The Amicizia (Friendship) case: the W56 beings of Rocca Pia

Bruno Sammaciccia was born in Ancona on 22 April 1926. Sources describe him as a psychologist, theologian and Catholic historian. By his circle's account, it began with a parchment showing the Rocca Pia fortress. Automatic writing followed, in Italian, Latin and Greek. It led the men to the Fortezza Pia, on the highest point of Ascoli Piceno.

Spring 1956. Sammaciccia went to the fortress with two friends, Giulio and Giancarlo. Two humanoid figures emerged from behind the castle. They were human in every way but one. Size. One was a little over a metre tall. The other was about three metres. The beings called themselves "Amici." Friends. They were on a planetary mission lasting several centuries. They had not come to bring civilisation.

The friendship lasted about 22 years. The group called its visitors the W56, which Gaspare De Lama read as "Viva il '56." They lived in underground and undersea bases around Pescara and the Adriatic coast. They ate no meat. They asked for fruit, vegetables, strontium and barium nitrate. One, Dimpietro, drove a white-and-blue Citroën DS, liked red wine and cigars, built a violin and played Chopin.

They spoke Italian in person, and through telepathy, radios, tape reels and letters that appeared from nowhere. Their discs had a raised central dome and could emerge from water. De Lama called them flying laboratories. Their power was Uredda, the energy of love drawn from the group's harmony. Quarrels, ego and jealousy drained it. Against them stood the CTR, the Contrary Ones. In 1978 the bases were reportedly destroyed or given up. That year luminous spheres emerged from the Adriatic, alarming fishermen and coast guard.

Photographs carried the case. Four pictures of domed discs, taken at Pescara on 27 September 1957, appeared in Alberto Perego's Sono Extraterrestri! in 1958. De Lama photographed craft in Milan, and his 1962 picture ran on the cover of Domenica del Corriere. Stefano Breccia, an engineer and university lecturer, took his own in summer 1964. A photograph of a being called Kenio dates from about 1976. No radar data, physical traces or official records have been found.

The story stayed private until 2007. That year Breccia published Contattismi di massa at Sammaciccia's request. Sammaciccia had died on 11 January 2003. He had also faced a fraud case, accused with accomplices of exploiting an elderly couple. He was convicted at first instance in 1997. On appeal, on 11 October 2002, the case lapsed under the statute of limitations. De Lama said his friend was unjustly accused over a money matter.

The ufologist Romano Di Bernardo reported that photos presented as a UFO interior were settings from an amusement park in Las Vegas. De Lama called the photos in Breccia's book worthless, and the two main protagonists denied on air that Kenio was an alien. Breccia admitted that photos from different landings had been mixed. Defenders answer that the witnesses were educated professionals who gained nothing.

Breccia's book appeared in English as Mass Contacts in 2009. Timothy Good covered the case in Earth: An Alien Enterprise. Italia 1 aired craft footage on Extremamente on 7 January 2013. Visitors, prank or elaborate deception, the Friendship case is still argued over in Italy.