Case description
The alleged Montebenichi encounter was first reported to ufologists in 1983, more than fifty years after its supposed occurrence in August 1930. Surveyor Edoardo Lavacchi said he had heard the story directly from an unnamed local farm woman while working in the area that summer. Her age differs markedly in later summaries; the 1983 account describes a woman in her forties, not a securely identified sixteen-year-old.
She had reportedly washed two pairs of handmade black wool stockings in the Ambrella stream and hung them on a wire. A hissing sound and gust of wind drew her attention to a shimmering, spinning-top-shaped object roughly twenty metres away. Its lower hatch opened and a ladder descended. Two small figures, about a metre tall, emerged, circled her while making chirping sounds, took the stockings and returned inside. The object then rose rapidly with another hiss and gust.
Investigators could confirm the locality and that surveyors had worked there, but did not recover a contemporary newspaper report or identify the woman. Some later claims of local recollection are also secondhand. The strong similarity to the nearby Cennina stocking-taking story of 1954 raises possible memory contamination or imitation, rather than proving an earlier event. The plate is labelled a late secondhand account and keeps the figures' undocumented appearance approximate.
