Extraordinary claims. Ordinary investigations.

The video posted by Shirley de Queiroz (queirozcomz) on Youtube:

“A strange object that in daylight crossed the sky of the northern region of Sao Paulo, around “Jardim Brasil”. This happened at the time that the so-called ‘chupacabras’ was much talked about. Note as it cannot be claimed it’s a balloon, [because] it, in its course, makes some tries to maintain its twelve claws open, until the moment that, as the policeman say, it ’succeeded’”.

A stabilized version can be seen here.

Shirley gave a more accurate date for the video in the comments: it was shot in 1995. She emphatically denies again it was a balloon, and also tells how at the time she showed the footage to a ufologist (still unidentified), but “on a final talk I realized that he didn’t know even what the word ufology exactly meant… so, given that, I left [the footage alone].”

It’s been causing some sensation abroad, but not so much here in Brazil. To be short, check this:

From “Planeta Balão” (Balloon Planet), it’s a “balao estrela” (star balloon), and the image was suggested by Cezar Castejon to Jonatan Francis. Credits for the find also go to “Ovni Ufo vídeos”.

You can see another type of star hot-air ballon here, and all the kinds of balloons being launched in Brazil in this page.

Around here it’s very obvious that it’s indeed a hot-air balloon, which was a real (and illegal) craze around the time. Groups of young men would join and create ever more complicated and elaborate balloons, trying to see who would make the best. They even included fireworks in some, huge signs and so on, check the previous links.

The activity suffered in more recent years, though, as authorities toughened the laws and suppressed the dangerous activity, which provoked fires and endangered the air space. Rival groups of balloon makers would also fight over the balloons that reached the ground, sometimes with great violence.

But even then, at great risk, some people are still launching those balloons. The star balloon in the image above, clearly the kind of the “spiky UFO”, was launched just last year.

The interesting thing is that Shirley seems to have no idea what the Chad/CARET/ISaac drone is, but the attention her footage got surely owes something to the drone saga — which only shows that the saga has already influenced the field of ufology.

- - -

UPDATE: The ufologist that Shirley de Queiroz contacted is Claudeir Covo, renowned Brazilian ufologist. He kindly clarified it further:

“Osmar de Freitas, of the GEONI UFO research group, who was also a balloon maker, watched the video and concluded it was a balloon.

When we told Shirley that it was a balloon, she didn’t accept the conclusion.

At the time, on the Internet, we found a similar balloon:

I still have her testimony recorded in video, among hundreds of tapes.

As an ufologist, I would very much like that this video was that of a UFO. But it isn’t.”

And so it is that this case had already been investigated and solved many years ago. It is indeed from before the drone saga.

With thanks to Claudeir Covo for the information.

- - -

For additional UFO videos, check out our wiki site. If you have a video camera, you can create a free wiki and download your own alien videos.