Encounter with an Alien
Date: Friday, December 08th, 2006 (CST )
Topic: UFO's & Aliens
 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.
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