An Interview with Bob Pratt

by Brent Raynes

A fascinating interview with Bob Pratt, formerly a reporter with the National Enquirer, who has, in the last 28 years, interviewed some 2,000 UFO eyewitnesses all over the world! He's certainly investigated some pretty incredible stuff from lots and lots of very credible people. Especially intriguing to me are the Brazilian cases. But don't take my word for it. Read on!

Editor: You stated on your website that for seven years, back in the 1960s, you were the managing editor of a small daily newspaper in Virginia, and that during that time, when a UFO news item happened to come in over the Associated Press wire, you would simply toss it into the wastepaper basket. You were quite skeptical of such reports. You felt they were simply mistaken planes, planets, satellites and such. But then after working for four larger newspapers you eventually ended up in 1973 with the National Enquirer tabloid. In May 1975, you were given the assignment to cover UFO stories for them. That's when something unexpected happened. Care to elaborate?

Bob Pratt: In May 1975 I happened to be assigned to look into the report of a UFO landing on a farm near Superior, Wisconsin. It wasn’t something I relished because I was certain in my mind that UFOs were nonsense. However, I made some phone calls to the Superior area and learned that a number of police officers had seen UFOs in the same area the same night. One high-ranking officer knew the family that had reported the landing and believed they were telling the truth about what they saw. My editor then told me to fly up there and check it out firsthand.

I had been a lifelong skeptic on the subject of UFOs but before I return to my office a week later, I had become a convert. As I flew to Superior I was certain that if I asked enough of the right questions, I would be able to figure out what people were actually seeing when they thought they were seeing UFOs. I was wrong.

The late Eugene Lundholm, then a librarian at the University of Wisconsin at Superior, was a veteran UFO investigator who had looked into the landing case as well as many others over the years. I stayed in the Superior area for a week and through Gene and on my own, I managed to talk with 60 to 70 people who had had sightings. Most of them were not related to the farm landing. I roamed all over northern Wisconsin, a couple of towns in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and several small cities along the Minnesota shore of Lake Superior north of Duluth, which is just across the St. Louis River from Superior.

As I talked to those 60 to 70 men and women who had had sightings I put my theory to the test. I asked every one of them every question I could think of. And I was not able to explain what any of them had seen.

This realization was stunning and sobering, and 28 years later I am still chasing UFOs trying to learn what’s behind this phenomenon.

Editor: On October 27, 1975, two young men in Oxford, Maine claimed to have encountered a very large UFO and suffered "missing time." Shirley Fickett and I were the primary investigators on the case. Not long afterwards (2-3 months?), you contacted me and we met briefly in Portland, Maine. You were looking into this case, as well as some activity down in Massachusetts as I recall. Naturally, this was a very early stage of your conversion. Where were you at that time, and where has your journey taken you since?

Bob Pratt: My conversion actually occurred that first week in May in northern Wisconsin. When I returned to my office in Florida from Wisconsin, I was already beginning to believe I knew what UFOs were, what they are doing here, etc. It took me several years to break myself of the habit of leaping to such conclusions and realize that this is an extraordinarily complicated phenomenon. The more I learned about it, the more I realized how little I knew about it. Now, 28 years after I got hooked, UFO researchers have accumulated mountains of information based on what people tell us about their encounters, but I believe we still know virtually nothing about the phenomenon.

In those 28 years I have interviewed at least two thousand people who have had sightings or encounters. Between 1975 and 1981, I investigated cases in 12 countries for the National Enquirer - the United States, Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Japan, Mexico, Peru, Puerto Rico, the Philippines and Uruguay.

The Enquirer and I parted company in July 1981, and by then I had become intrigued by the encounters I had investigated in Brazil. Many bad things had happened to people there, including injuries and deaths. I had visited the country four times for the Enquirer, and the first thing I did when left the company was to go to Brazil on my own. I made three more trips there in the 1980s, six in the 1990s and just returned from my tenth personal visit in May 2003.

Since 1981, all of my research has been carried out in Brazil except for two visits to Puerto Rico (another UFO hotspot) in the early 1990s.

Much of what I learned in Brazil is presented in one of two books that I wrote, UFO DANGER ZONE, Terror and Death in Brazil - Where Next? (Horus House Press 1996). It has been translated into Portuguese and is to be published in Brazil by the end of June 2003 under the title of Perigo Alienigena no Brasil, Perseguições, Terror e Morte no Nordeste Brasileiro.

I was also co-author with Philip Imbrogno and the late Dr. J. Allen Hynek of NIGHT SIEGE, The Hudson Valley UFO Sightings (Ballantine 1987 and the updated and revised edition Llewellyn Publications 1998). Phil Imbrogno and Dr. Hynek did all the research and I did the writing.

In March 2002 I also went online with my own website, THE UNREAL WORLD OF UFOs as I have Seen it Through the Eyes of Hundreds of People in a Dozen Countries ( http://www.bobpratt.org ).

