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152 PASSPORT TO MAGONIA
cover the wheel. Inside the cockpit, a kind of radio set, complete
with wires and operated by a man with earphones, was visible.
All six pilots were busy on their instrument panels.
The incident lasted about twenty minutes. Then the object
silently took off and reached an altitude of fifty yards. Then it
went away at a dizzying speed, toward the east.
The imprints left by the undercarriage's wheels on the soft
ground have been photographed. They resembled those of normal
rubber wheels. Their length was only about two feet.
If it were possible to make three-dimensional holograms with
mass, and to project them through time, I would say this is what
the farmer saw. And with that theory we could explain many of
the apparitions: in numerous UFO cases and in some religious
miracles, the beings appeared as three-dimensional images whose
feet did not actually touch the ground. But what about the other
physical actions, such as the electric shocks?
As we read the account of the Libyan landing case, it is tempting
to assume that the farmer, far from witnessing by chance the
maneuvers of interplanetary visitors, was deliberately exposed to
a scene designed to be recorded by him and transmitted to us.
Hence, the gas masks, the instrument panels, and the radio set—
"complete with wires."
The same is true with the following Italian case, which took
place in Abbiate Guazzone, near Varese, on April 24, 1950:
At 10:00 P.M., Bruno Facchini heard and saw sparks which he
attributed to a storm, but he soon discovered a dark mass hovering
between a pole and a tree two hundred yards from his house. A man
dressed in tight-fitting clothes and wearing a helmet appeared to be
making repairs. There were three other figures working around the
huge craft. This work being over, a trap through which light had
been shining was closed, and the thing took off. Other details were
as follows: the object made a sound similar to that of a giant beehive
and the air seemed strangely warm around it. Two of the men were
standing on the ground near a ladder; the third one was on a
telescopic elevator, the base of which touched the ground, and was
holding something near a group of pipes: this produced the sparks
seen by Facchini. They were about five feet nine inches tall, dressed
in gray diving suits with an oval transparent glass in front of their
faces, which were concealed behind gray masks. From the fore portion
of the masks a flexible pipe emerged at the level of the mouth.
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NURSLINGS OF IMMORTALITY 153
They wore earphones. Inside the craft could be seen a series of
oxygen-type containers and many dials. When Facchini offered his
help, the men talked among themselves in guttural sounds, and one
of them took a cameralike device from around his neck and projected
a beam of light on Facchini, who tumbled away for several yards.
He was then caught by a rush of air and thrown again to the ground.
They subsequently ignored him as they recovered the elevator and
brought it inside the craft, which took off.
After a sleepless night, Facchini returned to the site and found
some metal fragments left by the soldering operation, also four
circular imprints and patches of scorched grass. He revealed the
observation only ten days later, when his doctor treated him for the
pains and bruises resulting from his fall and advised him to call
police. Ministry of Defense technicians who examined the metal
samples found them to consist of an "anti-friction material very
resistant to heat." The incident had other witnesses, who testified
privately.
1 ^ Had Mr. Facchini been exposed deliberately to a faked appari-
4; r \hoax? Who can afford to contrive such a complex scheme, for so
v^^^little apparent result? Is human imagination alone capable of
2 ;f ^playing such tricks on itself? Or should we hypothesize that
-j j_ i^an advanced race somewhere in the universe and sometime in the
•i'^f^future has been showing us three-dimensional space operas for
- ^ '^the last two thousand years, in an attempt to guide our civilizaj
- \ tion? If so, they certainly do not deserve our congratulations!
.. i s Are we dealing instead with a parallel universe, where there are
^h races living, and where we may go at our expense, never
/ return to the present? Are these races only semi-human, so that
^
order to maintain contact with us, they need crossbreeding
• ? J "Iwith men and women of our planet? Is this the origin of the many
•% "-f.talcs and legends where genetics plays a great role: the symbolism
** of the Virgin in occultism and religion, the fairy tales involving
human midwives and changelings, the sexual overtones of the flying
saucer reports, the biblical stories of intermarriage between
the Lord's angels and terrestrial women, whose offspring were
giants? From that mysterious universe, have objects that can
materialize and "dematcrializc" at will been projected? Are the
UFO's "windows" rather than "objects"? There is nothing to