A local newspaper reports three months after the alleged events a story of one Carlo Rossi. The story such as it has been told in the following decades in various ufological sources is that this 53 years peasant was fishing as he used to on July 25, 1952, at 3 o'clock in the morning in river Serchio in San Pietro has Vico, Lucca, Tuscany, Italy.
He suddenly saw a strange gleam; which was diffused from a place of the river. He was intrigued and moved in this direction, and arrived at the level of the place where the luminosity spread, he saw a black object in the shape of a disc, that hovered at very a low altitude above the river. The disc had a two meters thick flat rim and a diameter of 20 to 25 meters. On the rim of the disc, there were oval openings. In its center, there was a turret, which exceeded on approximately three meters from the lower part of the disc and half a meter on the top part. This turret was transparent and large like a room. Inside in, there was a bluish flame that came from some mechanisms reflected on the surface of the disc. In the lower part of the disc, there were five propellers that protruded out of there, all around, equidistant one the other. On the top part, there were three propellers: one as large as the circumference of the disc, two others were above it, smaller and smaller. From the craft, a pipe came out and went towards in the river's waters as if to suck water.
A porthole opened in the higher turret and showed a human face with a kind of diver's helmet, who started to look around, and at a certain time, this man extended his arm and pointed his finger towards Rossi. Rossi became afraid, fled and was threw himself at the ground. At this moment he saw a green ray shot in his direction and felt an electrical shock in all the body. Looking up, he saw that the object had gained altitude, and was getting away in the sky at very high speed in direction of Viareggio.
There are versions of the story add that Rossi had decided to tell nobody about what he had seen, and that he was thus very surprised when on September 15, 1952, whereas he was going to his favorite place at the end of the day, a foreigner who seemed to await him, greeted him and asked him whether he had seen a plane, or some other flying machine above the river. The unknown man was dressed of dark blue, had a very angular face and a penetrating glance; which prompted some authors in saying that he was one of the infamous "Men-In-Black" characters. He spoke in Italian with a strong accent of the Scandinavian type. Rossi felt threatened, told the man that he hadn't seen anything. The man offered him a weird cigarette that had a gilded mark on the side. Rossi puffed on it and was at once dizzy and nauseous. When Rossi wanted to keep the cigarette, the man took it, crushed it and threw it in the river, then he left. Rossi feared that "someone wanted to silence him", and he is said to have gone to the prosecutor of Lucca where he is said to have made a sworn statement about his fling disc sighting.
An investigation into this history is evoked, with doubts about it because one of the investigators was possibly a nephew of Rossi. Rossi himself dies in the Sixties, allegedly in a strange way. As soon as 1954, French ufologist and science-fiction writer published the story from the local newspaper and commented that it must have been a hoax. The case appears in ufological books and magazines thereafter but it is difficult to know what was in the original newspaper article and what could have been added later. Italian ufologists note the inconsistencies in the story, specify that the journalist who wrote the article was known as inclined to pranks. The drawing published in the newspaper shows a technically ridiculous flying disc.
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[Ref. ln1:] JOURNAL "LA NAZIONE":
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This drawing appeared in the newspaper La Nazione for September 26, 1952. |
[Ref. jg1:] JIMMY GUIEU:
Jimmy Guieu indicates that on September 26 or 26, 1952, two months after the alleged facts and this delay being caused by the silence of the witness, the Italian press reported the adventure that happened him. The man was a fisherman named "Carlo" who did not want to give his surname by fear of the ridiculization. The first newspaper that published the story was "La Nazione", telling that in the night from July to 25, 1952, whereas he was fishing in the Serchio river, Carlo saw a disc in the sky, and told:
"Other people who saw flying saucers state to have seen them evolving at terrifying speeds and they only glimpsed at them; as for myself, I managed to observe one during 10 good minutes. It was moving without noise above the river, letting a tube hang; which plunged in the water. The disc had some twenty meters in diameter. Its back carried five propellers and on the top of the apparatus, three rotors emerged from a kind of cupola."
"During its evolution, a flow of orange color ran starting from slits on the edge of the principal platform of the apparatus."
