At an unusual public meeting in Washington, a panel of experts commissioned by NASA to look into the delicate issue of UFOs hammered home the need in early June to collect more data to arrive, in the future, to explain these phenomena. The report is due to be published in the summer of 2023 when “existing data and witness statements are insufficient to provide conclusive evidence, said David Spergel at the time. “We need high quality data”, had further advanced the astrophysicist in charge of presiding over this work.
It was counting without the help of 20 minutes and above all of its journalists in the regions who, on this July 2 World UFO Day, have compiled for you stories of unidentified objects, from the most improbable to the “classified defense secret”. And this, without the help of Mulder and Scully.
Behind these crop-circles… it was a maths teacher!
This year again, Françoise Evrard took two classes to a field in Alsace to draw a “crop-circle”. It has become a habit since 2019 for this math teacher from the Gymnasium private college in Strasbourg. That year, their famous “crop circles”, 150 meters long and about 50 meters wide, caused a real stir. “I had no idea of the fallout”, smiles the teacher today, remembering having “received mind-blowing messages”. For a few days, the discovered forms were indeed lent to the extraterrestrials. “The farmer who had lent us his field saw people marching by, some with dowsing rods looking for waves. He was laughing,” adds Françoise Evrard, whose initial objective was simply to offer “a practical geometry exercise” to her sixth graders. “With what happened next, they could see all the misinformation circulating on social media. It allowed us to do a course on that as well. »
The mystery of the van perched on a bus shelter in Finistère
An investigation at the frontiers of the paranormal. On the morning of October 11, 2021, in thick fog, the Finistère gendarmes thought they were hallucinating when they discovered a utility vehicle perched on a bus shelter in Plouneventer, a town located between Brest and Morlaix. In the village, this lunar scene naturally fueled the discussions, everyone trying to find out how this utility had found itself in such a situation. And also for what reason. After four days of frantic investigation, the mystery has finally been solved. It was not the work of an alien but of a farmer who, in revenge for a dispute with his employee, had hoisted the latter’s vehicle onto a bus shelter using a pallet truck…
The Col de Vence, UFO “hotspots” in France
In the Alpes-Maritimes, the Col de Vence, at an altitude of nearly 1,000, has become one of the “hotspots of France” in terms of unexplained phenomena. In 1994, the observation of a luminous triangle in this patch of sky on the Côte d’Azur was the subject of television reports. High place for cycling enthusiasts regularly crossed by the Paris-Nice, this natural area also regularly brings together enthusiasts of “UAP” hunting, to unidentified aerospace phenomena, unidentified aerospace phenomena, “as it should be said now”, rectifies Serge Tinland. This 59-year-old Azurean, aspiring candidate for the last presidential election for which he called for massive investment in the “search for extraterrestrial intelligence”, is a regular at the place. He is even part of a group, Les invisibles du col de Vence (ICDV), which regularly watches over the place in the hope of gaining new experiences. Fabien Binachi, our journalist in Nice, had met him in 2022:
In Lyon, “the world’s first ufology text”
It is an urban legend that spans centuries and generations. An unidentified flying object would have flown over Place Bellecour, emblematic of Lyon, in 832. Two artists wanted to seek the origin of this story told by their parents and came across texts by Bishop Agobard of Lyon. “He wrote a whole book and at one point he talks about the history of Magonia. It would be the world’s first ufology text,” reports 20 minutes Kalouf, one of the organizers of an exhibition inspired by this universe. Either from the Middle Ages and Magonia, which comes from the word “magic” and which would be a “flying country” located between Lyon and Bourg-en-Bresse. “In 832, a flying vehicle would have landed on the Place Bellecour with three men and a woman who would have come out of it, says the artist. The Lyonnais would have identified them as tempestaries, capable of triggering meteorological phenomena and ruining crops. They would then have been imprisoned, accused of witchcraft. These four Magonians would then have been pardoned by the bishop of Lyon but would never have been seen again. “We started from this story and we extrapolated to imagine an exhibition and bring this legend to life, which amuses us a lot”, concludes Kalouf.
