The 1978 Alien Abduction of Luis Carlos Serra

At noon on a Friday in March 1978, Luís Carlos Serra, aged 16, was looking for guava fruit in the jungle near his village of Penalva, in the state of Maranhão, Brazil, Suddenly, when he heard a loud sound that scared him. He looked up, and saw a light above the palm trees, so bright that it hurt his eyes. “Suddenly,” he said, “I fell flat on my back and couldn’t move. I was paralyzed.” A minute or so later, he began to rise slowly into the air, still in a horizontal position. He could see a round object just above the trees and when he got higher, he saw a dome on top and three windows around it. One window was open. He floated in through the window and was lowered to the floor. Inside were three beings, about a meter tall, wearing metallic suits and visors. They were talking but he did not understand them, and they simply ignored him.

Luis then felt the UFO moving and sometime later it stopped. He was levitated out of the UFO and came to rest on a nearby flat rock, still paralyzed. He could see tall grass, but no trees or birds or stars or sky, only solid blackness above him. The little men put some kind of liquid in his mouth, and he passed out. He remembers nothing from that moment until ten days later. The next Monday evening, three days and seven hours after he was abducted, a fisherman found him lying on the ground in the jungle, unable to move or speak. Luis was taken to the town’s small hospital. He was rigid and catatonic. A doctor tried to move his arms and legs but could not. She pricked him all over with a sharp pin, but he showed no reaction at all. His head appeared to have been shaved but the doctor told Bob Pratt that when she examined Luis more closely, she realized his hair had been burned off. His scalp wasn’t singed but the tops of his ears were slightly red.

In addition, four molars had been broken off and were still bleeding. There were no bruises or marks on him, and his body was completely normal. The doctor was stunned. Two days later, Luis was flown to a much larger hospital in the state capital. He was wide awake all the time, just staring straight ahead, but he did not react to anything anyone said or did. It was nearly a week before he came to his senses. During most of that time, he had to be fed intravenously and catheterized. Altogether, at least eight doctors examined him. 

Bob Pratt, a ufologist who has been spent decades researching Brazilian ufo cases, was able to talk with four of the doctors, including a neurologist and two psychiatrists, and not one of them could explain what caused his condition. When Luis finally came to his senses, he told his story, over and over again, without variation.

The case of Luis Carlos Serra is certainly an interesting case. Serra was clearly distraught and had suffered some sort of abuse. His catatonic state was something individuals who have been through shocking events often encounter. His abduction shares many traits with other alien abductions such as being pulled into the craft, beings in metallic suits and post-traumatic stress. 

Still, some question other logical explanations that could have happened to Luis. Was he a victim of sexual abuse and the perpetrator left him for dead? That could explain a lot of the physical abuse he suffered. Also, it is known that victims of severe abuse sometimes have to propagate a fictional story in order to help deal with the trauma. 

One troubling fact of this case is that there were no other witnesses who could account for the UFO and the abduction. This is often a problem with sightings and encounters with one eyewitness. 

From our research, it is not known whether Luis was able to move on from this horrific event or whether he continued to have visitations from the aliens during his adult years.