Fortunato Zanfretta (Italy, 1978)

A security guard reported repeated abductions by large greenish beings in Liguria.

The Zanfretta UFO incident was an alleged alien encounter that occurred on December 6, 1978 near the town of Torriglia, in the province of Genoa, northern Italy, and which involved security guard Pier Fortunato Zanfretta, who claimed to have had a close encounter with an extraterrestrial being during a night patrol and to have also seen a triangular spaceship that blinded him with an extremely intense light before disappearing into the sky. Following the media frenzy caused by the news spreading across the country, Zanfretta agreed to undergo a regressive hypnosis session, through which he reportedly remembered being abducted and taken aboard the extraterrestrial craft. However, the use of hypnosis was deemed invalidating by skeptics, as it has no scientific validity and tends to induce false memories in patients. Zanfretta later claimed to have been abducted by the extraterrestrial beings 11 times between 1978 and 1981. He also claimed to have received an alien artifact, but was never able to prove its existence. His story is the most documented alleged alien abduction case in Italian ufology.