Torriglia — the Zanfretta abductions, 1978–1981

OVERVIEW

The Zanfretta case is an alleged alien encounter on 6 December 1978 at Marzano, a hamlet of Torriglia in the province of Genoa, involving the 26-year-old security guard Pier Fortunato Zanfretta. It became the most documented alleged alien abduction in Italian ufology.

HISTORY

On patrol at about 11:30 p.m. he saw four lights in the garden of a mansion known as 'Casa Nostra', owned by a local dentist, with the gate and front door open. Going in to stop what he took for thieves, he saw a red oval object over 10 m across; he radioed his supervisor, who heard him scream, and when asked whether men were attacking him answered 'No, they are not men, they are not men' before contact was lost. Colleagues found him unconscious and in shock. He described beings 3 m tall with mottled, wrinkled skin, yellow triangular eyes and clawed feet. Brigadier Antonio Nucchi of the Carabinieri collected 52 accounts of strange events in Torriglia and Propata, and certified a semicircular patch of flattened grass about 2 by 3 m. Zanfretta appeared on the TV show Portobello; on 23 December 1978 the journalist Rino Di Stefano arranged a regression hypnosis session in front of journalists and ufologists, in which Zanfretta 'remembered' being taken aboard a craft and subjected to painful experiments by green beings 'from the third galaxy'. He disappeared again on 27 December 1978, 30 July 1979 and 2 December 1979, and claimed eleven abductions up to 1981; a neurologist found no disorder. In the early 1980s the Genoa police commissioner revoked his gun licence and he lost his job.

REPORTED ACTIVITY

Skeptics, while mostly accepting that he was sincere and well, held that the hypnosis — done without precautions, with questions discussed while he was under, and with Pentothal — invalidated his memories. The aliens' name, 'Dargos', resembles Hydargos, the villain of the cartoon Grendizer, hugely popular in Italy in 1978, and their look recalls a monster from the comic Zagor. The flattened circle was where the mansion's owners tethered their horse by day; his dry, warm clothes fitted his having sat in the car; the 'giant footprints' of 27 December were puddles; the other sightings were never verified. CUN, the Italian National UFO Centre, said several times that it did not consider the story reliable. He never proved the existence of the artefact he said the aliens gave him. Filed UNVETTED.

VISITING

The pin marks Marzano, Torriglia; the mansion is private.