Sighting in Saint-Marcel, October 27, 1954

Two gendarmes were returning from a night shift on bicycles, with all lights off, at about 5:15 a.m. They were talking out loud about a white patch they had noticed in the grass on the right side of the road when they heard a detonation. Immediately afterwards, on the left side of the road about 150 m away, they saw a burst of sparks either 1 m or 5 m long, 1 to 1.5 m above the ground. It was accompanied by a whistling sound, then a humming noise that quickly moved away to the north-east. The gendarmes saw no shape. When they approached, they found only frightened cows bellowing.

According to the gendarmerie investigation at the time, the brigade commander went to the site with one of the witnesses at 7:45 a.m., and the section commander went with the other at 1:30 p.m. The two accounts, gathered separately, did not contradict each other in any way. The gendarmes found an area of flattened grass measuring 1.6 m by 1.3 m, and a fence torn up over 25 m, 3.5 m from that spot, with four damaged posts, two of them broken off at ground level. Neither the owner of the pasture nor the gendarmes thought cattle were responsible for the damage.

The GEIPAN noted that cows may have flattened the grass before or after the sighting, and that a link between the ground marks and the phenomenon heard is not certain. A detonation followed by sparks and a whistling sound naturally suggests a pyrotechnic device. The area was crossed by various armies during the wars, and self-ignition of an abandoned military explosive is considered, though no crater was found. The GEIPAN found it surprising that the gendarmes saw the marks as the landing of an unidentified craft when no shape had been observed, and wondered whether the intense media frenzy over flying saucers in October 1954 played a part. The case is classified C because of insufficient information and cross-checking.