by UFO History Buff & Author, Charles Lear
As anyone who has looked into the subject of UFO-related humanoids knows, reported creatures come in all shapes and sizes. Some are more unusual than others, and a pair of creatures said to be seen in Italy in 1978 definitely stand out.
In the Vol. 28, No. 6, issue (page 15 of the pdf) of Flying Saucer Review, there is an article by Antonio Chiumiento headlined “An Encounter with ‘Rat-Faces’ in Italy.” The article was translated from Italian and Chiumiento is described as an “Investigator and member of the board of directors of C.U.N. (Italian National UFO Research Centre, Turin.)”
According to Chiumiento, on the morning of November 24, 1978, 61-year-old Gallio resident, Angelo D’Ambros, went to get some firewood in nearby Gastagh. At about a quarter before noon, he turned to put down a branch he had been chopping up when he “was gripped with horror” upon seeing two creatures looking at him that were “extremely close.”
They were hovering about 40 cms above the ground and D’Ambros estimated that one of them was 1 m 20 cm tall while the other was 1 m. They were “extremely thin,” and had yellowish skin that was tight to where D’Ambros could see large veins on the head and hands of the larger creature that was closest to him. Their heads were bald, smooth, large and pear-shaped, and they had “enormous” pointed ears that stuck straight up. They had no eyelids and large, sunken white eyes. Their noses were long and almost went below their lower lips, and they had large mouths with a long, pointed tusk at each end.
They seemed to be wearing dark, tight overalls, and sticking out of the sleeves and leggings were huge hands and feet that were out of proportion to the rest of their bodies. Their ring fingers were bigger than the others, and their nails were long.
As D’Ambros stood frozen in terror, the smaller creature began moving back and forth in rapid leaps between D’Ambros’s left and right side as though gliding and without moving its feet. As it did so, there was the sound of air displacement and the rusting of vegetation due to its ears brushing the lowest branches of the trees nearby.
D’Ambros managed to overcome his terror enough to shout “Help!” as loud as he could. He then got the strength to ask the creatures who they were and what they wanted with him. It was of no use as he only got “incomprehensible mumblings” from the smaller creature.
Suddenly, D’Ambros’s attention shifted to the larger creature that had remained almost motionless about a meter away from him. The creature grabbed the billhook (also known as a “sling blade”) D’Ambros was carrying at a spot that had no cutting edge and attempted to take it from him. D’Ambros became determined not to let the creature have it, as it was his only defense should they should prove hostile.
D’Ambros tightened his grip, and the creature grabbed onto the tool further down, at which point, D’Ambros felt what seemed to be “a slight electrical shock.” The creature made one more attempt using both hands, and D’Ambrose felt what was clearly another shock go up his arm.
D’Ambros became “furious” as the creature refused to give up, and he used his free hand to grab a large branch he had cut and was ready to hit the creature. Both creatures, seeming to recognize the threat D’Ambros posed to them, “fled instantly.”
D’Ambros recovered “his normal calm” and then, compelled by curiosity regarding the origin of the creatures, ran after them “as fast as he could along the mule-track along which they had come.” Finally, in a clearing, he saw a disk-shaped metallic object with a dome on top standing on four legs. The upper part was red, and the lower part, separated by a white band around the middle, was blue, while the legs were aluminum grey. Without the legs it was about two meters high and four meters wide.
As soon as D’Ambros spotted the craft, he saw the hand of one of the creatures closing “from inside the dome, a sort of trap-door by drawing it backwards.” The craft then took off silently at an angle at great speed while putting out a “burst of red flame.” It quickly went out of sight behind some fir trees.
When D’Ambros got home, he kept his story to himself but was so disturbed that he skipped his lunch. He then decided to confide in his son in law, Luciano Munari. The next day, Munari got someone to go with him and went to the spot where D’Ambros said he’d seen the craft.
At the site, Munari saw a 3.5 m circular area of grass that was blackened more from oil than burning and swirled flat in an anticlockwise direction. When he touched the grass, his hands stayed clean. He also saw two impressions that were U-shaped, 20 cm long, 3 cm wide, and 3 cm deep, and some bushes that had been uprooted, “this being the result of the displacement of air as the ‘object’ departed.”
Many of the local townsfolk didn’t believe the story and Munari decided to photograph the site as proof. Unfortunately, it snowed, and he wasn’t able to get back there until December 3rd. He went with some of the non-believers who helped him clear away the snow, and he took some black and white photos that didn’t show the details of the impressions very well. He tried again with color film on the 10th and circled the marks with yellow paper to make sure they’d show up. The photos are not included in the article.
Thanks to “an initiative of Munari,” the story made the local paper, Giornale di Vicenza, under the headline, “I Was Attacked by Two Martians: They Wanted My Billhook.” After it appeared, D’Ambros was swarmed with curiosity seekers and local UFO enthusiasts.
The billhook’s blade reportedly had an imprint about the size of a pinky, and the cutting edge had turned red. Local UFO “students” took it for testing but brought it back when they found that the lab work would be too expensive. Munari told Chiumiento that D’Ambros started using it again, and that the imprint and discoloration were no longer visible.
According to Chiumiento, he (he uses what I assume is the royal we) found out about the case when a “fellow investigator” sent him the article. He went to Gallio in the fall of 1979 and was told by the D’Ambros family that the site was still blackened, but he wasn’t able to see it for himself because it had snowed.
He went there again in February 1980 and got a statement from Munari who said he believed his father in law’s story, and that he had read UFO Report by J. Allen Hynek. He said he saw there was a resemblance between the marks he saw and the marks pictured in photos in the book, which Chiumiento identifies as photos of the Socorro landing site.
Chiumiento made several visits and established that D’Ambros and Munari had good reputations. He compares the creatures reported by D’Ambros to the ones reported in the 1955 Kelly-Hopkinsville case. He then includes descriptions of five more sightings in the area around the same time, including one where a witness gave photos he’d taken, along with the negatives, to a man identifying himself as an Air Force officer who “was never seen again.”
Chiumiento predicts that the Gallio case will become as well-known as the Kelly-Hopkinsville case and argues that it supports the theory “which asserts the presence here of UFO occupants of unknown but in any case non-terrestrial origin.”