Encounter with an Alien


Those who knew 26 year old Fortunato Zanfretta, a married man with a young family, described him as a ‘clear thinking person’ not prone to attention seeking. Yet shortly before midnight on December 6th, 1978 this very ordinary, hardworking security guard had an encounter that was quite literally out of this world.

Zanfretta came face to face with a tall reptilian creature and what appears to be its triangular shaped craft. The events of that night would change people’s perception of him forever and proved to be just the first of a series of bizarre abduction experiences that Zanfretta would be subject to over the next three years.

Working the late shift in his job as a private security guard for a large company, Zanfretta was carrying out a routine patrol of a remote residential area in the hills of Genova, Italy when his Fiat 126 patrol car mysteriously stopped dead.

The car’s electrics, engine, lights and radio all failed for no apparent reason. Clicking away at his unresponsive ignition, Zanfretta caught sight of what appeared to be the movement of torchlight in the grounds of an unoccupied villa that his company was responsible for. Unable to contact his headquarters on the radio due to the car’s unexplained electrical problems, Zanfretta drew his gun, grabbed a torch and went to investigate alone, fully expecting to be confronting burglars.

Cautiously making his way to the land at the rear of the villa and away from the glow of the streetlights, Zanfretta began to search for the source of the lights. In the darkness, something pushed him hard from behind, knocking him off balance. Reacting instinctively he spun around and shone his torch in the direction the contact had come from, expecting to see the person responsible. What Zanfretta came face to face with, he later described as “An enormous green, ugly and frightful creature, with undulating skin, no less than ten feet tall.”

Fleeing from the villa’s grounds in both shock and terror, he retreated back towards the relative safety of his vehicle. As he ran he became aware of a large and very bright light behind him. Glancing backwards, he saw what he later described as a huge, flat triangular vessel that emitted a hissing noise and a noticeable amount of heat as it rose in the air, apparently having taken off from the rear of the house. Although the villa itself was a large property, according to Zanfretta, the craft loomed over it, revealing its imposing size, reinforcing the terror created through his brief encounter with the creature on the ground. His routine patrol had brought him face to face with something that was impossible to explain and which had left him very frightened indeed.

An American Sighting

Whilst triangular shaped UFO’s became a common phenomena in the 1990’s and remain so to this day, Zanfretta’s sighting seems to be one of the earliest documented sightings of these rather ominous craft. It is interesting to note though, that there was one other sighting of a similar craft that occurred 18 miles north of Austin, Texas in the town of Round Rock during the same period as Zanfretta’s sighting; late at night during the late fall sometime between 1978-80. The witness in this case was a twelve year old boy who only came forward publicly with the story in his thirties. He described the craft as being massive, easily covering three or four home lots. No surface details were noted with the exception of the three static yellow / white lights visible at the corners of the triangle. At the time of filing the report, in 2000, the witness had been working in the US Air Force for a number of years and had first hand knowledge of the Stealth aircraft that have been mistaken for UFOs in the past. The witness was able to state quite categorically that despite the proximity of Bergstrom Air Force Base, he didn’t believe that the craft he witnessed as a twelve year old was an experimental one. It was something else.

Whether these two sightings, which appeared approximately 5522 miles apart are connected may never be known. Italy has its share of US Air Force bases, and of course many researchers suggest that the US has developed its stealth technology with alien assistance. The fact that both sightings relate similar observations over a decade before the wave of triangular UFOs really began, is certainly worthy of investigation.

Sheer Terror

Getting back to his car, Zanfretta was able to make a breathless and hysterical report of the incident to Carlo Toccalino, the radio operator, who testified to police that Zanfretta was highly agitated before radio contact was once again lost. Although his communication with his base had been fragmented and almost unintelligible, it was enough to cause deep concern amongst his colleagues who sent assistance to the villa and alerted their director of security. The remoteness of the hill-side village and difficult driving conditions on the frozen mountain road meant that it took almost an hour for back up to arrive. When they finally reached the scene, Zanfretta’s colleagues found him still in a state of blind terror, pointing his weapon wildly at anyone who came close and unable to initially comprehend that his rescuers meant him no harm. There were no obvious indications of anything being amiss, whatever Zanfretta had encountered that cold December night was long gone but the experience had absolutely terrified him.

