Script

The night was hot and still, the kind of late June heat that clung to the skin even after the sun had gone down. Astore Chiucini walked alone along the narrow path that cut through the Ferretto woods. He had left the train at Terontola and decided to continue on foot rather than wait for a connection that might never come. The war was over, but Italy still felt broken. Trains ran when they felt like it, and a man who had spent years in uniform and then in an allied prison camp, learned to keep moving.

He was no longer young. His body carried the weight of too many campaigns — the March on Rome, Africa, Spain, Russia. Now he was just another old soldier trying to get home. The woods around him were thick and dark, the trees pressing close on either side of the path. Somewhere ahead, beyond the next rise, there was supposed to be a farmhouse where he could find a bed for the night.

He had been walking for nearly an hour when he saw the light.

It was not moonlight. It was not the glow of a lantern or the headlamp of a distant vehicle. This light was low, steady, and faintly green, like the color that sometimes lingers in the sky after a summer storm has passed. It came from somewhere off the path, deeper in the trees. Chiucini stopped. He rested one hand on the pistol he still carried out of habit and habit alone. For a long moment he simply watched the light pulse and hold.

Curiosity, or perhaps the old soldier’s instinct that something was not right, pulled him off the path and into the undergrowth. He moved quietly, the way he had once moved through other woods in other countries. The green glow grew stronger as he approached. It did not flicker like firelight. It simply existed, constant and unnatural.

He reached the edge of a small clearing and stopped behind the trunk of a beech tree.

In the center of the clearing, resting on the flattened grass, was a machine.

Chiucini had seen many strange things in his life, but nothing like this. The object was roughly circular, though its edges were not sharp. It seemed to be made of a dark metal that drank the green light of the trees and shrubs and gave back nothing. Across its surface ran lines and panels that glowed with the same steady green. Small instruments — or what looked like instruments — were embedded in the hull, their faces lit from within. There were no wheels, no wings, nothing that suggested it belonged to any air force he had ever known.

Two figures stood beside it.

While I’m researching the case of Italy’s RS33 Cabinet UFO crash and recovery in 1933, I’ve found several fascinating cases of Italian UFO sightings from the early decades of the 20th Century.  Here are two stories of alien encounters from Italy.  This is season 6 episode 86 – Aliens in the Woods.  I’m MF Thomas and this is My Dark Path through the unexplained. 

They were not men in uniform. They wore dark, close-fitting garments and hoods that covered their heads completely. The hoods reminded him of the old stories of the Beati Paoli, the secret society whose members moved through Palermo at night with their faces hidden. These hoods were smoother, tighter, and seemed to be part of the same material as their clothing. The figures moved with a strange, deliberate slowness, as if every action had been rehearsed a thousand times. One of them was adjusting something on the side of the machine. The other stood a few paces away, facing the woods.

Chiucini felt the weight of the pistol in his hand. He did not draw it. He simply kept his fingers curled around the grip and watched.

The figure nearest the machine turned its hooded head toward the trees. It did not call out. It simply looked. For several long seconds the only sound in the clearing was the low, almost inaudible hum that came from the craft itself.

Then the second figure moved.

It walked to the side of the machine and placed one hand against the hull. A section of the surface slid open with a soft, metallic sigh. Inside, Chiucini could see more glowing instruments and a narrow space that might have been meant for a person to enter. The first figure turned and stepped toward the opening.

That was when Chiucini made his mistake.

He shifted his weight to get a better view, making an audible noise as the leaves and branches moved with him.

Both figures froze.

The one nearest the opening turned its entire body toward the sound. The other raised an arm in a quick, sharp motion. For a moment nothing happened. Then the machine’s hum rose in pitch, climbing into a higher, tighter register that made Chiucini’s teeth ache.

The first figure stepped into the opening and disappeared inside. The second followed. The panel slid shut behind them with the same soft sigh.

Chiucini stepped out from behind the tree. He did not know why. Perhaps he wanted to see more clearly. Perhaps some part of him still believed this was something he could understand — a secret weapon, an experimental aircraft that had come down in the wrong place.

The machine began to rise.

It lifted straight up from the grass, without tilting, without any rush of air or roar of engines. The green lights along its lower edge brightened as it climbed. Chiucini could see the flattened circle of grass beneath it, the way the plants had been pressed down in a perfect ring. The craft rose above the level of the trees, still silent except for that rising hum. Then, without warning, the sound changed.