Editor: Now you're retired, but out of your own pocket you continue to research and investigate these UFO stories. It's apparently become an obsession. Been one for quite sometime I gather. In fact, just a few days ago you returned from spending three weeks in Brazil. You've been in Brazil quite a few times now (how many?) and consider it a real UFO hotspot. Was this latest trip primarily vacation, or did it revolve around more UFO investigating?

Bob Pratt: The 14 trips to Brazil have always been for the purpose of looking into UFO cases. This last time, however, I also spoke at an annual UFO conference in the city of Curitiba, about four hundred miles south of Rio de Janeiro. It lasted for four days and included many Brazilian researchers and two other Americans, Dr. Roger Leir and Dr. David Jacobs

I talked about some of the cases I had investigated in Brazil and illustrated the talk with slides. Then, to my surprise, at the end of my talk the organizers kept me on stage another minute while they presented me with a huge certificate designating me as an "Honorary Brazilian Ufologist". Seventy researchers from around the country had signed it, and as it was handed to me, 25 to 30 researchers who had been in the audience came up on stage and shook my hand. A real shock.

I was traveling with Cynthia Luce, a longtime American friend who has lived in Brazil for about 30 years, and Tom Tulien from Minneapolis, a founder of Sign Historical Group. Among other things, Tom is a freelance videographer who conducts oral history interviews with UFO researchers (he’s done more than 80 now, most of them Americans).

After the conference, the three of us flew back to Rio, picked up Cynthia's car and drove to her home in the mountains two hours northwest of Rio. We stayed there two and a half days and then drove on up to Belo Horizonte, a city about the size of Chicago about five hours farther north in central Brazil.

There, we met with about 30 people from a Belo Horizonte UFO group. I told them a bit about my 25 years of research in Brazil and answered questions, with Cynthia interpreting for me.

After a long weekend in Belo Horizonte during which Tom interviewed two Brazilian researchers, we drove to a large farm near the small town of São Vicente, another hour and a half farther north. A well-to-do couple own the farm, called Fazenda dos Poções. The wife, Vera Filizzola, is very interested in UFOs. She and I became email friends after she saw my web site last year. We spent a week at her farmhouse and worked from there in and around São Vicente. With her help and that of three local ufologists, we interviewed 20 to 25 people who had had close encounters. Some occurred in the late 1970s, some as recently as two months ago.

Most of the incidents involved balls of light in the sky, but nearly all were close to the witnesses and usually lit up a large area, several hundred meters around. Nearly all occurred in the countryside as people were walking somewhere at night. Most lights were like brilliant headlights on a car, but some were bluish, some red. Some lights seemed to pursue the witnesses, and people hid wherever they could. Some had to hide all night long before the light went away.

Editor: Professor Jacques Vallee wrote a provocative book a few years back entitled CONFRONTATIONS, which explored details of his investigations into UFO injury and death cases in Brazil. Brazil seems to have a much higher incidence of these kinds of cases than any other country, it seems. You even wrote a book on quite a few of these Brazilian cases that you investigated also. It was entitled UFO DANGER ZONE: TERROR AND DEATH IN BRAZIL--WHERE NEXT? Prof. Vallee even wrote the foreword. What did you find seemed to be going on there, and how did all of this affect your personal journey?

Bob Pratt: Brazil is a fascinating country for a UFO researcher. Since 1975, I have looked into hundreds of UFO cases in 12 countries. I traveled all over the United States and much of Brazil and to a number of cities in Argentina, Bolivia, Canada, Chile, Japan, Mexico, Peru, Puerto Rico, the Philippines and Uruguay.

Of all these countries, Brazil is by far the most fascinating. It is incredible how many sightings and encounters occur in this country, and are still occurring (we were in São Vicente during a sighting but didn’t learn about it until after we left the area). There have been tens of thousands over the years, perhaps hundreds of thousands.

But what intrigues me more than anything else is that some UFOs in Brazil have been very aggressive, perhaps even hostile. They have terrorized many people, they have injured more than just a few, and they have left others dying.

Nearly every case in my book UFO DANGER ZONE shows the harrowing effect an encounter can have in Brazil. They include injuries, abductions, deaths, levitations, attempted levitations, and people being zapped by beams of light from UFOs. And there is nearly always terror. Virtually everyone is badly frightened when they see a UFO approaching.

Some people were paralyzed during encounters, unable to move or resist. Some were burned by UFOs as they tried to run away. Others hid wherever they could as UFOs tried to find them. Still others found themselves in the grip of a powerful, invisible force as UFOs tried to pull them up into the craft. And sometimes people were taken away.

UFO occupants have used hooks to snatch victims from the ground in Brazil, they have dropped scalding liq-uids on others, apparently trying to make them let go of a tree or bush that they were clinging to, and in one case a UFO dropped a slimy substance on a farmer as he tried to hide. Still another UFO dropped a glowing bubble about a meter and a half wide that exploded silently in the faces of a man and his wife riding on a motorcycle.

