Alien Base: The Evidence for Extraterrestrial Colonization of Earth: COSMIC CULTURE SHOCK
In April 1961, the respected Italian journalist Bruno Ghibaudi took a series of photographs purporting to show several unusual flying craft on the shores of the Adriatic coast at Pescara. One of the pictures is of a craft so unusual as to render fakery irrelevant (see plates). At that time, Ghibaudi was well known to the Italian television and radio public as a reporter on scientific subjects, especially aviation and space travel.
A year or so before taking the photographs, Ghibaudi had been asked by his superiors to prepare a television programme about people claiming to have seen flying saucers. Hitherto, he had paid little heed to the subject, but as he began to travel around Italy interviewing people, he was astonished to discover just how many had seen them, or taken photos, or met the occupants, or had recovered pieces of metal and other materials left by craft that had landed.
He also learnt that many witnesses who had spoken out had either lost their jobs or had been subjected to such a barrage of ridicule or hours of grilling by officialdom that they had become thoroughly fed up with the whole matter and thus were loath to relate their experiences any further — especially to a journalist. Before embarking on his second tour of Italy, however, Ghibaudi was told by his bosses that the projected programme had been cancelled. By then Ghibaudi had become so impressed by the evidence he had gathered that he continued the investigation on his own.
In the summer of 1961, a few months after taking the photographs in Pescara, Ghibaudi claimed that he had been invited to meet some of the ‘space people’‘.
As with Sir Peter Horsley, the meeting took place in a house, the location of which Ghibaudi declined to reveal. Several witnesses were present, including the ‘go-between’ who had arranged the meeting. In an interview with Le Ore in January 1963, translated by Gordon Creighton, Ghibaudi provided no detailed description of the visitors, confining himself mostly to what he had learnt from them, though he did say that some of them are so much like us in appearance that they were able to infiltrate. In their chance meetings with Earth people, he said, they sometimes communicate by gesture or telepathy, and sometimes in the language of the person contacted. After all, he surmised, people who are so advanced technically are unlikely to have any difficulty in learning our languages.
The human form is ‘universal throughout the Cosmos,’ said Ghibaudi, ‘and yet the idea of this has generally been rejected by Earthmen as impossible, no doubt because, as almost always, the truth is too simple to be accepted’. Apart from various superficial differences, beings throughout the universe resemble Homo sapiens, though Ghibaudi conceded that some of their internal organs may well be different; even perhaps performing quite different functions.
These space visitors, Ghibaudi continued, were coming to our planet from many different worlds; hence some differences in body sizes, for example. What is happening now, he claimed, is simply that the ‘infant civilization of Earth- Man being at a point of particularly grave crisis, the space beings are prepared to reveal themselves to us more’. He confirmed that the people he met, at least, were benevolent and desirous of helping us: their aim, to prevent nuclear catastrophe by intervening if it became unavoidable. He added that although these beings are many thousands of years ahead of us technically and scientifically, as well as ethically, they are not omnipotent. ‘They are men,’ stressed Ghibaudi, ‘so we must not rely on them to get us out of our difficulties.
For, not being infallible, even their efforts and their concern might not always suffice to avert disaster if something went wrong or some accident nullified their plans to avert the worst.’
On the subject of nuclear weapons, Ghibaudi pointed out that although extraterrestrials are capable of destroying such weapons, ‘the human heart would nevertheless remain unchanged. We would still retain the ability and, above all, the intention, to build fresh nuclear devices.’ Hence the extraterrestrials he met were working in a more sub— de manner to influence the minds of men. ‘They fully realize the dangers of any kind of broad prohibitive action. They know that in the last analysis Earth-Man must make his own way . . .