Cars lifted up and transported by UFOs

by Charles Lear

In the 1950s, the first reports of cars shutting down in the proximity of UFOs started hitting the news, most memorably those from Levelland, Texas, in 1957. Then, in the 1960’s, there were reports of UFOs chasing cars, sometimes hitting them, and in fair turnabout, reports of cars chasing UFOs. Things didn’t escalate until 1978, when the first reports came out of UFOs lifting cars up in the air, carrying them for various distances and periods of time, and then returning them to the ground.

In 1978 alone, there were four reports that this writer was able to find. The first of these occurred in July of that year and is described on the website of the Missouri Investigators Group.

According to the report, there was a UFO flap in Ellsberry, Mo., at the time. On July 27, Mrs. Clora Winscher, was driving towards her home in Arnold, Mo., after visiting her brother in Beaufort. At around 12:30 a.m., she was coming out of Union, Mo., when she saw what she thought was a tractor trailer coming straight at her. As she braced for impact, her car filled up with white light.

Then, the rear of her car was lifted up, and she found herself looking down at the pavement, which was lit up. The interior of the car heated up and the windows fogged. As this was happening, the car shook violently and swayed. Winscher did what she could to control it and saw that she was approaching a steel bridge. She pressed down on the accelerator but this, of course, only led to her rear wheels spinning in the air. All she could do was steer towards the center of the bridge and hope for the best.

Just as she came to the bridge, the car was released. She crossed the bridge and pulled over to the side to see what sort of damage might have been done to the car. There seemed to have been no damage, but the next day, an examination revealed two indentations in the trunk lid. What was odd was that there was no cracking in the paint in or around the indentations.

Winscher drove on to Arnold and stopped in at the police department there to report what had happened to her. The next day, she and her husband drove back to Union to give a report to the Union Police Department. The story was reported in the July 29-30 St. Louis, Mo., Globe Democrat. (See page 12.)

In September of that year, there was a case reported in the September 25, 1978 edition of the Argentinian newspaper, Cronića. (See Page 16.)  The case was also looked into by the Institute of Hispanic UFOlogy and described on the Inexplicata website. According to the Inexplicata account, two Chileans, Carlos Acevedo and Miguel Angel Moya, were participating in the Rally de America del Sur when they encountered a UFO.

Acevedo was at the wheel of their Citroen at around 3:00 a.m. They were on their way to Bahia Blanca, Argentina, and as they reached the area near Salitral del Agorrabo when they saw a bright light coming up behind them at a high speed. The inside of the car filled with a purple-shaded, cloudy, yellow light. Acevedo then realized that the car was about two meters up in the air.

After a few nervous seconds, the car was set back down and the light inside faded. According to the account in Cronća, they were set down on the side of the road. The men then watched as what they described as a truncated cone of yellow light moved away to the west.

They drove on and reached a gas station fifteen minutes later in the town of Pedro Luro and asked the attendant for directions to the local police station. They then looked at their odometer, which should have showed that they had travelled 127 km but instead indicated that they had only travelled 52 km. Also strange was that it took them just under two-and-a-half hours to travel the 127 km when it should have taken them about one-hour-and-fifteen minutes, and their reserve tank, which should have been full was empty. In the Cronića account it is mentioned that a man living near Pedro Luro went to check out the spot where the men said their car had been put down, and he saw tracks leaving the spot but none entering it.

One of the most famous cases where a car was reportedly lifted comes from Italy and was written about by Italian journalist Rino Di Stefano in his 1984 book Luci Nella Notte – UFO: Il Caso Zanfretta. According to Di Stefano, in December 1978, Pier Fortunato Zanfretta, an Italian night watchman who served with the Italian national police force known as the Carabinieri, started to report encounters with strange creatures. Under hypnosis, he described them this way: “They are green, with triangular yellow eyes, with big thorns, they have green flesh and their skin is full of wrinkles as if they were old. Their mouths look like they’re made of iron, they have red veins on their heads, pointed ears and arms with fingernails… with round things… They come from the third galaxy.” He also reported that his car was lifted with him in it up into a spaceship.

As fantastic as Zanfretta’s claims might seem, his fellow Carabinieri were repeatedly obligated to come to his rescue over the next two years and would find him in a terrified state in remote areas. Zanfretta’s head was reported to be hot, even when they found him outside on cold nights. The inside of his car was also described as being like an oven by one officer who drove it back to the station.

To test the validity of Zanfretta’s claims, two technicians secretly prepared his assigned car, a Fiat 127. They hid a thermometer that would record the highest temperature and rigged the axels with cables that would break if the car was lifted up. It wasn’t long before Zanfretta had another episode and he was found on a freezing cold night on the edge of a gorge. When the car was back at the station, the technicians checked the thermometer and saw it had recorded a temperature of 43° Celsius (109.4° Fahrenheit.) When they checked the cables, they found that all four of them were broken.

Finally, in the August 31, and September 1, 1978, editions of Cronića (See page 14) there is the story of two men who reported being lifted up and transported to a strange city while in their car. Francisco Nûñez and his son, also Francisco, were driving in Argentina from Mendoza to Luján de Cuyo when they were amazed to find themselves ascending. According to them, the ascent was “serene.” The car engine stopped but the radio continued playing music. They then felt cold and saw a number of bright red lights. Soon they saw a strange reddish city in front of them with tall joined buildings and a wide illuminated avenue. They saw no signs of life.

According to them, their car moved along at a high speed until the city disappeared from view. They then found themselves back on the road 9km further on and their engine restarted. They said they felt no fear during the entire episode.

According to the September Cronića, when they got home, the senior Francisco felt compelled to wash the car and take a bath because of “old sayings relating to spirits” and the younger Francisco didn’t bathe “as he didn’t believe in such things.”