Sometimes people weren’t safe even in their own homes because beams of light from UFOs would pierce tile roofs as if they didn’t exist, and burn someone inside.

Most of these people recovered from their injuries, but several were permanently impaired. I have also investigated a few cases in which victims died during or after an encounter.

However, having said all that, I must also say that all of the cases in the book represent only a very small percentage of all the tens of thousands of cases that have occurred in this country.

Editor: In CONFRONTATIONS, Vallee wrote about how during the incredible UFO wave of 1977 around Belem, the Brazilian Air Force went in with a team of professionals (engineers, geologists, and a biologist) and over a three month period reportedly took some 300 night photographs of UFOs and several reels of motion picture film. During your Brazilian visits and investigations, did you come upon any of these stories involving the military, or perhaps even speak with some of these officials yourself?

Vallee mentions how there were civilian journalists and cameramen on the scene as well, and they took many photographs, and that later all of the negatives were purchased from the publishers by an unnamed American firm. Out of curiosity, you wouldn't happen to have any information on this, would you?

Bob Pratt: My investigative days in Brazil are probably over, for several reasons, including my age (I was born in August 1926). My one big regret is that I have never finished my research in the 1977-78 Colares UFO flap. I had planned to spend a few days in the Belém area during my trip to Brazil in May but for various reasons could not go there.

I have a great deal of information about that flap and feel certain that it extended far beyond the Belém area in the state of Pará, from the small town of Pinheiro near São Luís in the neighboring state of Maranhão to some 30 villages around Colares near Belém, about 800 kilometers awayÉ

It lasted for many months. It apparently began near Pinheiro in April 1977, where sightings occurred almost every night for four months. Then sightings tapered off around Pinheiro and in August UFOs began to be seen around Colares and then were seen very often from October through the rest of 1977 and well into 1978, with February being a heavy month. Sightings continued sporadically through the end of 1978.

We know more about what happened around Colares than anywhere else because intelligence agents from the Brazilian Air Force base in Belém spent four months investigating the sightings.

What is particularly remarkable is that throughout this vast Pinheiro-Colares area, aggressive UFOs harassed villagers, farmers and fishermen, burning a number of people. Some victims died.

The Air Force investigators interviewed hundreds of witnesses who had sightings and encounters and during the investigation the agents had several hundred sightings of their own. They also shot hundreds of photographs of UFOs as well as several hours of motion picture films, including some that showed UFOs diving into or coming out of Marajó Bay.

The local expert on the Colares part of the flap is Daniel Rebisso Giese, a biologist and one of about 80 scientists working at Museu Goeldi, a famous research institute in Belém. Daniel became interested in UFOs when he and his wife were students at a university in southern Brazil. While walking one night, they saw a number of strange lights moving through the sky. After graduating, he traveled throughout the Maranhão-Pará region investigating many of the sightings that took place in 1977-78. He wrote and published a book about his findings.

Since 1979 I have visited Colares four times, most recently in September 1999. On my own and working with Daniel and Cynthia Luce, I have accumulated a great amount of information about the flap, talking to more than two dozen people who have firsthand knowledge of the flap, either as witnesses or investigators. But there is much that we don’t know yet.

As for the report that photos taken by civilians were bought by an unnamed American firm, I know nothing about that and have never heard that report. But I also talked to almost no one from the media.

In addition, one of the Air Force investigators told me that there were no specialists, such as engineers, geologists, and a biologist. He said only five or six sergeants (plus the captain in charge) from the Belém air base’s Intelligence Section took part in the investigation. He told me: “We were sent in not because we had any specialties or anything but because we had these reports of these happenings scaring people so badly that they were starving and were afraid to go out fishing,”

Editor: Based on all you've seen and heard, even though you still haven't seen a UFO yourself (right?), what's your own personal pet theory for the phenomenon?

Bob Pratt: No, I have never seen a UFO. Nothing about this phenomenon makes sense nor does any theory. As I said toward the end of my book, a growing number of researchers are coming to believe UFOs come from parallel universes. Most physicists believe paral-lel universes may exist and some believe they actually do exist, side by side by side with our universe, perhaps in infinite numbers.

If there are other universes, there must be stars and planets and life in them, just as we have in ours. And if other uni-verses do exist, then it's possible that inhabitants of one or more of those universes have learned how to travel between universes. They come in craft that can counter the pull of our gravity, allowing them to hover silently and motion-lessly, and then zip out of sight in seconds.

They can also pop in and out of our universe at will and maybe into any of several other universes. This could explain why people see UFOs suddenly appear and just as suddenly disappear. It could also explain where UFOs go when they simply seem to vanish.

The aliens may just be coming through while passing on to some other universe perhaps. There also may be many different civilizations traveling through space all the time, which could account for the infinite variety of shapes and sizes of UFOs.

Parallel universes might clarify some abduction re-ports where people say they are taken to a strange land, a red city, for example, or a land with no sky. The victims might simply be taken into another universe and eventually returned to our own.

But that’s a universe of “ifs.” It’s all just a guess.

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