The Extraterrestrials of Gallio

Some alleged encounters with alien beings are definitely more unusual--and frightening--than others.  For example, even the most dedicated UFOlogist would probably want to avoid what supposedly happened to 61-year-old Angelo D’Ambros of Gallio, a mountain town in northern Italy.

On the morning of November 24, 1978, D’Ambros went out to gather firewood in a copse.  After he had been working for a couple of hours, he turned around and realized that he was in the presence of two utterly bizarre, only vaguely humanoid creatures.

The beings were hovering in the air, about a foot off the ground.  They were a little over three feet high.  They were extremely thin, with yellow skin stretched tightly over their skeletal frames.  The creatures had large, elongated bald heads, with huge, pointed ears.  The eyes were white and without eyelids.  The noses were huge, set above equally large mouths featuring a set of pointed tusk-like teeth.  They were wearing what resembled tightly-fitting overalls, leaving bare their disproportionately long hands and feet.

The sinister-looking creatures stared at D’Ambros with what seemed to be a great and--considering the circumstances--very unnerving curiosity.  The shorter of the two began gliding around him silently.

Poor horrified D’Ambros didn’t know what to do, which is quite understandable.  He summoned the strength to shout “Help!” as loudly as he could, and in a shaking voice asked the beings who they were and what they wanted.  The creatures responded with unintelligible mutterings.  Then, the taller of the two began grabbing at D’Ambros’ billhook.  The Italian, very sensibly, was determined not to let it out of his hands.  As they struggled over the implement, D’Ambros felt an electrical discharge run up his arm, but sheer terror gave him the strength to hang on to his weapon.  With his free hand, D’Ambros grabbed a large branch to swing at the creature.  Obviously recognizing his intentions, the two beings gave up the fight and glided off.

By this point, D’Ambros’ anger at these pesky extraterrestrials was stronger than his fear.  He ran after them as fast as he could, but he soon lost sight of them.  However, in a clearing a short distance away, he found a peculiar solid, metallic oblong disc resting on four legs.  The disc was red on top and blue on the bottom, with the legs resembling aluminum.  It was about 13 feet long and six feet high at its center.  As D’Ambros stared at the thing, he saw the freakishly long hand of one of the beings reach out from inside the craft and close a sort of trap door.  Then the disc took off in a burst of red flame, instantly vanishing behind high trees.

At first, D’Ambros was inclined to keep his odd experience to himself, but after a fruitless attempt to understand what he had seen, he finally confided in his son-in-law, Luciano Munari.  Munari visited the site where the beings had appeared.  In the clearing where the disc had rested, he noted a circular area where the grass was black, flattened, and rotated in a counterclockwise direction.  There were also two U-shaped impressions, 7 inches long, an inch wide, and one inch deep.  Unfortunately, Munari had not thought to bring a camera with him, and subsequent snowstorms prevented him from obtaining convincing photos of what he had found.

The whole weird business eventually wound up in the local press, which brought it to the attention of investigators from the Italian National UFO Research Centre (C.U.N.)  When C.U.N. researchers visited D’Ambros and Munari several times in the fall of 1979.  They concluded that both the men and their families were “people who enjoy the highest reputation in their community, and very plain straightforward folk, deeply engaged in their own daily activities.”  They added that D’Ambros in particular was “not a person of great education, and consequently hardly likely to be subject to flights of fancy.”

In his article about the episode which was published in the “Flying Saucer Review” in 1983, C.U.N. board member Antonio Chiumiento could only conclude that “To our way of seeing it, it is impossible to dispose of the case by attributing it to a hallucination, since there is no proof whatsoever in support of such a solution.”

I suppose there’s nothing more to say.  However, I am left with one question that, to me, adds considerably to the creepiness of this episode:  Why did this rat-faced alien want that billhook?