"I was paralyzed with stupor. Suddenly, a porthole opened and a man appeared, his face protected by what reminded me of the helmet of a diver. The man saw me... I threw myself back but almost at the same time a green ray streaked the night and dazzled me. I was shaken from head to toe. As I managed to look up, the disc was disappearing towards the East at the speed of lightning."
"Six days later, I fished at the same place when a large man, thin, with gray eyes, came towards me and approached me. He spoke in Italian marked with some foreign tones; it was not the American accent but a language with Scandinavian inflections. He asked me whether I had ever seen, close to the river, planes or even "flying things"."
"I answered " not ", perhaps too quickly for he remained silent, looked at me and finally offered me a cigarette, a long cigarette, with gilded end. Hardly I had sucked two puffs, that I believed I was going to die. My head started to turn, I quickly withdrew the cigarette from my mouth, extinguished it and slipped it into my pocket; but the man grabbed it brutally, broke it apart and threw the remains in the river; then he moved away, leaving me lying on the bank and almost dead..."
The newspaper had concluded "Se non e vero e bene travata!", [i.e., if it isn't true, it is nevertheless nicely invented."]
Jimmy Guieu notes, or quotes, that this witness is not a ghost or some simple imaginary name and that a many notabilities of San Pietro (in Vico) regard the witness as a man "of sound mind."
Jimmy Guieu then comments on the case by noting that the propeller propulsion excludes an extraterrestrial origin, that the propellers are incompatible with the reported silent flight, that all the story appears to him "quite far fetched!" with only few details in agreement with previous sightings, and that this man of Scandinavian accent and his "poisoned" cigarette feel like "melodrama... and trickery."
[Ref. jv1:] JACQUES VALLEE:
In his catalogue of UFO landings, Jacques Vallée indicates that on July 24, 1952, in Vico, Italy, a man who was fishing at night in the Serchio River saw a disk hovering for 10 minutes. From it hung a hose that plunged into the water. The object was 20 meters in diameter, with five propellers in the rear and a dome with something like blades on top. An orange glow could be seen through slits along the deck. A man wearing a diving helmet looked at the witness through a window, and he received a kind of electric shock as a "green ray" hit him. He looked up with difficulty, in time to see the object fly away toward the east. Six days later a stranger with a foreign accent contacted the witness and intimidated him.
Vallée indicates that his source is "FSR 69,1."
[Ref. pd1:] PIERRE DELVAL:
Pierre Delval indicates that the Italian Press echoes a stunning adventure of "fisherman Carlo M." on July 24 1952. Delval indicates that the witness told:
"Whereas I was fishing along river Serchio, in the night of July 24, I managed to observe a flying saucer during ten good minutes. It moved without noise above the river, letting hang a tube that plunged in the water. The disc had some twenty meters in diameter. On the top of the apparatus a kind of cupola emerged. During its evolution, the apparatus seemed to diffuse a light of orange color. I was paralyzed with stupor. Suddenly, a porthole opened, and a being of human appearance appeared. It wore a species of diving suit. I threw myself back, but almost at the same time a green ray struck me and dazzled me completely. I was shaken from feet to toe. When I managed to open my eyes again, I saw the disc disappear at the speed of lighning."
[Ref. jr1:] JACQUES RIVOYRE:
The author indicates that Carlo Rossi was a modest employee of the administration of the mail services in San Pietro a Vico, close to Lucca, in Tuscany, and people who knew him said that he is a "balanced man, simple, and absolutely unable to invent weird stories."
In the night from the 24th to the 25th of April 1952 at approximately 3 a.m., Carlo Rossi skirted the Serchio river to go to the site where he had set his fishing net, as he was impassioned of fishing, since childhood. A light coming from the slope that borders the river suddenly appeared in front of him, he was puzzled and climbed on the ground elevation, where he saw a weird apparatus of circular form of about 25 meters approximately in diameter, motionless above ground level. He observed it by far and noted that the apparatus was feeding in water by means of a long tube plunging in the river. The apparatus was surrounded by openings resembling exhaust conduits. It had in its center a kind of turret of which the three quarters were below the disc and one quarter above. The higher part of this turret had the aspect of a cockpit and had a port-hole, the lower part was transparent and he saw there a large cylinder connected to thin tubes, with flashes of sharp light of variable color that passed continuously from one tube to another. The machine had five propellers laid out on the circumference of the lower part, rotating very quickly but without noise.