Physical Evidence

The Carabinieri, the Italian military police, immediately launched an investigation to ascertain what had transpired at the villa that night and if a crime had been committed. The property itself was undamaged, and had certainly not been broken into, ruling out burglars as the source of the disturbance, but not of course the possibility that Zanfretta had either imagined or concocted the whole story. However, on the grounds, investigators discovered physical evidence that something strange had taken place in the grounds of the villa. Two horse shoe shaped depressions, each 9 feet in diameter had been left in the frozen earth. These marks could only have been created by a sizeable and very heavy object and no one, including the villa’s owners or the police, could explain what might have caused them; how they came to be there was a complete mystery.

House to house enquiries seemed to validate Zanfretta’s account of events even further. Despite the fact that the population of the village only amounted to a couple of thousand inhabitants, police amassed a total of 52 witness statements from people who claimed that they had observed a strange light phenomena in the area of the villa.

Memories locked away

Zanfretta encountered a wide range of reactions from various groups of people in the days and weeks that followed the report of his experience. Perhaps understandably many people felt that the sighting had to be a hoax, suggesting that Zanfretta had fabricated the whole story; although others pointed out that a married father of two would be unlikely to put his job on the line by exposing himself to ridicule and allegations of madness in such a controversial way. People close to Zanfretta knew that seeking the limelight in this way would have been very out of character for him; he was an ordinary man who in the weeks and months that followed, often spoke of his regret at the fact that his story did make the news the way it had. Others, particularly the ufology community, took Zanfretta’s sighting much more seriously and he was swiftly elevated to the status of a minor celebratory amongst their ranks.

In an effort to substantiate his story and perhaps provide for clues as to what occurred that night, Zanfretta agreed to be hypnotized by Dr. Mauro Moretti, a psychotherapist and member of the Italian Association of Medical Hypnosis, in Genoa on December 23rd, just over two weeks after the encounter had taken place.

As the regression progressed, Zanfretta described how he had not only seen these alien creatures, but had actually been abducted by them and taken aboard the triangular craft that he had described. He recalled how he was taken to a ‘hot, luminous place’ where the creatures interrogated and examined him.

According to Zanfretta’s description, his abductors were ten feet tall, had hornlike projections on their forehead and pointed spines on either side of their heads. The skin is variously described by different sources as being ‘hairy green skin’ or as being ‘dark green and marked by a series of horizontal ridges or folds’ - the discrepancy possibly being attributable to the translation from Italian to English, rather than any inconsistency on Zanfretta’s part. The creatures, he explained, had yellow triangular eyes and prominent red veins across their foreheads and came from ‘a third galaxy’. He recalled that his captors did not communicate with him in his native Italian but instead used what he described as a ‘luminous device’ to translate what they were saying.

Reptoids on Earth

There are actually many researchers who share a common belief that one or more reptilian races frequent the earth and have influenced human history and evolution for millennia. According to researchers such as John Rhodes, these reptilian races are a subterranean species that have always shared our world, hence their prolific contribution to the mythology of so many ancient civilisations from the Sumerians to the Zulu. There are other reptoid races according to Rhodes, who live off world. This belief is shared by other researchers such as Zecharia Sitchin who has suggested that according to ancient texts, the Annunaki are either reptilian or quasi-reptilian beings that created man as a slave race. Could it be that these were the creatures that Zanfretta had encountered?

Moreover Zanfretta is not alone in his description of his abductors; there are a great many other abductees who report similar encounters with reptile-like aliens. It seems that the most common reptile encountered is described as very tall (around 6-10 feet), with a snout like face, red or yellow slit or snake-like eyes and clawed hands, often wearing black robes. Most abductees understandably describe these creatures as frightening beings that often perform invasive physical examinations. According to reports, they are also possessive of their abductees. Dan Wright speaking at MUFONS 1995 symposium in Seattle observed “When a so-called reptilian is repeatedly described as having the same scaly skin, claws for fingers, and an extreme interest in sexuality, one must pay attention.”

A Second Abduction

If people thought that Zanfretta’s regression would be the end of the matter, they were in for a surprise. On the night of December 26th, just three days after his session with Dr. Moretti, Zanfretta was at the centre of yet another unexplained event while on patrol. As he was driving through a tunnel near a place called the Scoffera Pass, control of his patrol car was taken away from him. It was as if unseen forces had taken control of his vehicle, which was completely unresponsive to Zanfretta’s efforts to either stop or steer it.

Over the radio, Zanfretta reported that he was having problems controlling the car. According to Zanfretta, the car simply turned around in the tunnel by itself and carried on travelling up the steep mountain road for about a mile without any input from him. Zanfretta’s next contact with the radio controller came a few minutes later when he calmly announced ‘The car has stopped. I saw a bright light. Now I am getting out.’

