Almost a quarter of a century after the sighting in Calalzo, the witness Giuseppe Giacomelli adds details to the story
THE MYSTERY. An “X Files” in Cadore sauce. The initiative of the association “Idea musica” of Vigo, on Facebook on Friday, brought back the episode of the sighting of a UFO in Cadore. Twenty-four years later, the scholar Giovanni De Donà rekindled the light on what, in 1997, was an event as much discussed as it was fascinating: unidentified flying objects in the skies of Centro Cadore.
“We are talking about an event that took place in October 1997”, says De Donà, “which attracted everyone’s attention for months and months”.
The protagonist, perhaps in spite of himself, was a young man from Calalzo, Giuseppe Giacomelli, who with his Polaroid immortalized, in broad daylight, a flying object in the sky of the town.
«Giuseppe is a quiet boy, free from protagonism», continues De Donà, «he had kept for himself and for a few close friends the photos that documented the fact because he did not want to be teased by his friends. To convince him to tell everything were his employer, Antonio Iafrate, and above all the ufologist Antonio Chiumiento who certified the goodness of those photographs ».
Giacomelli himself rewound the tape of memories, recounting a quarter of a century after that episode. «It was an afternoon in October, while I was working on the terrace of the house near the little church of Caravaggio, looking up into the valley between Calalzo and Rizzios I saw an object moving in the sky. At first I thought it was a hang glider or a hot air balloon, because I didn’t hear any engine noise. Then, looking at it better, I noticed the particular circular shape “.
“The object was moving slowly, it was dark gray, almost black. I then decided to photograph it, I ran into the house to take my Polaroid. When I returned to the terrace the object was still there; I took the photo and then I looked down at the camera to check that the image was coming out. When I looked at the sky again, the disc was gone. The object was very large, the photo does not give an exact idea of the size, between 40 and 50 meters “.
On the same day Giuseppe saw the flying object again, just above the Molinà stream. “It was an incredible scene, the valley was illuminated by this object, it looked like a meteorite. He headed straight towards the Marmarole, stopped for a moment, got up and then accelerated and disappeared into the night ».
The sighting of Giacomelli was not the only one: the mayor of San Nicolò, Giancarlo Ianese, together with his daughter Cristina, on the same evening of 16 October 1997 saw a luminous sphere moving on Mount Zovo. The object was photographed and simultaneously filmed with the VHS camera by Cristina.
Other reports concerned Vigo and Casera Razzo. But there is more: a confirmation of the truthfulness and of Giacomelli’s words and photo comes from the US Navy. Some films of unidentified flying objects have just been declassified: one, surprisingly, is absolutely a photocopy of the one photographed by Giacomelli in Calalzo.
“The fact remains, however, that even in Cadore, as in the rest of the world, certain phenomena do not find a logical and scientific explanation”, concludes De Donà. –