At the end of a moment, the port-hole opened and a "human silhouette" appeared. The silhouette seemed to have noticed Rossi because he made a gesture with the to somebody who was to be inside the apparatus. Rossi panicked and with turned the back at the threat to run away, an escape during which he saw a green ray passing above his head. He was not touched by this ray but had "the feeling" to receive an electrical shock. He threw himself on the ground and from the corner of his field of vision he saw "the saucer rising and disappearing at a tremendous pace in the direction to the sea."
Rossi did not tell anything of his encounter, afraid that he would be seen as a crackpot, but changed his mind after September 15, 1952, when in the middle of the afternoon, whereas he was fishing at the same place, another "fisherman" approached him. It was a man who obviously was not from the area. Rivoyre quotes Rossi as saying that he "held in his hand a curious very short cane and carried a blue suit giving him the appearance of a soldier." Rossi discusses with this unknown man who asks him whether he already saw aircraft or other flying objects above the river. Rossi felt oddly in danger and answered that he never saw anything. The unknown man then offered him a cigarette of unknown mark. Rossi felts dizzy at once when he lit the cigarette, and extinguishes it in an instinctive gesture while pretending to slip the cigarette into its wallet. But the unknown caught his wrist, snatched the cigarette away, and threw it in the river. Without another word, the unknown man moved away quickly, and disappeared behind the trees.
Rossi told this to the police officers of Lucca on September 26, 1952. He claimed that he "did not invent even one detail" and that his story is "purely and simply the truth." He was lengthily interviewed during several weeks by the radio and the Italian and foreign press, and always maintained his story.
The Italian ufologist Eugenio Almerio also supported the story as true, and stated that the encounter was "a new attempt of the inhabitants of Alpha Centauri" to enter in contact with humans by choosing a modest postal worker who was "a simple man" to transmit their message. Eugenio Almerio added: "Alpha Centauri will soon send new messengers to us in 1985."
[Ref. fr1:] MICHEL FIGUET AND JEAN-LOUIS RUCHON:
The authors indicate that many world cases show beings which were seen drawing water from a river or a lake, among those, the case which follows, from the Vallée catalogue.
The authors indicate that on July 24, 1952, in Vico in Italy, a man who was fishing in the Serchio river saw a disc stationing in the air during ten minutes. A pipe hung down of it to the water. A man wearing a diver's helmet looked through a port-hole. The witness was paralysed by a "green ray" which caused a kind of electric shock.
[Ref. ci1:] CISU CASE FILE 5202:
In their case file #5202, the Italian ufology group CISU describes the case of July 25, 1952, 03.00, in Lucca, San Pietro in Vico: a 53 year old farmer, Carlo Rossi, went fishing on the Serchio river. Suddenly, he saw a strange gleam that diffused from a point of the river. Intrigued, he moved in this direction, while being behind the high undergrowth. He climbed on the banks when he arrived at the level of the place where the luminosity spread. Beyond the banks, he saw a black object, in the shape of a disc, that hovered at a very low altitude above the river. On the lathe of the disc, thick of approximately of two meters, there were oval openings. In its center it had a turret, exceeding on approximately three meters at the lower part of the disc, and exceeded of half a meter above the disc. The turret was transparent and "large as a room." In its inside, the witness noticed a bluish flame that came from some mechanisms. The produced gleam was reflected on the surface of the disc and making it luminous. In the lower part of the disc, he saw five "propellers" that came out for half of the black disc, laid out all around, equidistant one from the other. On the topside of the disc, there were three propellers, as large as "the entire of the circumference of the disc, and the two others above were smaller and smaller." Suddenly, a porthole opened in the higher turret and showed a human face that started to look at the neighborhoods. At a certain moment, he pout an arm out and pointed a finger at the witness, who became afraid, and fled to throw himself at the ground to the other side of the banks. As soon as he was on the ground, he saw on the banks a drawn green ray fired in his direction. It felt a jolt in all the body. Looking up, he noticed that the object (who previously had a long tube coming out that ended in the water of the river) had gained height, and disappeared in the sky at very high speed. He remembered that the human face inside the turret carried a some sort of a diver's helmet.
