Encounter record / 1959
Évora, Portugal. Monday, 2 November 1959. Just after midday. At the Escola Industrial e Comercial, colleagues hurried to the director with news of a strange object over the city. Joaquim Guedes do Amaral set up a telescope in the front yard. He saw a round, light blue body drifting slowly across the sky, seeming to swell and shrink. Then a second object joined it, undulating like a jellyfish. Both climbed away and vanished. What came next made the case famous. For nearly four hours, white silky threads fell over the school and the town. And in those threads, Amaral said, he found something alive.
In 1959 the Escola Industrial e Comercial de Évora was housed in the Convento de Santa Clara, in the historic heart of the Alentejo city. Its director was Joaquim Guedes do Amaral. He would become both the chief witness and the first investigator of one of the strangest episodes in Portuguese UFO lore.