Mrs. Chaskova's early-1952 sighting of a formation of orange-glowing discs hovering over the ocean at Itanhaém, Brazil, with two human figures briefly visible atop one craft.
THINK ABOUTIT UFO|ENTITY ENCOUNTER REPORT
1952: The Itanhaém, Brazil Beach Sighting
An explosive noise in the small hours of a Brazilian beach night woke an airline pilot in his cottage, but it was his grandmother, out to investigate on her own, who saw what he missed entirely: a large number of glowing, orange-lit, “inverted soup-plate” shaped craft hovering just above the ocean’s surface, two human figures briefly standing atop one of them before the entire formation departed at tremendous speed. Mrs. Chaskova’s half-hour vigil, relayed secondhand through her pilot grandson, produced one of the more visually striking mass-object sightings in this archive’s Brazilian record.
Date: January-February 1952
Sighting Time: 3:00 a.m.
Day/Night: Night
Location: Itanhaém, Brazil, along the coast
Urban or Rural: Rural
No. of Entity(‘s): 2
Entity Type: Humanoid
Entity Description: Described only as “human figures”; no further physical detail (clothing, size, coloring) survives in the source
Hynek Classification: CE-III (Close Encounter of the Third Kind) — close observation of animate beings associated with the object
Duration: Approximately half an hour
No. of Object(s): A large number (exact count not specified)
Description of the Object(s): A large formation of disc-shaped craft, likened to “inverted soup-plates,” hovering low just above the ocean’s surface, each lit with an orange glow
Shape of Object(s): Inverted soup-plate (disc)
Size of Object(s): Not specified
Color of Object(s): An initial bright, blue-white light woke the pilot; the discs themselves were lit by an orange glow
Distance to Object(s): Not specified; Mrs. Chaskova observed from the shore, close enough to make out two human figures atop one craft
Height & Speed: The formation hovered low, just above the ocean’s surface, for the duration of the observation, then departed one after another at what Mrs. Chaskova described as tremendous speed
Number of Witnesses: 2 (Chaskov, the airline pilot, who witnessed only the initial noise and light; and his grandmother, Mrs. Chaskova, who witnessed the full sighting including the entities)
Special Features/Characteristics: An explosive noise preceded the sighting; the craft hovered in a large formation low over the water rather than a single object; two human figures emerged atop one craft and stood there for a period before re-entering; the formation departed sequentially, one craft after another, rather than all at once.
Case Status: Insufficient Data
Source: Commander Auriphebo Simões
Summary/Description: In January or February 1952, at around 3:00 a.m., an airline pilot named Chaskov, asleep in a beach cottage in Itanhaém, Brazil, was awakened by an explosive noise and saw a bright, blue-white light outside. He did not investigate further that night. The next morning, his grandmother, Mrs. Chaskova, told him that she had gone out at the time to see what had caused the disturbance, and had witnessed a large number of disc-shaped objects — which she likened to inverted soup-plates — lit with an orange glow, hovering low just above the ocean’s surface. She watched the formation for roughly half an hour, during which two human figures emerged onto the top of one of the discs and remained standing there for a period before going back inside. The craft then departed one after another, at what she described as tremendous speed.
Related Cases: 1951: The Sønderborg, Denmark Encounter | 1951: The Veghenza Landing, Ferrara, Italy (comparable multi-witness, occupant-observed landing structure)
Detailed Report
The Itanhaém case’s evidentiary structure is unusual within this archive’s collection in a specific way: its two witnesses did not observe the same portion of the event. Chaskov, the pilot, experienced only the case’s opening moments — a noise and a light — and slept through everything that followed; the sighting’s substantive content, including the discs and the two entities, rests entirely on his grandmother’s account, related to him only after the fact. This means the case functions, in practice, as a single-witness sighting for its most significant details, even though two people were technically present and aware something unusual was happening that night.
The scale of the sighting — “a large number” of objects rather than one or a handful — sets it apart from most of this archive’s entity-encounter cases, which typically describe a single craft. A mass formation hovering in coordinated fashion just above open water, with at least one member of the group producing visible occupants, describes something closer to an organized fleet than an isolated visitor, though the source material offers no further detail on the formation’s arrangement, size, or behavior beyond the two entities’ brief appearance.
Chaskov’s own profession as an airline pilot is worth noting as a mark of general credibility for the household, even though he was not the primary witness to the sighting’s key details — a professional aviator’s presence lends the household a baseline of technical literacy and public accountability that an entirely anonymous family might lack, even if it does not directly strengthen his grandmother’s secondhand-to-him account of the entities themselves.
The source, Commander Auriphebo Simões, appears elsewhere in Brazilian ufological literature as a documented compiler of contemporary sighting reports, though this archive has not been able to independently verify further biographical detail or cross-check this specific case against a second published source.
RESEARCHER’S NOTES
The Itanhaém Beach Sighting — Brazil 1952 and the Limits of a Secondhand Witness
- Classification issues: CE-III is correct given the close observation of animate occupants, though the entities were seen by only one of the case’s two named witnesses, with the other relaying her account rather than observing directly.
- Source chain assessment: The case survives through Commander Auriphebo Simões’s compilation, with the case’s central sighting itself relayed to this archive’s record through a chain of at least two tellings — Mrs. Chaskova to her grandson, and the grandson (or Simões directly) to the published record. No primary interview transcript with Mrs. Chaskova herself has been located.
- Pattern context: Brazil produced a substantial body of early-1950s UFO reports (see also this archive’s 1951 Brazilian entity encounters), and this case’s multi-craft, occupant-observed structure fits a broader regional pattern of detailed close-encounter reporting during this period.
- Physical evidence and evidentiary weight: None survives — no photograph, trace, or independent corroboration. The case’s evidentiary weight rests entirely on Mrs. Chaskova’s account as relayed through her grandson and Simões’s compilation.
- Geographic and historical context: Itanhaém’s coastal setting, with open ocean directly adjacent to the sighting location, is consistent with several other Brazilian coastal UFO reports from this era, though it also means no inland or overland witnesses were positioned to independently corroborate the formation’s presence.
The Itanhaém sighting endures as a striking, if evidentially thin, account of a mass UFO formation and its briefly glimpsed occupants — a scene relayed secondhand from grandmother to grandson to compiler, with no independent witness, photograph, or trace to anchor it beyond that chain of testimony. It is catalogued here as Insufficient Data: a vivid and specific account of a large-scale sighting that this archive can neither verify nor dismiss.
Two human figures emerged onto the top of one of the discs and remained standing there for a while.
— Account of Mrs. Chaskova, on the January-February 1952 Itanhaém, Brazil beach sighting
