Alien Base: The Evidence for Extraterrestrial Colonization of Earth – Proliferating Encounters
Bruno Facchini, a 40-year-old industrial worker, lived on the outskirts of Abbiate Guazzone, Italy, a short distance from the highway leading to Milan.
On the evening of 24 April 1950, a violent storm struck the district of Varese in northern Italy. Just before 22.00 the rain stopped, and Facchini decided to take a breath of air outside his house. He was about to go inside when his attention was drawn to strange flashes in the sky a few hundred metres away. Because a high-voltage power line passed right over the spot and a pylon with electrical equipment stood in front of his house, Facchini became concerned that the storm might have damaged these structures.
Proceeding cautiously to avoid stepping on any ‘live’ cables, Facchini arrived at the spot. Seeing nothing amiss, he was on the point of returning to his house when he saw the strange flashing again. ‘This time I could see that it was a little further away from where I stood,’ he told investigator Antonio Giudici, ‘so I decided to go closer.’
When I did get closer, I caught sight of an enormous black shadow, almost round in shape (it looked like a ball with the top part flattened). In the middle of it I could see a little ladder, and from the top of the ladder was coming a greenish light. I was now able to have a close view of the source of the flashing; that is, I saw quite clearly an individual who, from the top of a pneumatic lift (of the type made with a base, an extensible shaft, and a platform on top), seemed to be standing and doing a welding job. I could see quite clearly that the individual . . . was wearing a diving suit and mask.
My curiosity now aroused, I stepped closer, and now also saw two other individuals, likewise in diving suits and masks, moving about very slowly around the machine, which caused me to think that the suits they were wearing must be very heavy for them. The machine, which was of a dark colour, showed metallic reflections when lit up by the flashes coming from the welder.
Since Milan’s La Malpensa airport, as well as the military airfields at Vergiate and Venegono, were not far away, Facchini presumed that an aircraft had made an emergency landing. ‘I told the men that I lived close by and asked them if they needed any help,’ he said. ‘The only reply I got were some incomprehensible guttural sounds.’
The crew was wearing what looked like dark-grey, presumably heavy diving suits, with grey masks over their heads. A tube appeared to hang down from the level of the mouth, with an opening at the end, as if, Facchini reasoned, it could be joined to another tube or cylinder. During brief bursts of light from the welding, the skin of the crew looked to be light in colour. They were about 1.70 metres in height.
I tried to guess what their intentions were, and I got the impression that they wanted to invite me to go up into the machine. Then I heard a noise like the sound of a gigantic beehive, or perhaps it might be better to say like a big dynamo, and I saw, inside, another ladder going up, and all around — on the walls — tubes, cylinders and gauges. In that precise moment I realized that it couldn’t be an aircraft, and I was seized by a sensation of panic and fled.
But after I had run a few paces I turned round, and saw one of the pilots grab a sort of camera that he was carrying round his neck and shoot a beam of light at me. I carried on running, and simultaneously I had the impression that I had been struck by a blunt instrument or, to put it better, by a powerful jet of compressed air, and I fell to the ground, landing, for further measure, right on top of one of the boundary stones marking the edges of the fields.
Suffering pain from his bruises, Facchini continued to watch the strange aircraft and its crew. ‘It seemed as though they were no longer interested in me,’ he said. ‘I was sure that they did not desire to do me any harm.’ Then it looked as if the crew was preparing to leave.
The individual who had been welding had now come down (the lift on which he was standing had in fact descended, its tubes re-entering) and the two others who had remained on the ground picked up the lift, now reduced in size, put it into a small box and stowed it inside the machine, the ladder was drawn in, and the door closed. Everything became dark. The noise like a beehive continued. Then, all of a sudden, it grew louder, and more powerful, and the machine rose at fantastic speed and vanished into the darkness.
All became silent. Facchini stood there, his eyes glued to the sky, but there was nothing to be seen. He returned home quietly and spent a sleepless night.