Sighting in Poncey-sur-l'Ignon, October 4, 1954

On 2 October, at 7:40 pm, a witness who had just finished milking the cows noticed a light in the sky that lit up the yard. They first took it for the Moon, but its shape looked odd: a luminous vertical cylinder about 1.5 m tall and 80 cm wide, orange with a green glow, moving low down near the buildings. Three people close to the witness were called and saw it travel from north to south. One described it as a ball the size of a football, more orange than a light bulb, and silent. The Moon, very low in the south-west, could not be ruled out.

On 4 October, around 7:30 pm, a witness closing their shutters saw a yellowish light to the north, shaped like a mushroom, like a transparent globe lit from inside, about 15 m up and 50 m away, the size of a cooker. There was no noise. Panicking, they took refuge with a neighbour. Around 8:30 pm, relatives found a rectangular patch in the meadow, roughly 1.50 m by 0.60 m and 5 cm deep, with overturned clods scattered within a 4 m radius and live white worms. Around 8:45 pm, another witness saw a wingless, cigar-shaped, luminous object cross the sky quickly from north to south.

The gendarmes, informed on the 5th, rejected the prank hypothesis. The Moon was ruled out for the 4th, while vehicle headlights and wild boars remained possible but unconfirmed, and a hoax could not be excluded. No link between the lights and the marks was proven. GEIPAN classified the case C for lack of verifiable information, in a context of heavy UFO press coverage in 1954.