Antonio Urzi’s ET contact case is well known within the UFO international community. Still highly debated in Italy, the case stands uniquely in the whole history of ufology. In fact, there is no memory of anybody that has produced more than 2,500 video recordings of UFO sightings like Antonio Urzi has done since he began to talk about his experiences at the end of the nineties. Antonio, originally from Livorno and now 37, and his wife Simona live in Cinisello Balsamo, a small town bordering the north of Milan, in the region of Lombardy. Located a few miles off the metropolitan center and densely populated, Cinisello Balsamo is an industrial and residential area, punctuated by high buildings, crowded condominiums and some sparse green in a lot of cold cement.
Despite these uncanny conditions, almost every day Antonio has been able to capture hundreds of images of UFO’s, shooting with his video camera from a small dormer window in a top floor condo. Maneuvering just above his head either at far or close distance, the anomalous objects apparently are willing to show up to him in many spectacular ways, patterns, and shapes. Antonio’s UFOs span from singular balls of light to couples and numerous spherical luminous objects in swarms (in Spanish “flotillas”, small fleets), from structured metallic discs pivoting and standing still in the air to dome shaped crafts silently hovering, rotating and shining till they disappear to the naked eye.
I met Antonio and Simona more than ten years ago during a conference in the city of Viareggio, a hot spot for American and German tourists on the sunny Tirreno coast. I have reason to believe that I was one the first ufologist they wanted to approach to disclose their story. Sincerely, I was stunned. The couple looked to me sincerely willing to understand what was happening to them, and why. I did not have an answer then, I don’t have it now, despite my efforts. I followed the case closely for about five years and after a very long video interview that the couple gave to me in 2005, I finally reached the conclusion that the case was genuine. My opinion was mainly supported by the positive results of the video analysis conducted by the British researcher Andrew Fry to whom I sent a dvd copy of some original videos shot by Antonio. In the last five years I had no more chance to personally investigate a case that in the meantime was becoming very popular in Italy. With such a massive public exposure obviously Urzi obtained an unprecedented visibility and lots of criticism too.
Any serious researcher knows that a selective factor in this field of study is the “strangeness coefficient” of a case, the highest it is the more is worthy any effort to ascertain its authenticity. The great oddity of the Urzi affair is evident. Too many videos, one can say, and too good to be true, one can argue. However, in several instances, the sighting and Antonio’s ability to film the event occurred in the presence of other witnesses, including professional camera operators of the Italian most important TV networks RAI and Mediaset. What is really noticeable is that very often wherever Antonio goes to participate to a UFO conference, strange flying objects do appear in the sky in the same time. And this has happened not only in Italy, but in many other locations around the world. The experience continues to repeat itself. All of a sudden, while the Urzis and friends are walking the streets, Antonio points his finger to the sky and the evidence of what he is seeing is often recorded by other people’s cameras. This has happened in February 2009 during the International UFO Congress in Laughlin, Nevada, reoccurred during the Istanbul New Age and UFO Conference in June 2009 and it happened again during the Cumbre Mundial OVNI held in Mexico City on March 19-21, 2010. This last time, witnesses to the sightings in the Mexican capital with Antonio and Simona, where also Open Minds editors Antonio Huneeus and Alejandro Rojas, and fellow Italian-American journalist Paola Harris. To their eyes, it was indisputable that the bright luminous objects whose presence Urzi first spotted and then recorded with his camera, were really there.
Antonio sightings are continuous, constantly increasing in number and frequency and witnessed also by dozens of people in such occasions as large international UFO conferences. It is understandable therefore that Antonio had become a worldwide sensation.
Antonio and Simona have many detractors, however, especially in Italy where their case was presented several times in popular TV shows, viciously attacked and in a couple of cases. Some detractors and debunkers are disputing the truthfulness of his experiences. Nonetheless, while the scrutiny over Antonio Urzi’s images has to continue until the case is proven one way or the other, it seems that he is a genuine participant inf an ET contact case, supported by miles of images.
His position also, is pretty clear. He feels the urge to get his camera, which every day he aims to the sky. Then he just waits patiently and they appear, as if attracted by a powerful human catalyst.