A great, tearing roar filled the woods.

It was not the sound of a propeller or a jet. It was deeper, more primal, like the earth itself tearing open. The machine shot upward at an impossible angle and was gone, leaving only a fading green glow that shrank to a pinpoint against the dark sky and then vanished.

Chiucini stood alone in the clearing.

His ears rang. His heart hammered against his ribs. The pistol was still in his hand, though he had no memory of drawing it. He walked slowly to the center of the ring where the machine had rested. The grass was warm beneath his boots. In several places the earth had been scorched in thin, precise lines, as if something very hot had touched it and then been lifted away.

He remained there for a long time, staring up at the empty sky.

When he finally turned and began walking again, the night felt different. The woods that had seemed merely dark before now felt watchful. Every shadow seemed to hold the shape of a hooded figure. Every sound in the undergrowth made him stop and listen.

He reached the farmhouse sometime after midnight. The farmer gave him a bed in the barn without asking many questions. Chiucini lay on the straw and did not sleep. He kept seeing the two hooded figures stepping into the machine and the way it had risen without effort, as though gravity were only a suggestion.

Chiucini never spoke of it again for many years.

But he never forgot the sound the machine made when it left, or the way the green light had seemed to come from inside the metal itself rather than from any lamp. He never forgot the hooded figures who had moved with such calm purpose, as if they had done this a thousand times before and would do it a thousand times again.

In the decades that followed, whenever he heard stories of strange lights in the sky or machines that did not behave like ordinary aircraft, he would remember the clearing in the Ferretto woods and the two figures who had boarded their craft and risen into the night without looking back.

He was an old man when he finally put the story down on paper and sent it to professor Roberto Pinotti, who was the scientific coordinator of Italy’s National Ufological Center,  who spoke about such things on television. He wrote it carefully, the way a soldier writes when he knows his words may be doubted. He ended the letter with the words

“Such things I have seen and I am ready to take an oath and register them because I am old and no longer in the field.”

The second Italian alien encounter story comes from the year 1950 in the northern province of Lombardy, that borders Switzerland.

The woods outside the town of Abbiate Guazzone were never truly silent, but on that particular evening in 1950 they felt heavier than usual. Bruno Facchini walked with his head down, shoulders hunched against the damp air that rose from the ground after a long day of labor. He was a man in his forties, thick-handed and tired, the kind of worker who had survived the war and the years immediately after it by simply putting one foot in front of the other. The path he took cut through a stretch of woodland between Tradate and the small cluster of houses where he lived. It was a shortcut he had used a hundred times. Tonight, something in the air made the hairs on his arms stand up before he understood why.

He first noticed the light.

It was not the warm yellow glow of a farmhouse window or the thin beam of a bicycle lamp. This light was low to the ground, steady, and faintly bluish-white, like the reflection of moonlight on wet metal. It pulsed once, very faintly, then steadied again. Facchini stopped. The woods around him were dark enough that the trees had become black columns. He could hear his own breathing and the distant creak of branches. For a moment he thought of turning back. Then curiosity, or perhaps simple stubbornness, pushed him forward.

He left the path and moved between the trunks, placing his feet carefully on the soft leaf litter. The light grew stronger. After another fifty meters he saw it clearly: a large, circular shape resting on the ground in a small clearing. It was not resting so much as settled, as if it had pressed the earth down beneath its weight. The upper surface caught what little light remained in the sky and threw it back in dull metallic gleams. Around its lower edge, thin lines of the same bluish light ran in slow, rhythmic patterns.

Facchini crouched behind the thick trunk of an oak and watched.

Figures moved around the object.

They were not men in the ordinary sense. They were small, perhaps a head shorter than an average person, and their movements were precise and economical. They wore what looked like tight-fitting suits that reflected the strange light in patches. Their heads were covered by smooth, rounded helmets or hoods that left no visible face. Two of them stood close to the edge of the disc, working on a section of the outer rim that had been opened like a panel. Another moved slowly around the perimeter, stopping now and then to examine something on the ground. They did not speak. The only sounds were a low, continuous hum that seemed to come from the craft itself and the occasional soft metallic click when one of the figures adjusted something inside the open panel.

Facchini’s mouth had gone dry. He told himself it was an American machine. Everyone in the Varese area knew the stories about the nearby town of Vergiate and the old SIAI Marchetti factories. The Marchetti factories had been one of Italy’s most important centers of aircraft manufacturing.  The Americans had bombed the place repeatedly during the war, and after the war they had taken over parts of it. People whispered that strange aircraft were still being tested there in secret. This had to be one of them. Some new experimental design that had come down in the wrong place.

