The Antônio Vilas-Boas Abduction (1957): The First Modern Abduction Account

Antônio Vilas-Boas was a 23-year-old farmer near São Francisco de Sales, in Minas Gerais, Brazil, who plowed his family's fields at night to avoid the heat. On the night of October 15–16, 1957, he said, a bright light descended over the field and an egg-shaped craft on legs landed. His tractor engine died. Small beings in grey coveralls and helmets seized him and took him aboard, where he was stripped, covered in a gel, and had blood taken from his chin.

In the account he gave months later, a naked female being with pale skin, red body hair, and slanted eyes came into the room and had sexual intercourse with him twice, then pointed at her belly and at the sky, which he took to mean she would bear his child among the stars. He was shown around the craft, tried to steal an instrument as proof, and was returned to the field after about four hours.

In February 1958 Vilas-Boas was examined by Dr. Olavo Fontes, a Rio de Janeiro physician and UFO investigator, who noted symptoms consistent with radiation exposure, nausea, sleepiness, and lesions on his face and body, and who reported the case to the American APRO organization. Fontes' report circulated privately for years; it was published in Brazil in 1962 and in English in Flying Saucer Review in 1965, before the Hill case was public.

Vilas-Boas is the first modern abduction account with the elements later cases repeat: a vehicle stalling, small beings, a physical examination, and a reproductive purpose. That it emerged in Brazil, in a rural setting, before the abduction narrative existed in English is either evidence that the phenomenon predates the culture or evidence of how universal the underlying human material is. Vilas-Boas became a lawyer, raised a family, gave a single television interview, and maintained the story unchanged until his death in 1991.