Mysterious encounter with an alien in Italy (4 photos)

People often experience hallucinations that are extremely realistic, becoming victims of their own obsession, or, on the contrary, deliberately mystifying others or fantasizing for their own pleasure, just to become the object of everyone's attention, at least for a while. It's a completely different matter when the evidence is supported by photographs or video footage.





Photo by Filiberto Caponi

One such case, reliably documented by photographs, occurred in 1993 in Italy, in the village of Pretape di Arquata del Tronto.

There, starting in May, some mysterious creature appeared, announcing the surrounding area at night with heartbreaking cries and stealing chickens from barns. It took some with it, and drank the blood of some and left it next to the chicken coop, like a South American chupacabra. Only it looked completely different: not like a disgusting creature covered in fur and spikes, but like a humanoid resembling a man, about a meter tall, with disproportionately long legs and short arms.

For some reason, the overwhelming majority of encounters were attended by 24-year-old Filiberto Caponi, a professional painter and ceramicist. Perhaps this was because he treated the alien without aggression. The reward for this was five high-quality Polaroid photographs. Moreover, twice or three times the creature literally posed for Filiberto.



They first met late in the evening on May 9th. Filiberto returned from a friendly party, parked his car in the garage, and suddenly heard piercing screams coming from the grass. He thought it was some kind of animal in trouble and decided to help. Suddenly, a strange, humanoid creature leaped out of the darkness right in front of him and took off running.

The incident so intrigued the young Italian that he literally launched a nighttime photo hunt around his home. The first two photographs were taken on the night of May 23. One was from a great distance and proved to be a failure, but the second was taken from literally a couple of meters away, when Filiberteau, stealthily, almost overtook the mysterious creature. Curiously, the photographs, which had been stored in a wooden box at home, had undergone strange changes: they seemed to have become embossed.





Photo by Filiberto Caponi

On July 10, a reporter from the weekly magazine "Stop" visited Caponi's house. Leonid Barezzi, and a week later this publication published an article with drawings based on Filiberteau's photographs. A little earlier, another article appeared in Il Messagero. Caponi began receiving calls and letters from all sorts of people: writers, children, self-proclaimed sorcerers, religious fanatics and sectarians, and ordinary curious people. He received several calls from a man with a strong Florentine accent, claiming to have seen the same creature and been badly burned while trying to catch it, and later being chased by men in black.



Photo by Filiberto Caponi

The Pretarese Humanoid reappeared in August. On the night of August 10th-11th, Filiberto Caponi photographed him sitting in the grass, gazing intently at a street lamp. Late in the evening of August 19th, the "elf" himself came to Caponi's house again. This time, his legs were unbandaged and he sat calmly on the pavement, staring at a cat perched in the second-story window. The artist went outside with his Polaroid camera and, overcome with extreme excitement, calmly photographed the alien twice. The creature then stood up and ran away. Both shots were of the highest quality. After this incident, the "elf" disappeared again for a long time, only to reappear for the last time on the rainy night of October 9th-10th. This time, Filibert went outside with his grandmother, Antonia Perla, who, despite it being two in the morning, was also awake. They approached the alien standing in the rain. The grandmother, who had previously been terrified of even talking about the mysterious creature, smiled upon seeing it this time and said, "How small it is, how cute! Where is it looking?" Filibert took another high-quality photograph. This time, the humanoid only fled when the artist tried to touch it. Soon after, a mysterious glow was observed at night on the summit of a hill near Pretar. Many decided it was aliens arriving to retrieve their lost companion. After this, encounters with the mysterious being ceased forever.

The photographs were eventually sold to the prestigious magazine "Visto," which published a four-page article with an expert opinion from Robert Pinotti, vice president of the National Ufological Center (CUN). Ultimately, the police and prosecutors intervened, and the photographs were confiscated.

I first read this story about 20 years ago in a book on UFO studies. I was young and passionate, I believed in miracles. But now I've decided to find it again. I have a question: how much pizza dough did it take to make this masterpiece?