CISU comments that the only really available source is a short article of a local daily newspaper that was published at the time. An investigation carried out many years after the event only made it possible to gather statements of members of the family and some people who knew the witness, who had died in the Sixties. It seemed without being certain that one of the investigators was in fact the nephew of the witness who perhaps started to be interested in the ufology because of this event, and successively provided new versions of the facts, versions that contrasted on many points with the original one. The journalistic report of the time appears well too detailed, therefore one cannot exclude possible "embellishments" by the journalist who wrote the article, or, as "somebody claimed", that it was all entirely invented, as the journalist was known to be a bit of a prankster. By taking as well as possible into consideration the description of the seen object, one could risk to suggest a helicopter, those being then far from widely operational in Italy. The authors or the author see some contradictions in the original report, among those, that of the "being" inside the transparent turret however seen only in a second time when he showed his face at a porthole.
CISU indicates as sources: "La Nazione 26/9/52; GdM 1, 8, 26 + 3, 30, 15-17; UFO in Italia I, 137; OSSOLA III, 736-737; DELVAL I, 128; GIANFRANCESCHI I, 216-217; INTCAT 244 + M35 + FSR 15, 1 & 21, 5 + GUIEU I, 79 + UFO INFO 15, 62, 32 (INTCAT) + UFO ASPEKT 8, 6/8"
[Ref. mk1:] MARTIN KOTTMEYER:
Martin Kottmeyer indicates that on 26 September 1952, Carlo Rossi, in Italy, had a close encounter of the third kind. There was a drawing in the press that shows a man wearing an aviator's cap with goggles worn atop it, looking out of a circular hole on a blister atop a flying disc. A round glass window is resting open beside the opening. The shape of the craft is basically flat like a hockey puck, and there is "a Christmas tree of helicopter blades" above it, with a bottom blade roughly the same diameter as the disc, the next above is about two-thirds in size, and the third above smaller in the same proportion. There is a cage-like compartment and a system of three-bladed propellers that spins parallel to the plane of the disc. Kottmeyer explains that this aircraft, with the top blades all smaller than the disc, could not fly as the airflow would all be directed down on to the disc and then flow horizontally outward. Kottmeyer indicates that his source is "Boncompagni, Conti, Lamperi, Ricci, Sani. UFO in Italia, Corrado Tedeschi Editore pp. 138-43."
[Ref. ar1:] ALBERT ROSALES:
Albert Rosales indicates that in San Pietro a Vico, Italy, on July 25, 1952, at 03:00 a.m., going to the river Serchio before dawn to fish, Carlo Rossi saw a circular object hovering above that river, apparently drawing up water through a long tube. The object was black, with oval openings around the edge, and a transparent tower of 6 meters in diameter and extending 3 meters below the disc in its center. On the tower were four thin tubes attached to a central cylinder, and a bluish flame was passing between these tubes. Under the disc, there were five equidistant propellers, and on top, three concentric cones. The only sound was "like silk rustling." From a porthole in the turret, a human face looked out, and stretched out an arm toward Rossi, who threw himself over the ridge of the bank. He saw a green ray projected above him, and felt an electric like shock. Then, he saw the UFO depart "at frightful speed."
Two months later, he encountered there a very thin and tall man with a peculiar accent, who asked him if he had ever seen any sort of aircraft over the river, and gave him a peculiar cigarette that immediately made him feel faint. The stranger grabbed the cigarette from him, threw it in the river, and hastened away.
Albert Rosales indicates that his source is Siro Menicucci, for the research group for the Study Of UFO Phenomena, Prato, Italy.
