The 1978 Italian UFO Wave

January 1978. Italy logged 46 UFO reports. A quiet start. By June the monthly count had passed 100. September brought 443. December brought 850. By 2018 CISU had catalogued more than 2,300 cases, 28% of all Italian reports up to then.

The ground was prepared. Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind had opened in Italy in March and drawn about a million viewers. J. Allen Hynek toured the country. His Rapporto sugli UFO became Italy's best-selling UFO book.

July 4, about 10:30 pm. The Monte Sona crater on Mount Etna. Air Force sergeant Attilio Di Salvatore and three companions saw three objects glowing red. One, a disc about 12 metres across with a shining yellow dome, landed about 300 metres away behind a slope. They described tall beings in white robes with long, golden hair, and shorter ones in helmeted space suits. They felt paralysed. The Carabinieri questioned them and filed a report.

September 17, Tuscany. A 25-year-old motorist, Mr Faralli, saw a bright red domed disc that looked hat-like. Two humanoids about 5 ft tall, in green coveralls and helmets with aerials, floated around his car. His engine and headlights failed. He could not move.

October moved the story out to sea. Between Ancona, Gran Sasso and Pescara, fishermen reported columns of water rising from the sea, luminous bodies between the waves, compasses gone "drunk" and radios cutting out. On the night of October 14 to 15 the fishing boat Francesco Padre sank off San Benedetto del Tronto. The brothers Vittorio and Gianfranco De Fulgentiis died. Local papers tied the tragedy to the anomalies.

November 9, about 9 pm. Coast Guard patrol boat CP 2018, Commander Nello Di Valentino and a crew of five. The radar blacked out.

Then the peak. Near Catanzaro, three police officers saw a luminous domed object hovering over the highway. They turned a spotlight on it. It shot away. At the Brindisi air base, two soldiers on patrol watched a glowing object with pulsating lights perform strange maneuvers.

December 12, about 11:45 pm, outside Navelli. Alfonso Marinelli's engine stopped. Two humanoids in luminous suits and huge oval helmets rose 90 centimetres off the ground, flew over his car and disappeared. Near Torriglia, Zanfretta would describe giant humanoids under hypnotic regression. Then, after New Year's Day 1979, the wave stopped. Abruptly.

The Italian Air Force had collected reports since 1977. After the wave, Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti named it the body responsible. Deputy Falco Accame, a former admiral, asked the Prime Minister what would be done to reassure alarmed people in Abruzzo and Marche. The Navy investigated the Adriatic. Scientists offered answers ranging from silence to gas bubbles. No single official finding on the wave has been published.

A bright bolide on the morning of September 14 explains many of that month's reports. Methane from seabed mud volcanoes could raise water columns and, if ignited, lights. Patrick Gross judges the Etna landing a probable invention tied to the Sicilian contactee Eugenio Siragusa. Edoardo Russo of CISU calls 1978 "especially a media wave". Richard Hall, in the MUFON UFO Journal, counted more than 500 cases, at least 130 of them close encounters. In 2018 CISU met in Bologna under a fitting title: "L'ondata del 1978 diventa storia".