The Three-Metre Being of the Cansiglio Road, Caneva (2012)

The road from Caneva climbs out of the plain toward the Cansiglio plateau. Above the town lies Gaiardin, one of Caneva's localities, on the provincial road S.P. 61. Nearby stands a disused military installation known as Sito G. According to the Messaggero Veneto, it served until the 1980s as an alternative NATO command post for Allied Air Forces Southern Europe, AFSOUTH. Today the area carries radio and TV transmission towers.

Saturday 7 April 2012. About 11 pm. Easter Sunday was only an hour away.

Two men from the Alpago, in the province of Belluno, were heading home after dinner in Caneva. An uncle and his nephew. The nephew drove his Fiat Panda. The uncle does not drive and had asked for the lift. According to the Tribuna di Treviso, neither had been drinking.

Just past Gaiardin, after a sharp bend, the headlights found something standing in the middle of the road. The Carabinieri later described it as "an alien about 3 metres tall, knobbly legs, long arms, a not-quite-round head and two bright blue eyes". One witness told the Tribuna it was perhaps more than three metres. Taller than a deer or a boar. The eyes shone a really very bright blue. Both men froze.

It stayed for 20 or 30 seconds. No craft. No communication.

How it left depends on who tells it. The official report says it moved off in the direction of the installation and was lost to sight. The Tribuna di Treviso adds a detail the report lacks. The driver sounded the horn. The figure fled at a run to the left, toward a small road.

The witnesses do not appear to have gone to the police themselves. According to the Messaggero Veneto, the story reached the Carabinieri of Sacile through a woman described as an ufology enthusiast. The Sacile company wrote it up and sent it, for information only, to the Reparto Generale Sicurezza of the Aeronautica Militare. The press put Italy's 2012 total at 10 reports. No investigative follow-up came.

The case surfaced two years later in UFO: I dossier italiani, a 2014 book by Vincenzo Sinapi and Lao Petrilli built on Air Force files from 1972 to 2013. On 1 and 2 March 2014 the story ran in ANSA, Il Fatto Quotidiano, the Corriere delle Alpi, the Messaggero Veneto, the Tribuna di Treviso and others. The book itself became the subject of a parliamentary question.

The Air Force lists a case as unidentified only when no technical or natural explanation, such as a balloon or a radar-tracked aircraft, is found. It stresses that this does not mean aliens exist, and that it does not judge whether a witness is credible. Angelo Carannante, president of the Centro Ufologico Mediterraneo, reportedly said the case lacked certain and indisputable confirmation, without dismissing the witnesses.

The sighting was brief. A rainy night, headlights, a sharp bend, half a minute at most. The account reached the police second-hand, and the two versions disagree on how the figure left. No one offered a conventional explanation, and no one was named.

Italian files hold one other famous report of a being about three metres tall, from the Zanfretta case at Torriglia in 1978. The two are not connected. The Caneva case remains what it was that night. No photograph. No trace. Two men on a mountain road, and a pair of blue eyes in the dark.