Giants, luminous triangles in Languedoc
Testimonies on UFOs, the 11 investigators of the Ovni-Languedoc association receive them regularly. About ten per year. After investigation, about 45% of cases find a rational explanation. But some puzzles remain. Thus in 1950, in a mazet near Nîmes, a young woman would have come face to face with three entities, described as “giants”, accompanied by a human. A former teacher who “worked for them”. For years, she will bear witness to an extraterrestrial, who paid her short visits after dark, to transmit mysterious information to her.
In 2011, in Sète, two people saw a triangular luminous phenomenon in the distance. “They stayed half an hour watching it before the lights went off at full speed towards La Grande-Motte, evokes Thierry Gaulin, president of the association since 2006. It couldn’t be a boat. We queried many resources. To date, we have no response. »
Near Nantes, a luminous cylinder and a derailed car
This is one of the most disturbing UFO reports in the Pays-de-la-Loire region. And despite an official investigation, it remains unexplained. On January 24, 1980, at 6:05 p.m., a man was driving a professional car in the town of Loroux-Bottereau, near Nantes, when his attention was drawn to a “cylindrical object with two small dark colored fins on the side” flying about 200 meters high, near a water tower. The craft stabilizes for more than 6 minutes. The witness then had plenty of time to observe this funny thing illuminated “with a bright yellow-orange light, the fins having disappeared”. He also notices that his radiotelephone crackles abnormally. And it is when the man decides to scan the sky with a portable searchlight that the UFO “moves away suddenly while gaining height”. “Afraid”, he directly warned the gendarmerie. The electrical circuit of the vehicle’s dashboard will no longer work. Mere coincidence?
The “twisted tiles” affair in 1989, in the Tarn
This affair, still unexplained, made the headlines of the local press, disrupting the smooth running of the investigations. She came to the fore on September 4, 1989, when the insomniac resident of an isolated hamlet in the town of Puylaurens, in the Tarn, saw a bright light filter through his shutters.
The 69-year-old commercial director, “honourably known” as the police report says, gets up, looks out his first floor window and sees in the field below a perfect luminous square about ten meters on a side. Reckless, he puts on his dressing gown and approaches the super-glow, without entering the perimeter. And when he turns towards his house, he sees above his roof an object “in the shape of a spinning top” or a giant “gas bottle”. Silent, yellow or orange – theoretically, the man being color blind – the shape disappears after 30 seconds. But it leaves material traces on the roof and gutters in the house. The gendarmes will see for themselves that the tiles have moved, and that the foam seems burnt over a length of three meters and a width of five meters. The roofer called for repairs will speak of “tiles twisted clockwise”. The story does not say what became of the tile samples taken for scientific analysis…
A secret-defense case in the North
It is a case that has gone around the world. In September 1954, a certain Marius Dewilde, who lived in a gatekeeper’s house in Quarouble, in the North, was alerted by the barking of his dog. It is 10:30 p.m. and when he leaves, he sees two small masses fleeing towards a machine parked on the railway tracks. He says he was struck by a laser beam when the machine took off. The police and even the army began to take this story seriously when strange traces were found (blackened ballast, for example) and an EDF employee mentioned a power failure at the same time. The case was classified as a defense secret. It is told in detail in a book UFO Hunter, written by Jean-Marie bigorne (ED. Temps present), passionate about ufology.
It was in October 2022 that NASA launched its famous exceptional work on UFOs which we mentioned in the introduction to this article. No less than 16 experts have been appointed to carry them out. Among them, eminent scientists, but also officials from the American civil aviation regulator (FAA), or even former astronaut Scott Kelly. Since then, some 800 unidentified aerial phenomena have been collected. In France, there is a very serious service which is responsible for investigating: the Geipan or study and information group on unidentified aerospace phenomena. This service of the National Center for Space Studies (Cnes), highlighted in the series UFO(s) in 2021, operates with four full-time staff and a team of around twenty volunteer investigators. Between 600 and 700 requests are received each year. In the end, according to the Geipan contacted by 20 minutesapproximately 3.5% of the files do not find any explanation and are classified “D”, cases still open after investigation.