One case from the night of October 20, near the town of Como, involved thirty-seven-year-old Renzo Pugina. He had just parked his car when he saw, standing near a tree, a four-foot being wearing a “scaly” luminous suit. The being paralyzed Pugina with a beam from an instrument. It didn’t work fully: Pugina made a motion when clenching his fist that seemed to free him. He then rushed at the being, who fled to a craft and took off. An oily spot was found at the site. Pugina, known locally as a trustworthy person, arrived home in shock and went to bed with a high fever. Italian police investigated the sighting. The next night, in Melito, Italy, a man walking in a field heard a rustling noise and saw a strange craft land. As he got closer, he saw a being wearing a diving suit coming out of the craft, which emitted rays of light that flooded the countryside (claims of intensely bright light have appeared in many military reports of UFOs, including those from the United States). The witness was paralyzed. A dog barking in the distance may have prompted the being to re-enter the craft and depart.113
A multiple-witness sighting of a landed craft and humanoid occupants occurred in Milan on October 28. The story has several dubious elements, but on the same night, U.S. Ambassador to Italy, Clare Booth Luce, saw a UFO over Rome. Meanwhile, across the Adriatic Sea, the Yugoslav government ordered its own secret inquiry into UFOs on October 27.114
Another typically strange Italian case occurred on November 14 in the northern town of Isola. A farmer saw a cigar-shaped craft land nearby and hid to watch it. Three very short creatures emerged, dressed in metallic diving suits. They became interested in his caged rabbits, a step that caused the man to reach for his rifle. When he tried to shoot, however, the rifle not only failed to work but became so heavy that he dropped it. The beings took his rabbits, entered their craft and departed silently, leaving a bright trail. Interviewers considered the man to be reliable.115
Across the Atlantic Ocean, reports coming from South America were equally strange. To be sure, there was no shortage of traditional UFO reports. On October 24, for five hours in the afternoon, Brazilian air force officers and men, as well as airline personnel and civilians, saw a formation of apparently mechanical devices moving at tremendous speeds over Porto Alegre AFB. According to a local press release, the phenomenon was reported immediately to the air ministry in Rio De Janeiro with a request for investigation. The base command stated that “it was impossible to calculate the altitude or velocity at which the objects moved, but the speed was greater than any of which the base has knowledge. Their general shape was circular, silver-colored, and shimmering.” A startling incident involving a Brazilian airliner occurred on November 21. The plane was bound for Rio de Janeiro flying at eight thousand feet when it encountered a formation of nineteen glowing UFOs, each more than one hundred feet in diameter. Thirteen passengers stampeded the plane, including one screaming woman who ran into the pilot’s compartment. The objects flew by at a tremendous speed, and the story made the Brazilian press. The next evening, in Santa Maria, Brazil, a radio operator at a local air base saw a dark object about one hundred feet in diameter hovering at treetop height. Accompanied by four other people, he watched it for several hours. It glowed at times and occasionally came close to the ground.116
However, people in Brazil also claimed to be seeing aliens. In Pontal on the night of November 4, a man fishing in the Pardo River saw a wobbling craft descend and land. It looked like two washbowls placed together and was perhaps twenty feet in diameter. Too terrified to move, he saw three small men, dressed in white and wearing tight-fitting skull caps, exit the craft. They gathered vegetables and water, then flew away. In Curitiba, at 3:30 A.M. on November 13, a witness saw a disc-shaped object on the railroad tracks, and three dwarfs nearby wearing tight-fitting suits. The object took off when the man approached.117
