Sighting in Bennecourt, March 8, 1978

Shortly before 7 a.m., a motorist was driving when they noticed, through trees, glimmers of various colours coming from a field. On reaching the field, they saw a large, very shiny, metallic grey-blue object shaped like an upturned bowl. It was motionless and silent, with flashing lights on its base. Frightened, the witness drove off after about a minute, without waiting to see what the object would do. They returned at midday with work colleagues, who noted a circular imprint on the ground there.

The next day, alerted by rumour, the gendarmerie contacted the witness and went to the site. They found no particular marks apart from those of a tractor. According to the witness, many curious onlookers had trampled the spot.

GEIPAN classified the case C, unusable, because it goes beyond its own remit: the phenomenon was described on the ground, and nothing rules out that it arrived or left over land; the examination of the marks proves nothing either way. Within the limits of its analysis, GEIPAN considers the visual description only moderately strange and consistent with a vehicle with lights in a field near the road before dawn, the darkness and the improbability of a vehicle there at that hour possibly having favoured a misidentification. The presence of such a vehicle could be linked to illicit activity such as poaching, which cannot be verified. GEIPAN stresses the weakness of the file: the accounts, including those of the colleagues, were given at the gendarmerie's request, the object's disappearance was not observed, the gendarmerie did not find any circular marks, and collective excitement may have influenced the statement, while the near-identical, minimal descriptions of the marks leave open the unverifiable possibility of prior discussion.