Sighting in Villiers-le-Bâcle, September 7, 2001

A representative of the prefect found three circles of scorched grass on the local football pitch, each about 30 to 40 cm across. They formed an isosceles triangle roughly 120 metres in size. Nobody reported seeing anything in the sky; there were only these marks on the ground.

The gendarmerie investigated. They found charcoal dumped in the neighbouring ditch, along with numerous vehicle tracks, since the adjacent land had recently been occupied by travellers.

At the time, the SEPRA, GEIPAN's predecessor, had classified the case as D, unexplained. The file has since been re-examined. GEIPAN no longer handles cases that involve no aerospace phase, meaning a phenomenon that a witness perceived in the sky, or very close to the sky and the ground. Ground traces are only useful when they can be tied to such an observation, which is not the case here. The testimony was therefore judged unusable and the case was reclassified as C, for insufficient data.