While images of UFOs can often be forged, the Mediterranean UFO Centre (Cufom) has published a new document featuring high-quality photos and videos to back up each sighting.

Cuform President Angelo Carannante says that the images are "suprising and eloquent."

"It seems that in 2017 there has been a leap in quality in the objects sighted, given the unusual clarity of some unidentified flying objects, filmed or photographed, that had been absent for years and seem to be back," he added.

Of particular interest to UFO enthusiasts are the skies of Liguria, a crescent-shaped city in the Northwestern part of the country, nestled on the Italian Riviera. Considered a land of sightings not unlike our Roswell, the city has reported sightings going back to the '40s, and has earned something of a reputation for it through films like the 2004 Italian-language B movie, InvaXon - Alieni in Liguria.

The film recounts the story of Pier Zanfretta, a local whose purported 1978 alien encounter during his time as a night watchman changed his life. Zanfretta held his account of meeting a large, terrifying green man and a triangular-shaped UFO even under hypnosis, recounting with painful attention to detail how he was abducted and subsequently contacted by the aliens on multiple occasions.

Most notable, Carannante says, is a significant rise in the reports of flying discs that, after years of absence, seem to have returned. Citing UFO photos from Lavagna in Genoa, Arco Felice near Naples and a particularly loud one in Civitavecchia that flew 50 meters above sea level, he recalls one particular incident in the summer of 2017 when "the birds flew in a squardron, giving rise to the spectacular flotilla phenomenon during a concert by Ennio Morricone. Cufom's dossier also records sightings from towns all across the country.

Italy's first reported UFO sighting of 2017 came last January, when an unusual bright green spherical object was caught on camera in Salento, changing its shape and color multiple times over a four-year period.

All of this would be business as usual were it not for the fact that UFO sightings in America were uncharted in 2017, too. New York City had an astonishingly high number of sightings, and even professionally-trained pilots failed to identify the crafts they saw in the air. Whether or not its comforting to know, it seems that Italy felt the surge in activity, too.