The Zanfretta Case: A Night Watchman's Encounter at Marzano di Torriglia

Pier Fortunato Zanfretta was 26, a father of two and a night watchman with the Istituto di Vigilanza Val Bisagno. His round took him past the villas of Marzano, a hamlet of Torriglia in the Apennines behind Genoa. The night of 6 December 1978 was moonless and freezing.

His car stalled. Its lights failed. In the garden of the villa "Casa Nostra" he saw four unusual lights, and the gate and front door stood open. Expecting burglars, he went round the back, torch off, pistol lowered.

In the early accounts he met a being about 3 m tall, with mottled skin, yellow triangular eyes and clawed feet. Some versions describe a red oval object more than 10 m across. Other accounts describe a huge flat triangular light, bigger than the house, that hissed and gave off intense heat.

Radio operator Carlo Toccalino asked if men were attacking him. "No, non sono uomini, non sono uomini." Then contact was lost. Guards Walter Lauria and Raimondo Mascia found him on the ground in shock, his clothes warm "as if he had been inside something". Later he said: "I don't know what it was that I saw, but I saw it. I am not a liar."

The next day his employer filed a complaint with the Carabinieri in Torriglia. Brigadier Antonio Nucchi recorded a horseshoe-shaped mark in the grass and gathered accounts from about 52 local people who saw a large luminous object over Torriglia. Of Zanfretta he said: "I can state with certainty that he is a clear thinking man with no strange fantasies in his head."

On 23 December 1978, at the suggestion of Corriere Mercantile reporter Rino Di Stefano, psychotherapist Mauro Moretti hypnotised him in Genoa. Zanfretta spoke of a brightly lit room, a painful helmet, intense heat. The beings had green, wrinkled skin with spikes and mouths "like iron". They came, they said, from "the third galaxy", and would return "in large numbers".

Near Rossi that December, footprints of about 50 by 20 cm were found and his .38 Smith & Wesson had been fired five times. In December 1979, at Fallarosa, two beams of light came down from a cloud onto the guards searching for him. Lt Giovanni Cassiba fired at them, and the lights went out. Witness Andrea Pesci said a huge luminous disc stayed in mid-air for 20 minutes. Later came a transparent sphere Zanfretta was told to deliver to J. Allen Hynek.

Magistrate Russo closed the file on 11 January 1980. No crime committed. Doctors found Zanfretta sane, and Cesare Musatti judged he spoke in good faith.

Sceptics pointed elsewhere. The flattened grass matched the spot where the owners tied their horse, and the giant footprints matched puddles. Critics noted that the name "Dargos" resembled "Hydargos", a villain from UFO Robot Grendizer, and said the hypnosis sessions bred suggestion. The Centro Ufologico Nazionale repeatedly said it did not consider the story reliable. Di Stefano himself drove the Rossi route in 8 minutes, not the reported 4.

By 1981 he had reported up to 11 encounters. Zanfretta lost his gun licence and his job as a guard. His son Fabio says the affair "only caused us damage". Torriglia now holds an annual UFO convention. In 2025 Di Stefano said Zanfretta "is a different person" today, and that much of what he now tells does not match what happened.