Sighting in Montpellier, June 28, 1998

At about one in the morning, during the night of 27 to 28 June 1998, a driver's vehicle suddenly failed completely: the engine, headlights and radio all cut out. The driver pulled over to the roadside and noticed a green glow ahead of the car. They got out and walked closer, but felt as though they were paralysed. They then saw a conical object hovering motionless above the ground. A being was moving toward the inside of the object, which held three seats, two of them occupied. The craft then rose quickly and vertically. The witness gradually calmed down and got back on the road.

The next day, the witness realised they had a significant memory gap covering part of the previous evening. They went back to the site with someone else but saw no trace. The gendarmerie found no trace or clue either, and only one account was recorded. It described a conical craft with no wings and small beings with oval heads and four fingers going aboard via a gangway before takeoff.

The case was first classed D. On review, GEIPAN found that this classification did not fit its current methodology: a single account is not consistent enough to establish a truly unexplained phenomenon. A second independent witness or indisputable traces, such as photos or ground marks, would have been needed. Reliability is also an issue, since the witness could not remember the previous four hours, so the experience may result from some other kind of memory distortion. The case is therefore classed C: the testimony cannot be used.