It was over an hour later that Sergeant Emanuele Travenzoli finally located Zanfretta in a field by the road, close to his patrol car. Once again Zanfretta was terrified, shaking with fear, crying “They say I must leave with them. What about my children? I don't want to, I don't want to...” Although it was raining, his clothes were warm and dry, as if he’d just been dropped off there, moreover the patrol car itself was hot to the touch, despite the cold dark December weather.

Strange tracks

Police were quickly on the scene and began to comb the area for clues. Again, the scene was not without physical evidence. Around the car were a series of massive footprints measuring some 20 inches by 8 inches with a strange space between the sole of the foot and the heal. On examining Zanfretta’s Smith & Wesson gun, police were alarmed to discover that it had been fired five times, but Zanfretta couldn’t recall having fired it.

Once again, to try and establish what had happened, a second hypnotic regression was quickly arranged. This time the entire country was so taken by the strange events that had befallen Zanfretta, that the regression was actually televised live.

To ascertain his state of mind, Zanfretta was also examined by a series of highly respected medical professionals. One, Dr. Giorgio Gianniotti, a prominent neurologist at San Martino Hospital in Genoa confirmed that “The man is in a state of shock, but he is perfectly sane.” Dr. Cesare Musatti, Italy’s most highly regarded psychoanalyst, also examined Zanfretta and observed that he “spoke in good faith” even if it was hard to differentiate objective facts from subjective experiences.

For the next seven months, Zanfretta’s life returned almost to normal, but on the night of July 30th, 1979, while patrolling a residential quarter of Genoa on his motorcycle, he was abducted for a third time. He was discovered two hours later on the top of Mount Fasce, a summit with just one road that lead to it; a road that was patrolled by the security company that employed Zanfretta. Despite there being security personnel on duty that night, no one could explain how he had got to the top of the mountain unseen; he hadn’t used the road to reach the summit.

Truth

Determined to dispel the persistent rumours that he was either making the abductions up or was completely delusional, Zanfretta requested that he be injected with a truth serum. This treatment was duly carried out at the International Centre of Medical and Psychological Hypnosis in Milan by Prof. Marco Marchesan. Whilst under the effects of the drug, Zanfretta confirmed the same facts that had come out previously under hypnosis. He added that that this time, he had actually been ‘lifted from the ground’ into the alien spaceship by a mysterious green light.

Having administered the Sodium Pentothal and conducted the questioning, Professor Marchesan confirmed that in his opinion Zanfretta was telling the truth; his encounters were real. Whilst many experts now question the reliability of Sodium Pentothal, the fact remains that not only did Zanfretta volunteer to use the drug, he took it expecting to be unable to resist giving a true account of the events that surrounded him.

During the next eighteen months, Zanfretta experienced at least half a dozen more abductions. On at least one occasion he had witnesses to corroborate his story.

On December 2nd, 1979, Zanfretta was abducted once again, on this occasion four security guards that had been sent to find him actually witnessed the UFO themselves. Without realising it, the men had made themselves unwitting targets for this extraterrestrial attention. Without warning, two beams of light came down, one over each car, immobilising the vehicles by killing their electrical systems in the same way that Zanfretta had described in the past. Terrified, the men got out of their vehicles. The senior officer, a Lt. Cassiba, fired a warning shot at the craft which have stopped them from continuing their search; the craft simply disappeared in the clouds. One of the four men, a guard by the name of Germano Zanardi, was so traumatised by what he had experienced, that he killed himself within a few months of the incident taking place.

In 1980, two years after Zanfretta’s abductions first started, without warning they simply stopped. Sceptics point out that this is because Zanfretta had promised to bring poof of his abductors in the form of a device that would project a hologram of them, a promise he could not make good on. The alternative theory is that Zanfretta was receiving too much public attention to be of continued use to his abductors, or perhaps they had simply diverted their attention elsewhere. Sceptics have difficulty explaining why a husband and father of two children would want to subject himself and his family to ridicule by making a story like this up. Neither can they explain the physical evidence, the impression made in the ground by the craft, or the strange footprints. Likewise, the consistency of Zanfretta’s evidence under routine questioning, hypnotic regression and even Sodium Pentothal makes him the kind of witness whose testimony has to be taken seriously.

If as the sceptics will always claim it was a hoax, then it has to be the most elaborate hoax ever mounted. Perhaps the prevailing mentality of the skeptic is “shout down enough witnesses and we prove that UFOs don’t exist.”

The case of Fortunato Zanfretta demonstrates that there are too many unanswered questions for that approach to work. If Zanfretta was one of the first witness to see the mysterious flying triangles then given the level of interaction he had with the beings inside it, it is hard to overestimate the importance of this case.