‘I’ve seen the devil’: Brazil’s UFO capital marks 30 years since ‘alien encounter’

Sightings in Varginha in 1996 have been dismissed as hoax, but saga continues to draw people from around world

The skies over this far-flung coffee-growing hub went charcoal black, the heavens opened and one of Brazil's greatest mysteries was born.

It really was something unique," recalls Marco Antonio Reis, a zoo director, who was at his ranch outside Varginha one stormy day in January 1996 when, he says, an otherworldly creature came to town.