He stayed behind the tree for what felt like a long time, watching the figures work. One of them reached into the open panel and withdrew a long, thin tool that glowed at the tip. Another knelt and placed both hands on a section of the craft’s underbelly. The hum changed pitch for a moment, then settled back into its steady tone.

Facchini shifted his weight. A twig snapped under his boot.

The nearest figure stopped. It turned its hooded head toward him with a motion that was too smooth, too quick. For several seconds it remained perfectly still. Then it raised one arm. In its hand was a small rectangular device.

A fan of brilliant white-blue light burst from it — not a beam, but a sudden crackling sheet that crossed the clearing and struck him full in the chest and face.

It felt as though every nerve in his body had been pulled tight and then released at once. His muscles locked. He was thrown backward against the oak and slid to the ground. For several seconds he could not breathe. His vision flared white, then went dark at the edges. A high ringing filled his ears. He tasted metal. When he tried to move his arms, they responded slowly, as if the signals were traveling through oil.

Through the haze he saw the figure lower the device. The other beings had stopped working. One made a short, sharp gesture. The first turned and walked back to the disc. The panel closed. The low hum rose in pitch.

Facchini forced himself to his hands and knees. He crawled backward into the undergrowth, not caring about the noise. Behind him the craft lifted straight up, bluish lights brightening along its lower edge. Within seconds it was above the trees, then gone.

But it had left marks. The grass and low plants in a perfect circle had been pressed flat and darkened, as if exposed to intense heat. In several places small, irregular pieces of metal lay scattered on the ground. They were thin, lightweight, and unlike any scrap he had ever seen in the factories. Some had sharp, clean edges. Others were twisted, as though they had been cut or torn during the repair work.

Facchini gathered several of the pieces. He wrapped them in a handkerchief and pushed them deep into his pocket. Then he turned and began the long walk home.

The pain in his chest and stomach grew worse with every step. By the time he reached the edge of the woods his vision was narrowing again. He made it to his house, told his wife he had fallen against some machinery at work, and went to bed. He did not sleep. Every time he closed his eyes he saw the hooded figures moving around the silent machine and the sudden fan of light rushing toward him.

In the days that followed, the burns on his torso blistered and then slowly healed, leaving pale, irregular scars. The welts on his face faded, but the memory did not. He kept the metal fragments in a small wooden box under his bed. Sometimes at night he would take them out and turn them over in his hands, feeling their strange lightness and the way they seemed to hold warmth long after they should have cooled.

He never told anyone what he had seen.

Not for many years.

When he finally spoke of it, first to a few trusted friends and later to investigators who came asking questions, he described the craft and the beings as clearly as he could. He told them about the device that had fired the light, and about the way the figures had moved with such precise, unhurried purpose. He showed the scars on his body. He showed the metal fragments, which by then had been examined by several people who could not identify the alloy.

In 1962 an Italian magazine ran photographs of Bruno Facchini standing in the woods near Tradate, pointing to the place where the craft had rested. They also photographed the thin, lightweight metal fragments he had kept. By then the pieces had been examined by several people who could not identify the alloy.

He lived the rest of his life with the pale, irregular scars across his torso and the memory of the fan of light that had knocked him down. He never claimed to understand what he had seen. He only knew that on one ordinary evening something not of this world had been waiting in the dark, and when it noticed him it reached out and marked him.

The woods outside Abbiate Guazzone are still there. People still walk the old paths at dusk. But those who know the story sometimes pause when they pass the place where the trees open into a small clearing, and they listen to the silence that always seems to wait just a little too long before answering.

These two reports sit in the same region and the same time period as the alleged RS/33 crash and recovery operation near Magenta and the storage of that craft at the SIAI-Marchetti facilities in Vergiate — the same factories Facchini himself wondered about when he first saw the object.

Whether that is coincidence or context is still open. What is not open is that two ordinary Italian men, years apart, described nearly the same thing: a circular machine on the ground, figures in sealed suits working on it, and a departure that did not behave like any aircraft they knew.

Chiucini put it in writing and offered to swear to it. Facchini kept the fragments in a box under his bed for the rest of his life.

I’m MF Thomas. This is My Dark Path. Until next time my friends, good night.