Encounter record / 1978
Liguria. The night of 6 December 1978. Night watchman Pier Fortunato Zanfretta drove up the road to Villa "Casa Nostra" in the hamlet of Marzano, above Genoa. His engine, headlights and radio died. Four lights moved in the garden. Then something touched his shoulders. At about a quarter past midnight his radio operator heard him screaming. "No, they're not men, they're not men." Then the line went dead. He was found more than an hour later, in shock, his clothes warm on a freezing night. He spoke of an enormous being about three metres tall. It was the first chapter of what became Italy's most famous alien abduction story.
Pier Fortunato Zanfretta was 26. A metronotte, a private night watchman, for the Istituto di Vigilanza Val Bisagno. He did not drink. Brigadier Antonio Nucchi of the Carabinieri called him "a decisive type without strange fantasies." On the night of 6 to 7 December 1978, his round took him to Villa "Casa Nostra", a dentist's mansion in Marzano, a hamlet of Torriglia.