Grodner Pass, ITL being encounter — July 1968

Around 1:00 a.m. on a summer night in July 1968, Walter Marino Rizzi was driving a Fiat 600 through the Dolomites of northern Italy. He had left a companion near St. Kassian around midnight and was traveling toward Campitello di Fassa by way of the Grödner, or Gardena, Pass. Thick mist and low cloud made the mountain road difficult. Feeling unusually sleepy after several near-misses on the bends, Rizzi pulled into a roadside sand dump and rested in the car. He later said he awoke to a sharp burning smell resembling ozone. After checking the Fiat and finding no obvious mechanical problem, he noticed a brilliant light lower on the slope, perhaps five hundred meters away. At first it suggested an illuminated building, but the location was isolated. When the mist shifted, he saw what he described as an enormous silvery-white domed disc standing in a meadow on three landing legs. Orange and violet light formed a narrow halo around the hull, yet the surrounding ground reportedly remained unusually dark and without normal shadows. Near the craft was a mechanical figure about three meters tall. Rizzi described it as a robot with three legs and four arms, apparently performing work beside the object. He moved closer until, at approximately three meters, he felt immobilized by an invisible boundary. In one version he threw a stone toward the object and saw it disappear in a flash. He then perceived a warning that another step would destroy him. A smaller humanoid came into view. Rizzi described the figure as roughly 1.6 meters tall, with broad shoulders, a narrow waist, smooth olive-green skin and unusually large, slightly upturned eyes. It wore a close-fitting uniform and a transparent hood enclosing the head and shoulders, with tubes behind it. The feet were hooflike, and its movement had a light hopping quality. The being raised a hand in greeting, smiled and engaged Rizzi in what he understood as a long telepathic conversation. Later retellings attribute extensive claims about the visitors' origin, biology, technology, animal collecting and warnings about Earth's future to that exchange. The accessible summaries do not preserve a precise, step-by-step departure sequence. They do report three large landing traces afterward. Rizzi kept the experience private for about eleven years, first speaking publicly in 1979. Hans Hermann and Daphne Markert interviewed him, prepared maps and site photographs, and supplied material later published in Flying Saucer Review in 1980.