On the morning of July 31, 1952. Giampiero Monguzzi, an engineer from the Edison company, on a trip with his wife Pinuccia Radaelli to the Bernina mountains (Sondrio) above the Scerscen glacier, all of a sudden he felt a freezing breeze that seemed to produce a similar noise to that of the shrouds of an ancient sailing ship; then, suddenly, the surroundings became silent. “I was very close to my wife, I was screaming and I realized that she didn’t hear me. And I also saw that my wife opened her mouth, but her voice did not come out. It was a ‘compact silence’, an “emptiness” that could not stand upright.” Immediately after this feeling of “absolute silence” (typical of many sightings and even some Ufo abductions, ed), the Monguzzis sighted a large glittering object rising from the lower part of the glacier and settling silently on the snow. It was a huge silver plate, at least ten meters wide. “I had the camera over my shoulder, but when I took the shot I didn’t hear the usual click. Maybe I hadn’t taken any pictures. I stayed to watch. The disc remained lifeless for a few seconds. Then I saw a man clad in a metallic-shine diving suit coming towards me. Instinct told me to run away but fear pinned my legs. Maybe she hadn’t seen me. In fact the man (at least I think it was a man) was walking towards the outside of the circumference of the disc. He paced it around as if he were inspecting the device. He stopped every two or three steps looking up at the aircraft. He walked very awkward in that suit that had not well defined contours and seemed almost hairy. He was holding a cylindrical instrument similar to a flashlight. I don’t know how long all of this lasted, maybe five minutes from when the disk landed on the glacier, but I can’t exactly establish a precise time.” He walked around it as if inspecting the apparatus. He stopped every two or three steps looking up at the aircraft. He walked very awkward in that suit that had not well defined contours and seemed almost hairy. He was holding a cylindrical instrument similar to a flashlight. I don’t know how long all of this lasted, maybe five minutes from when the disk landed on the glacier, but I can’t exactly establish a precise time.” He walked around it as if inspecting the apparatus. He stopped every two or three steps looking up at the aircraft. He walked very awkward in that suit that had not well defined contours and seemed almost hairy. He was holding a cylindrical instrument similar to a flashlight. I don’t know how long all of this lasted, maybe five minutes from when the disk landed on the glacier, but I can’t exactly establish a precise time.”

Once the inspection was completed, the being presumably re-entered the disc from a side entrance, invisible from Monguzzi’s observation point, given that at a certain moment the UFO took off, with one part that began to rotate, and darted Street. In that instant Monguzzi snapped two more photographs. “As the puck receded, I felt life come back around me. I called my wife and the voice came out. The wind had started making that strange music again like in the shrouds of a sailing ship”. At that point the two, even if frightened, had the strength to approach the landing site; however, they found no trace of the disc’s descent, not even a footprint.” We didn’t leave footprints on the ice either, but the puck must have had an extraordinary weight, it was impossible that it hadn’t left any marks. If you asked me how it managed to fly, I think of a very powerful magnetic force contrary to that of the earth’s gravity. Only that silent force could absorb the sound waves and, by repelling the Earth, allow the craft to rise. However, when the saucer left the upper Scerscen, it did so at an estimated speed of between 200 and 300 kilometers per hour.” A few weeks later Monguzzi published his story in the press.

A French agency said it was willing to buy the photos for five million (an enormous sum at the time); an American publication said it was equally available and a film house even proposed to shoot a documentary on the close encounter. But when Monguzzi was now at the height of his popularity, on 22 October, as a guest at the Milan editorial office of Radio Sera, he publicly confessed that he had created a fake! The photos had actually been made using a cardboard model and a puppet; the scam had been concocted together with two of his cousins, Mario and Alfredo Gaiani, with the collaboration of a mountain guide from Scerscen. Monguzzi admitted that he had made the forgery to mock the journalists, to, the press wrote, “demonstrate that he, an aspiring journalist, had the numbers to be hired and not rejected, as had happened up to the day before”. As proof of what was said, Monguzzi had himself photographed with the cardboard model and the puppet that simulated the alien visitor.

Thus ended the Monguzzi case.

And he died amid controversy, given that several ufologists repeatedly underlined, and in vain, that the models shown by Monguzzi did not correspond perfectly to what was seen in the photos. Except that in the middle of an investigation into certain strange traces in a field in Lombardy we came into contact with Mr. Antonio Sprecapane.

“I knew Monguzzi”, Sprecapane tells us, “because we both worked at Edison Gas. One day Monguzzi called me telling me that he wanted to be helped in the creation of a model sketch of the Upper Scerscen. He told me that he had to show that he had photographed a flying saucer over the mouth of the Scerscen, at the edge of the icefall. That’s exactly what he told me. He had to prove that he was a good photographer, that was his motivation ”. When we ask Sprecapane if the photos were fake, our man shakes his head. “Honestly, I’ve seen the original negatives. In the first sequences Monguzzi and his wife were seen on the mountain, in the middle there were the photos of the disc, and then again the mountain. Therefore, the photographs had been taken on the Bernina and not at home. If you look at the photos of the disk on the glacier, you will realize that it is impossible to recreate the same slope. The photos were clearly taken by a person who was much lower than the puck.

Since, when we recreated the Bernina model, we did it on the ground, it was impossible to photograph from below. Among other things, the mountains of the model were a gouge, with the earth trying to simulate the rock. After the denial came out, Monguzzi showed me the model of the record, it was a cardboard cone held together by scotch tape. Of the alien, he told me it was a puppet assembled with wool and wire.

It seemed to me a ridiculous explanation.” But why, then, had Monguzzi preferred to pass as a visionary? “When the photos came out, there was an uproar. Monguzzi was interrogated by CIA agents and by our secret services; he told me that his photos of him had been blown up to wall height by the Air Force (he didn’t tell me which country). He was truly terrified. I remember that at a certain moment he told me to get out of the story, that he was in trouble.

I, who had a family, preferred to obey. After all, Monguzzi paid dearly for it. He was kicked out of Edison.

The executives, who at first queued up to be photographed by the press with him, after the denial became nowhere to be found. And they fired him. I remember that after an interview with Rai we were interrogated, they asked me if in the photos, now declared false, I really recognized the Bernina; I was also grilled by Edison executives, who wanted to know what role I had played in the affair.” Sprecapane claims that Monguzzi would have made the model before even disclosing the photos! Before, not after. This would mean that the engineer from Monza, foreseeing trouble, would have built an escape route.

So what did Monguzzi fear? The answer is perhaps in a statement he made to the newspaper Il Popolo on 23 October 1952: “I only published the photos two months after the sighting because I was scared. I am young and have a son, and at 29 I didn’t want to be kidnapped or killed. Because, although he is personally convinced that it was an inhabitant of another planet, yet the disc could have belonged to a great Power that would have done everything possible to eliminate the indiscreet discoverer of a formidable military secret.” Had Monguzzi actually photographed a top-secret prototype and then been forced to pass as a cheater, on pain of death? Or more simply had he stumbled upon the classic debunking and cover up that happened to many unfortunate UFO witnesses during the Cold War years?

After all, it was the 1950s and America had put its best disinformation agents on track. Of course, to find out more, it would be necessary to talk to the person concerned, but Monguzzi seems to have disappeared from circulation. When we asked Sprecapane about it, he replied: “I don’t have precise information, but one of our former Edison colleagues told me that a strange thing had happened to him. that he had died in a curious car accident.”