The Magé Lights

Magé lies in the Baixada Fluminense, part of the Rio de Janeiro metropolitan region. Across Guanabara Bay sits the Rio neighbourhood of Ilha do Governador. Shortly before May 2020, the Pentagon had released its UAP videos.

Tuesday, May 12, 2020. Between 10:40 pm and 2:00 am, residents filmed lights in the sky. Orbs in blue, red and yellow. Circular objects. Strong flashes on the horizon.

One clip showed a gyrating blue sphere floating above the city. Another, a group of five illuminated spheres. Another, a floating red orb. One caught the lights in a triangular formation.

On Ilha do Governador, a man narrated as he filmed a light on the horizon: "fica parada, está parada há mais de dez minutos." It stays still, it's been still for more than ten minutes. Lights blinked, dimmed, brightened and shifted. "Tem um vermelho, agora." There's a red one now. Someone suggested a balloon. His reply: "balão não anda naquela velocidade não." A balloon doesn't move at that speed. Off camera, a voice: "Tô arrepiado." I've got goosebumps.

André Di Mauro posted a clip and tagged Elon Musk. "There are reports that something fell over there in a lake … But it doesn't seem to be a satellite." Marcelo Aguiar passed on the word going around: "teve notícias que magé caiu um disco." Online, people claimed loud explosions and gunfire. None of it was verified. By Wednesday morning, "Mage" and "Pau Grande", the district named as the crash site, were trending on Brazilian Twitter. The name is a slang double entendre. The memes followed.

The Brazilian Air Force said it had no record of anything falling, no areas had been cordoned off and airspace control ran normally. The Observatório Nacional said no strange phenomenon was registered in the region. The Prefeitura de Magé said it had not been notified of any UFO, and urged residents to stay home because of Covid-19. Firefighters and military police recorded nothing related. No formal investigation was opened.

Then a Google Maps "saucer" near Magé went viral. Google blamed the sun reflecting off a building, "a reflection that is temporarily overloading the satellite's sensor." Meanwhile #MageUFO posts vanished from r/UFOs. A moderator insisted: "mods here do not censor."

Ufologist Marco Antonio Petit told CNN Brasil there was no evidence of a crash. The clips he saw, he said, showed Venus and satellites. Others pointed to Starlink trains, passing over Brazil since May 10, or debris from the Long March 5B core stage, which re-entered on May 11 and fell into the Atlantic. Drones, Chinese lanterns and skydivers with pyrotechnics were suggested too. One YouTube clip of the supposed wreck looked, Dazed noted, "very suspiciously like a colander."

Danielle Pedra sees it differently. For Pedra, Magé was a real UFO that military forces then hushed up. A letter sent to Linda Moulton Howe allegedly claimed US special forces were deployed into the forest. No primary document has been found.

Arthur Sérgio Neto's team could not finish its inquiry after members fell ill with Covid-19. As he put it: "teve grande repercussão, mas infelizmente não podemos concluir a investigação." Magé is often compared with Varginha. What it left behind is a night of phone footage, a trending hashtag and a question still open.