Squadron 51 is being developed in Rio Grande do Sul, on the very south of Brazil, very near to the frontier with Uruguai. Coincidence or not, is no surprise that an UFO-themed videogame has its roots here, since it's historically one of the favorite spots for extraterrestrials to visit here in Brazil.
There's been a lot of UFO activity in Brazil throughout the decades, from the mysterious incidents in the Amazon forest in the 1970s, supposedly covered up by the military dictatorship, to the infamous close encounters in Varginha city in the late 1990s. But a lot of lesser-known incidents happened very near from the headquarters of the developing studio Loomiarts and film company Fehorama Filmes.
Here you'll find out about a few of the many cases that happened right here in our state, a region that also houses study centers for ufologists and places of interest for UFO-tourists.
THE BERLET CASE (1958)
In Sarandi (RS), tractor driver Artur Berlet claimed to have been taken away by a flying saucer on May 14, 1958. He only returned 11 days later. At the time, the abduction case was known worldwide. The tractor driver's account was rich in detail. He was reportedly taken to the planet Acart, 65 million kilometers from Earth, and the trip would have lasted 38 hours. Acartians supposedly had a physical type similar to humans and communicated with him in German. Berlet's account was published in the book "From Utopia to Reality, a real trip to another planet".
THE WESTENDORFF CASE (1996)
In Saragonha Island, at Lagoa dos Patos, the airplane pilot Haroldo Westendorff witnessed a cone-shaped (or is it pyramid-shaped?) UFO, 50 to 60 meters tall, with a base as big as a soccer stadium. He flew around the object for 15 minutes, keeping 100 meters of distance. The object was spinning around itself and heading towards the sea and was spotted at the radar of Pelotas' airport. Westendorff also reported a smaller object coming out of the top of the big UFO, which climbed into the skies at a very fast speed, with the larger UFO following shortly afterwards.
THE SANTO ANGELO CASE (1997)
On February 25, 1997, in Santo Ângelo, the resident Vanda Polansky was with her family when they noticed something that sounded like a motorcycle engine. After going out the door to check, Vanda found spheres of red lights that went up to the sky and disappeared. At the time, the Porazzis, Vanda's neighbors, also confirmed the sighting. The family saw a strong flash that would have originated the phenomenon observed by Vanda. About five people witnessed the case, and afterwards, even crop circles and dead bugs were found nearby.
THE 2020 LIGHT SPHERES (2020)
Even in 2020, in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, the extraterrestrials couldn’t help to step by. In the night of June 22, the entrepreneur Rudinei and his daughter Giovana, witnessed the presence of light spheres on the skies in the north coast of Rio Grande do Sul. At first, they thought it was a shooting star or maybe some unusual fireworks, but then, as it got brighter and started to move randomly, they realized it couldnt’ be any of that. They even photographed it. They weren’t alone in their account: another dozens of people told the same otherworldly stories on social networks in the same week, in different beaches.
M. NIGHT SHYAMALAN's SIGNS (2002)
Even the film director M. Night Shyamalan, known for the classic The Sixth Sense (1999), noticed our state's fame of welcoming alien invasors, and decided to use a city in Rio Grande do Sul as the spot where one of the first close encounters with aliens took place in his film "Signs" (2002). You can check it out here in this scene where Joaquin Phoenix's character is watching news on TV, when he's astounded by an extraterrestrial appearance at a children's party in Passo Fundo (Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HeTjBPbY70Y