Brazil
Every logged mystery in this country.
- Pará
Colares / Operação Prato
In 1977, the Brazilian Air Force sent intelligence officers to Colares island, where residents blamed a light they called the chupa-chupa for burns and a lasting weakness. The records, which Brazil's National Archives began receiving in 2008, document the investigation but do not establish what the lights were or what caused the injuries.
- Minas Gerais
Memorial do ET, Varginha
Three young women told police they saw a crouching creature with red eyes in a vacant lot on January 20, 1996. The Army investigated and concluded they had mistaken a local man in bad weather. The town built a water tower shaped like a flying saucer and, in 2022, a museum.
- Mato Grosso
Percy Fawcett and the City of Z
Colonel Percy Fawcett left Cuiabá in April 1925 to find a city he called Z, taking his son and his son's friend. The last message came on May 29. Search parties have been going out after him since 1928.
- Bahia
Terreiro da Casa Branca
Founded around 1830 by African women in a country that still held their people as property, this is the oldest Candomblé house in Brazil and the mother house of the Nagô rite. In 1984, it became the first site of Black Brazilian culture placed under national heritage protection, which came after a century in which the police raided houses like it and confiscated the drums.
- Federal District
Vale do Amanhecer
A religion founded in 1969 by Neiva Chaves Zelaya, one of the first women to drive trucks for a living in Brazil, whose mediums hold that they are reincarnations of extraterrestrial beings who reached Earth some 32,000 years ago. Around 600 temples now operate worldwide, and at the mother temple outside Planaltina thousands of mediums in ceremonial dress give readings to any visitor who asks, without charge.