As Rachel de Queiroz watched flying saucers cross the skies of the world, from California to Amazonas, Maceio to Uruguay, she had no doubt that an alien invasion was imminent and would bring about the end of humanity.
The writer believed everything. The 15 meter diameter disc made of an unknown metal, the 0.5 meter long large skull homunculus that pilots it, and the phosphorescent trails they left in the sky. “I believe it myself. Why don’t I believe it?” the author of “O Quinze” wrote in a column published in Folha da Noite magazine in the 1950s.
In the early 1960s, the newspaper merged with Folha da Tarde and Folha da Manhão. sheet.
The author, who is originally from Ceará, rejected skeptics who claimed the sighting was a collective fantasy. “If so many people have seen flying saucers, it’s because flying saucers exist,” he says. To her, the saucer was a spy for advanced creatures preparing for an invasion, “their scout and fifth columnist.”
“Everyone who has sinned must strive to repent, for the time has come and it has turned ugly. The world will end, at least our world.”
Read the full story below. Part of Section 105’s Great Reaction Column recalls the chronicles that made history in Folha. This initiative is part of the newspaper’s 105th anniversary celebrations scheduled for February 2026.
Flying saucer (1950/8/5)
I believe in myself. Why not believe it? Nothing justifies disbelief. I believe in everything. It is 15 meters in diameter, made of an unknown metal that shines like polished silver, and consists of three concentric circles, only one of which (the center circle) rotates to power the device. I believe they leave glowing trails everywhere they go – certainly phosphorescent dust from the stellar worlds they travel to. And I mainly believe that they are being piloted by half a meter tall, giant, ugly homunculi from God knows which planet: Mars, Venus or Saturn.
Oh, I believe it. Why can’t that be true? They have been witnessed all over the world: East and West, Pacific and Atlantic, the coasts of California, Peru and the Amazon, Maceio and Uruguay. And here in Rio, there was a gentleman who watched them for 45 minutes. He proves to be a very smart man as he calls on the radio when he sees with his eyes that the earth is about to be eaten.
A collective fantasy conversation. Flying bombs are also said to be a collective fantasy. The people know where they are looking, and the newspapers tell a lot more of the truth than the naive people who are addicted to believing the negative think. If so many people have seen flying saucers, it’s because flying saucers exist. After all, in this world of appearances, who can distinguish between appearance and reality, and to what extent can we say that something is concrete or an illusion of the senses? The rainbow is also an illusion of the senses, now shining among the wet clouds in the sky, bright and real, like a living body.
I believe in records, but I fear records. I am well aware that it is a positive sign of the end of the world. If it’s in a book, it was predicted a long time ago! And why isn’t it the end of the world? What accomplishment is so great as to save us from catastrophe? The ten righteous people who missed Sodom will miss us for an even greater reason.
Anyone who has sinned must make an effort to repent. Because the time has come and it’s ugly. If you haven’t seen what you should see, look and fill your eyes. Those who have not loved will soon love; those who have not taken revenge must take revenge. Time is running out. The clock is already ticking, so do what you have to do. The world is coming to an end.
At least in our world. Another person may arise from our ashes, but it will be another world inhabited by people known only to God – it will not be formed by our grandchildren, or even in the wombs of our daughters. And beautiful, innocent and unfortunate, they will die with us, lost before they can inherit the flame of life.
The world that comes after is theirs, and they are already watching over us and preparing the way. So, brethren, do you not see that these mysterious saucers, which soar and soar and depart like hawks upon their prey, are their scouts, the fifth column, the scouts of the crowd of big-headed dwarfs who are destined to be our masters? Following the observers, the military arrives with amazing weapons, next to which President Truman’s H-bomb is like St. John’s snore. And how old will they reach if their bodies have already become smaller and their heads have grown larger?
90% of the raw material can be trace amounts, so how can it be purified, purified and not adulterated? What can we do about them, slow, microcephalic giants barely emerging from the age of crude iron and still crawling through the early stages of the atomic age?
What will they think of us when they see us so backward, so primitive, irrevocably connected to the body and its misery, enjoying barbaric wars with crude devices made of crude metals and crude explosions of gunpowder and nitroglycerin?
Oh, scary, scary. What will happen to us when they fall from the sky in droves? It is so strange and terrifying that we blindly believe in their divine right to survive at the expense of our lives. How will they destroy us, or what means will they use to enslave us? And what would they be like–transparent, gelatinous, all muscles and bones refined into a noble substance, with walking brains, few internal organs, perhaps freed from a state of low need for food and rest? And will they have breasts that can sympathize and eyes that can see beyond our grotesque ugliness, wickedness, and imperfection?
they are angels. And they will come to destroy, just as the angels, neither hating nor rejoicing in carnage, but obeying a higher command, destroy with a fiery sword a heart made of diamond, where nothing tarnishes, nothing softens. However, it is also possible that they evolved solely in the direction of beasts, and as beasts in their essence of perfection, they would be ferocious and merciless. They will truly be the descendants of Leviathan.
Watch out for them coming. There was a warning at first, but the warning quickly goes away. They will be small but brave, descending in thousands and millions, knowing all the secrets, multiplying in unfailing numbers according to their futile needs, producing warriors and leaders to suit their own tastes, shortening childhood to just a few months, and learning the process by which very early systems produce adults with transparent bodies and big heads in the same time it takes us to build automobiles.
Oh you unbelievers! Oh you scoffers! Oh, you wise men who look through foolish telescopes and deny what the naked eye can see! They measure the stars with rulers and come to tell us that there is no danger and that they are just afraid of meteors. The shaman of an American tribe had to proclaim this to his frightened warriors when they first saw the wings of a caravel floating on the horizon. They are birds, rays of sunlight, dreams of the eye. So when the whites arrived, they found the warriors unprepared and helpless. The same thing will happen to us. It’s easier to doubt, and it’s much easier to say that everything is wrong and a lie.
And all the while, flying saucers depart by the thousands from bases in the skies beyond, take off into the empty ether, and choose the world’s most beautiful and most enchanting places to land – California, the Gulf of Mexico, Italy, the tranquil beaches of the South Atlantic…
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