The Valensole Encounter

Early on the morning of 1 July 1965, Maurice Masse was starting work on his lavender fields on the Valensole plateau in Provence. According to his account, he heard a whistling sound and saw an object in his field that he first took for a helicopter. As he approached, he saw it was an egg- or rugby-ball-shaped craft about the size of a car, standing on legs, with two small figures near it.

Masse said the figures were about the height of children, with large heads, and wore close-fitting clothing. When he came close, one of them pointed a small tube-like device at him, and he found himself unable to move. After some time, the beings returned to the craft, which rose and left at great speed. Masse said it was a while before he could move again.

At first Masse told only a few people. The story spread locally, and the gendarmerie investigated. Journalists and French UFO researchers, including the writer Aimé Michel, later interviewed him.

The main physical evidence was a set of marks where Masse said the craft had stood, including a depression and holes in the ground. Masse said that lavender plants near the site withered and that the area was slow to recover, and this was reported by visitors. The gendarmerie recorded the marks, and soil samples were reportedly examined, but no conclusive analysis has been published.

Masse was described by those who knew him as a steady, practical farmer with no interest in publicity. After the initial interviews he became reluctant to discuss the event. He reported feeling a strong need to sleep for a period afterwards, a detail often cited by researchers but impossible to verify.

There were no other direct witnesses and no photographs. The case therefore depends almost entirely on the testimony of one man and the traces in his field.

The gendarmerie investigation found no evidence that Masse had invented his story and did not identify a conventional explanation. The case is included in the archives of GEIPAN, the unit of the French space agency CNES that studies unidentified aerospace phenomena. GEIPAN has not attributed it to a known cause.

Because the investigation occurred in the 1960s, long before GEIPAN existed in its current form, much of what is known depends on the original gendarmerie report and on interviews collected by journalists and private researchers at the time.

Sceptics have suggested several possibilities: a hoax or a story that grew in the retelling; a misidentified helicopter or other aircraft landing, combined with fear and imagination; or a vivid experience occurring between sleep and waking in the very early morning. None of these has direct support, and the people who knew Masse did not consider him a fantasist.

Researchers who take the case seriously note how closely it resembles a report made the previous year in Socorro, New Mexico, by police officer Lonnie Zamora, which also involved an egg-shaped craft on legs and small figures. Some see the similarity as evidence for a real phenomenon. Sceptics see it as a sign that the Socorro story, which was widely reported, may have shaped or inspired the Valensole account.