This story is regularly published in various anthologies of anomalous phenomena, but unfortunately, it is unclear to what extent it is true or who first narrated it.
In May 1753, a man named Alberto Gordoni, who was considered a respected member of society and worked as an artisan and gardener in the town of Taconi, Sicily, Italy, was walking through the town square when he suddenly and inexplicably vanished into thin air right before the eyes of numerous stunned witnesses.
Naturally, a search was immediately organized, and all nearby areas and houses were inspected, but Gordoni was nowhere to be found. Moreover, there were no ditches or pits in the area into which he could have presumably fallen. It seemed as though one moment the man existed, and the next moment he simply vanished from the face of the Earth.
Days turned into weeks, weeks into months, and months into years, but Gordoni remained missing. Gradually, the townspeople began to forget about him, and eventually, he was completely forgotten. Then, 22 years later, as the story goes, Gordoni suddenly reappeared in the same spot where he had disappeared. Remarkably, he looked as though he had not aged a single day during this time.
When asked what had happened to him and where he had been for so long, Gordoni insisted that he had never disappeared and that, for him, those 22 years had simply not existed.
It took several more years before Gordoni finally confided in a local priest named Mario about what had actually happened to him. According to Gordoni, on the day of his disappearance, he saw a strange shimmering tunnel before him and stepped into it.
“Alberto suddenly found himself in a tunnel that transported him to a ‘white and ambiguous’ world. There were no objects there, only bizarre accessories. Alberto saw something resembling a small canvas covered with stars and dots, each pulsating in its own way. There was a long creature with long hair that told Gordoni he had fallen into a ‘crack in time and space,’ and that returning him back would be very difficult.
Alberto begged to be sent back, but the creature took its time, explaining things about holes that open in darkness, white drops, and thoughts moving at the speed of light, about a soul without a body and a body without a soul, and about flying cities with eternally young inhabitants.”
Eventually, he was returned to the place he had been, but, according to Gordoni, he had been gone for only about half an hour at most. He had no idea that 22 years had actually passed.
Father Mario was apparently convinced that Alberto Gordoni was telling the truth and later took him back to the place where he had disappeared and reappeared to see if anything would happen again. When they arrived there, Gordoni suddenly disappeared again, this time forever.
He did not reappear a year later or even decades later. Since the disappearance occurred right before Mario’s eyes, he crossed himself and ordered the area to be fenced off, calling it the “Devil’s Trap.”
