness world of alien contact.
Hal McKenzie, (mcke8344@cox.net),
is a veteran journalist and a contributing editor of World Tribune.com and www.cosmictribune.com.