A strange but very real fact I will try to report what happened more than 30 years ago, so please consider that some details may be a little imprecise, even though as true as one can be. I was just 17 years old and it was in Rio de Janeiro, June 1970. When the weather was nice, I and my friends used to go a suburb named Barra da Tijuca. In the 70s, Barra as we called it, had just a bunch of houses in its first 15 miles of unspoiled beach (now the place is full of luxury skyscrapers). As everybody else, we bowled, laughed and had a wonderful time with our girlfriends in front of a paradisiacal beach. Close to the beginning there was a biological marine reserve with barbed wire fences at both sides of the beach road. There is also a nice restaurant at the Marisco rock, at the end of the 15-mile long beach. One day however, on Friday or Saturday of the week before my 18th birthday, I was driving my girl home in my blue Opala Chevrolet from this restaurant a little after 3 AM. We were speeding fast on the bumpy beach side road to arrive at the girl’s home before her mother woke up. I was singing happily while listening to the radio and seeing the beautiful night sky with a full moon and bright stars. I was totally unconcerned while my yellow high light beams vanished the darkness ahead of us. When we started crossing the marine reserve with its fences, the radio suddenly started to give static and went completely off. I thought it was just because of a bump on the pavement. Then, the road lights also went off in a sequence of stretches, blackening out the entire beach, but this was not unusual at that year in Rio. However, to my total surprise, seconds later both headlights also went off entirely, and the ENGINE stopped! That was something else ! We still had half a gas tank, and I felt it very strange that a motor could stop at such speed ! I had never heard of such a thing! I hit the brakes at once and they worked perfectly (mechanic drums) while trying not to leave the road, as we were going damn fast. Since the road was perfectly straight and there were no close trees, only the beach on the right side and the long lagoon and vegetation about 150 feet on our left side, I managed to stop safely at the side of the road. Both of us were a little startled, but I dropped from the car to see if the tires had suffered any damages, but they were intact. I tried to start the engine, but it refused to go and more - there was no sign of electricity whatsoever. This puzzled me as everything had been working perfectly. I checked the circuits, cables and connections using a cigarette lighter but everything seemed OK. Well, we were stuck in the middle of nowhere, with a small chance of getting mugged, robbed or worse. I walked around to see if there was any house or lights approaching, but we were entirely alone. A wind started and I looked up to the sky, but it seemed to me that it was going to rain as I could no longer see the stars. A big round black cloud was just in top of us and I could already feel some cold and electricity in the air, just like before some storms - but the sky had not a single cloud moments before! Well, what a bad luck ! We first stayed outside near a tree, so that if a burglar came he would not find us, but as no car appeared for 10 minutes, we decided to get into the car, get some shelter and relax. The last time I looked at my clock it was about 3:30 AM. It seemed to me that I had dozed for a while, when I woke up suddenly with a loud noise coming from shaking fences, the girl screaming at my right, and a super-bright beam of light - so bright in fact, I thought it was the highlights of a motorcycle gang. The girl immediately complained from a strong headache and eye strain, but I could barely see and was not able to do nothing besides hugging her at that moment. When the lights diminished I got out of the car. First I looked around and could see the barbed wire fences stopping to shake and shivered. How strange was all that! Then I looked up to see the cloud, and noticed that the black cloud now had bright colored lights shining in a circle over us. At that time very few people cared or worried about flying saucers, and my mind was in beautiful girls not UFO’s. I guess that as I do not remember seeing people then, but a huge shape, I did not realize I was seeing a flying saucer but rather something very unusual. I met something unexpected and felt uneasy, dizzy, confused, a little scared but I do not know why, I was not in any way terrified, paralyzed or the like. We noticed that the lights were splitting from half sides of the circle to meet at their opposite sides, going back and forth, I had a very, very strong feeling of being closely observed, tried to run back but felt suddenly weak, stumbled but continued to the car. I found the girl trembling and, ridiculously enough, we both yelled at those lights to get off. It took them a long time (10 minutes?) to leave. Then, the cloud literally exploded in light, and slowly got high in the sky above us. It took a few seconds at uniform speed to reach the beginning of the 15-mile long beach stretch (we were near the middle), and then it propelled itself to the beginning and then upwards in the direction of the open sea with a tremendous acceleration to become just a point in the sky, and join two other points. Minutes later, the beach road lights went on again, I could start the engine in the first try, the radio was OK, and we could finally get home. I could never talk to the girl again. Her mother was really worried (read pissed off) since she had to go to the hospital because her right eye had been severely injured - her retina suffered burns and seemed to have "dripped" in the white sclera area. I myself had a very strong headache for almost two weeks but it went off. Months later however, I started having strong "surges of energy" throughout my body (I still do), have some odd dreams, premonitions and feel like floating at night (I still do sometimes). Strangely enough, for some reason (mental block, innocence ?) I can recollect fear but no panic at any moment, besides people made fun every time I tried to tell them what had occurred, so my mind repressed what happened as "unimportant," and I did not made any effort to remember it clearly until fifteen years ago, during a spiritualist meeting. Spiritualists are a different kind of people who always look to expand the truth - like it or not. As strange is the fact that, thirty years later, I got acquainted with a good friend of my wife, ((male's name deleted)), that has my own age and is also an engineer, and passed through a very similar experience in the very same week, in almost the same circumstances, and also suffered from similar after effects! He even told me the UFO had been detected by the Navy radars, Rio’s traffic air controllers, and even noted on the news. I can’t remember all these details, but later learned they were true. Anyway, by different paths, we both became spiritualists, and give "energy healing passes," and are very good friends. One day I shall do a regression to dig more about this. I obviously think the governments know all about this kind of phenomena and there is a huge cover up, which makes me wonder how far from the whole truth is "The Great Conspiracy" of Ernesto Bono. It is clearly much exaggerated (sometimes a total fantasy), and is poorly documented, but if just half of it is true we are in deep trouble! ((name deleted))((e-address deleted))((NUFORC Note: Date is approximate. PD))