[Ref. in1:] FOUND ON THE INTERNET:
On the Internet, several websites publish the same text without sources claiming that Carlo Rossi was used to fishing at night in his favorite place on the Serchio river close to San Pietro a Vico. It had lost an arm in an accident, was aged around 50, and took much pleasure in fishing, his favorite hobby. At the end of the July at 3 o'clock in the morning, a reflection of light on the water drew his attention, he looked up and saw a weird object resembling a flat reel, with rotors on the top, that hovered a little above the river while emitting orange and blue flashes. A tube then came out of the machine and plunged in the river like for pumping water. Rossi observed in awe, when a character of human appearance emerged by an opening at the top of the machine, looked at him for a while, pointed a finger towards him as if he wanted to show him to another person that Rossi could not see and who would be inside the object. Rossi was not reassured and fled, but a ray of green light passed above his head, while it felt like an electrical shock in all the body. He was thrown on the ground and could see the object rising and disappearing in direction to Viareggio. Rossi decided to tell nothing about what he had seen, and he was thus very surprised when on September 15, 1952, whereas he was going to "his favorite place" at the end of the day, a foreigner who seemed to await him, greeted him and asked him whether he had seen "a plane, or another flying machine above the river." This unknown man, who was dressed of dark blue, had a very angular face and a penetrating glance, "characteristics common to the majority of the Men-In-Black cases." He spoke in Italian but with a strong accent, seemingly Scandinavian. Rossi felt threatened, said that he had seen nothing, and the man offered him a cigarette like Rossi had never seen before, that had a gilded mark on the side. Rossi breathed a puff of the cigarette and was at once dizzy and nauseas. The foreigner then took back the cigarette, crushed it and threw it in the river, then left. Rossi feared that "someone was trying to silence him" and thus went to the prosecutor of Lucca where he made a sworn statement about his UFO sighting.
[Ref. lg1:] LUIS R. GONZALES MANSO:
Luis R. Gonzalez Manso notes in his FirstHumCat catalogue that on July 24, 1952, in Vico, Italy, at night, Carlo Rossi was fishing in the Serchio river and saw a disk hovering for 10 min. From it hung a hose that plunged into the water. The object was 20 m in diameter, with five propellers in the rear and a dome with something like three more blades on top. An orange glow could be seen through slits along the deck. A man wearing a diving helmet looked at the witness through a window, and he received a kind of electric shock as a "green ray" hit him. He looked up with difficulty, in time to see the object fly away toward the east. Six days later a stranger with a foreign accent contacted the witness and intimidated him.
Luis Gonzales indicates that his sources are Giuseppe Stilo, Ultimatum alla Terra, pp. 289-297, 2002, and La Nazione (Toscana) for September 26, 1952, and the MAGONIA Catalogue case #95.
The available documentation about this affair is thin and vague to the extreme, it is not even possible to distinguish an origin of possible embellishments. The whole offers the impression of pure phantasmagoria.
| Id: | Topic: | Severity: | Date noted: | Raised by: | Noted by: | Description: | Proposal: | Status: |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Data | Severe | September 11, 2006 | Patrick Gross | Patrick Gross | No primary sources available, missing La Nazione newspaper article. | Help needed. | Opened. |
| 2 | Ufology | Severe | September 11, 2006 | Patrick Gross | Patrick Gross | Though a much discussed case, no investigation report seems available. | Help needed. | Opened. |
Witness hoax, or journalistic hoax, or combination of both, with insufficient reliable reports to conclude anything reliable.
* = Source I checked.
? = Source I am told about but could not check yet. Help appreciated.
| Main Author: | Patrick Gross |
|---|---|
| Contributors: | None |
| Reviewers: | None |
| Editor: | Patrick Gross |
| Version: | Created/Changed By: | Date: | Change Description: |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0.1 | Patrick Gross | September 12, 2006 | Creation, [ln1], [jg1], [pd1], [ci1], [mk1], [ar1], [in1]. |
| 0.2 | Patrick Gross | September 12, 2006 | First published. |
| 0.2b | Patrick Gross | October 6, 2006 | Addition, [jr1]. |
| 0.2c | Patrick Gross | January 22, 2007 | Addition, [jv1]. |
| 1.0 | Patrick Gross | July 24, 2007 | Conversion from HTML4 to XHTML Strict. Addition, [fr1], [lg1]. |
