A bizarre UFO case dubbed “Brazil’s Roswell” has set the internet abuzz amid rumors that video of a captured “creature” may exist — and could soon be released.

The so-called Varginha incident — an alleged UFO crash, extraterrestrial encounter, and subsequent military cover-up — made global headlines in 1996 and sparked a media frenzy in Brazil, despite official government denials that anything unusual had occurred.

It remains one of the country’s most famous UFO cases and sparked a wave of “UFO tourism” to Varginha, where many residents to this day insist the Brazilian military captured two alien beings and threatened locals to keep quiet.

More than a quarter-century later, interest in the case has been renewed after the release of a documentary, Moment of Contact, which sees filmmaker James Fox return to the small town in the southwest state of Minas Gerais to interview eyewitnesses, experts, and officials.

“Governments tend to cover up everything they can’t explain to their population,” retired Brazilian Air Force General Jose Carlos Pereira tells Fox in the documentary.

In January 1996, locals in Varginha reported seeing a strange, cigar-shaped object, about the size of a school bus, slowly fall from the sky and crash in a field.

Carlos de Souza witnessed the alleged crash and spoke to researcher Claudeir Covo on camera in 1996.

“It was floating and slowly losing alтιтude,” he said at the time.

“It looked like a washing machine struggling, fighting to keep its alтιтude … The side of it was completely torn and it had white smoke coming out. It wasn’t black smoke like from a fire. At the time I thought it was like an aircraft in trouble, an aeroplane, so I decided to follow it.”

Twenty-six years later, Mr. De Souza and the filmmakers returned to the crash location, just up a hill from a small white farmhouse — where he broke down in tears.

“When I arrived at the site on this very spot, I observed a lot of debris, pieces,” he said.

“And when I got out of the car I immediately smelled ammonia, like rotten eggs. A very strong smell, so strong that I had to cover my nose with the shirt I was wearing. My eyes got watery.”

Mr. De Souza said he straight away realized it was “something very different from what I was expecting”. “First, due to the smell — that smell made no sense,” he said.

“And I saw a piece, it looked like it was aluminum. I took a sheet. I took a small piece, it was very light. Crumpled it, but when I released it, it went back to its original shape.”

Within minutes, however, Mr. De Souza said military trucks arrived from the nearby ESA Army Base — 30km from Varginha — and ordered him to leave, threatening him with their guns.

Soon after, Varginha residents were stunned as a large military presence descended on the town, cordoning off several blocks and preventing anyone from entering.

A group of girls, ranging in age from 14 to 21, made headlines after claiming they had stumbled across a “strange creature” in broad daylight, at around 3.30 pm on January 20, 1996.

The being, which was huddled next to a wall by a clump of weeds in a vacant, grᴀss-covered lot, was described as about four feet (120cm) tall, with brown, oily skin, V-shaped feet, a large head, and huge red eyes.

For its part, the Brazilian military said in 2010 that an official inquiry had concluded that the girls had actually encountered a homeless, a mentally unstable man nicknamed “Mudinho”, covered in mud.

Liliane Silva, Valquiria Silva, and Katia Xavier, now adults, returned to the location with Fox to recount their experience.

“We were walking down along here, I was in front and they were a little further back,” Liliane said.

“Pᴀssing by here the graffiti caught my attention. I looked and I saw the creature. I looked into its eyes and saw that it was frightened. Just as I was frightened, the creature was also frightened. I saw that it was scared of us, so it was an exchange of fears, its and ours.”

Ms. Xavier said it had “red eyes, oily skin, I couldn’t see an open mouth”.

“Smiling, no — not happy, sad,” she said. “Shrunken back. A sad expression. And it didn’t have hair.”

Valquiria added, “It was a creature, there in the corner, cowering and afraid. Afraid of us just as we were afraid of it. This being that’s unknown to us.”

Liliane said when she first saw the creature it was just eight feet away.

“When I said, ‘Guys, look at that!’ Then it turned around,” she said. “I saw the eyes and took off running.”

She said in the moment she made eye contact, she “sensed it was distressed”.