ALSACAT-1965-07-24-ZIMMERSHEIM-1
The regional newspaper "L'Alsace" for July 28, 1965, reported they received a testimony of a person who wanted to remain anonymous "not to sink into the ridiculous among friends."
This person stated that late in the evening of July 24, 1965, on the forest road of the "Buchwald" between Mulhouse and Zimmersheim, she had seen in the company of another person, an object that was shaped like "a wristwatch case, but a bit more rounded, and it must have been about 6 m in diameter."
The craft was at the vertical of the field, and just about its center, about twenty meters above the ground.
The witness thought it was spinning fast, and it emitted a vague white glow.
The newspaper gives the testimony "with cautious", inviting the author to come forward" to their newsroom.
| Date: | July 24, 1965 |
|---|---|
| Time: | Evening. |
| Duration: | ? |
| First known report date: | July 28, 1965 |
| Reporting delay: | 3 days. |
| Department: | Haut-Rhin |
|---|---|
| City: | Zimmersheim |
| Place: | From the forest road of the Buchwald between Mulhouse and Zimmersheim, UFO in the sky. |
| Latitude: | 47.732 |
| Longitude: | 7.373 |
| Uncertainty radius: | 800 m |
| Number of alleged witnesses: | 2 |
|---|---|
| Number of known witnesses: | 1 |
| Number of named witnesses: | 0 |
| Witness(es) ages: | Young adults, adults or aged. |
| Witness(es) types: | ? |
| Reporting channel: | Anonymous letter to the regional Press. |
|---|---|
| Type of location: | From a forest road, UFO in the sky. |
| Visibility conditions: | Evening. |
| UFO observed: | Yes |
| UFO arrival observed: | ? |
| UFO departure observed: | ? |
| Entities: | No |
| Photographs: | No. |
| Sketch(s) by witness(es): | No. |
| Sketch(es) approved by witness(es): | No. |
| Witness(es) feelings: | ? |
| Witnesses interpretation: | ? |
| Hynek: | DD or CE1 |
|---|---|
| ALSACAT: | Unidentified, possible hoax. |
[Ref. lae1:] NEWSPAPER "L'ALSACE":
According to two different, but consistent testimonies, "unidentified flying objects" manifested themselves in the Upper Rhine sky recently.
Thus, a resident of Mulhouse who was returning from vacation in the night of Thursday, July 22, to Friday, and traveling on the highway in the direction of Roppe, told us he "saw an oval shape that hovered over the fields" that line the road there. A red light, of geranium hue, said our interlocutor who gave us the report right upon his return, came from the "thing". It seemed moreover extended by a kind of peduncle curved downwards. Ignoring the distance at which the object moved, he did not want to speculate on its dimensions. His wife confirmed these observations. A third person traveling with the couple witnessed the mysterious phenomenon under the same conditions.
Indeed, a second testimony by someone (who wanted to remain anonymous, "not to be ridiculed by his acquaintances," he wrote) told us of a similar occurrence he witnessed with the person who accompanied him, late in the evening of July 24, this time on the forest road "Buchwald" between Mulhouse and Zimmersheim: "The object was shaped like a wristwatch body, but a little more rounded, and must have been about 6 m in diameter. This machine was vertical to the field, and its center was about twenty meters from the ground. I had the impression it was rotating on itself very fast. The object emitted a vaguely white glow."
While we recorded the first oral statement directly, we give that second report with caution, inviting the author to make himself known to the editors.
[Ref. cvn2:] CHRISTIAN VALENTIN:
Former journalist Christian Valentin published in 2012 a very interesting book telling the story of UFO sightings, flying saucers sightings, in Alsace, from the beginning to 1980.
In this book, he reports that two cases, one in Roppe on July 22, 1965, the other in Zimmersheim on July 24, 1965, were reported in the newspaper L'Alsace for Wednesday, July 28, 1954:
According to two different, but consistent testimonies, "unidentified flying objects" manifested themselves in the Upper Rhine sky recently.
Thus, a resident of Mulhouse who was returning from vacation in the night of Thursday, July 22, to Friday, and traveling on the highway in the direction of Roppe, told us he "saw an oval shape that hovered over the fields" that line the road there. A red light, of geranium hue, said our interlocutor who gave us the report right upon his return, came from the "thing". It seemed moreover extended by a kind of peduncle curved downwards. Ignoring the distance at which the object moved, he did not want to speculate on its dimensions. His wife confirmed these observations. A third person traveling with the couple witnessed the mysterious phenomenon under the same conditions.
Indeed, a second testimony by someone (who wanted to remain anonymous, "not to be ridiculed by his acquaintances," he wrote) told us of a similar occurrence he witnessed woth the person who accompanied him, late in the evening of July 24, this time on the forest road "Buchwald" between Mulhouse and Zimmersheim: "The object was shaped like a wristwatch body, but a little more rounded, and must have been about 6 m in diameter. This machine was vertical to the field, and its center was about twenty meters from the ground. I had the impression it was rotating on itself very fast. The object emitted a vaguely white glow."
While we recorded the first oral statement directly, we give that second report with caution, inviting the author to make himself known to the editors.
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It is not at all my habit to "advertise" a book or anything, and I have no interested relationship with the author, but I wanted to say a word on the book by Christian Valentin, "Mythes et Réalités des Phénomènes Aériens Non Identifiés" (i.e. "Myths and Realities of Unidentified Aerial Phenomena" (cover on the left) , ref. [cv2]; which, as its subtitle indicates, is about Alsatian UFO sighting reports and the saucer lore in Alsace.
I think Alsatian ufologists and, generally, people interested in the UFO question, or in the history of Alsace, my region, would probably like this book.
The 144 pages book is sober but well presented, unbiased, richly documented and illustrated. It is the first work in print specifically about UFO sightings in Alsace. (There was another one a few years ago, but it was partly made by copying - pasting without mention of the sources, portions of my website, especially the Alsatians cases I almost exhaustively documented in my catalog of UFO sightings in France in 1954, and copies from another websites; the trivial explanations I proposed or gave there being almost always stripped off!)
The author does not want to prove or disprove the possibility of extraterrestrial visitors or some other so-called "extraordinary" explanation, he rather offers a chronologically ordered review of Alsatian UFO reports, starting from the origin and stopping in 1980, based on known sources ufology, on the articles of the regional Press, and cases less known or even unreleased so far that he collected directly with the witnesses. His own comments are printed in a different color, references to the sources are always given. A very nice work in my opinion!
The author currently has a blog where he shows what libraries in Alsace have the book available, see: christian.valentin.overblog.com
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If this case must be considered as genuine, it lacks so much information that I could not decide between some alien craft and a helicopter.
For example, no indication on noise or absence of noise is given.
Some signs make me wonder about the plausibility of a hoax: the complete anonymity, apparently no response to the newspaper who asked the witness to come forward, no exact hour, no duration, no viewing distance, a description of the shape by an analogy of the 1954 flap type, no circumstances of the beginning of observation, no circumstances of the end of the observation etc., as if all this had no reality.
Unidentified, possible hoax.
* = Source is available to me.
? = Source I am told about but could not get so far. Help needed.
| Main author: | Patrick Gross |
|---|---|
| Contributors: | None |
| Reviewers: | None |
| Editeur: | Patrick Gross |
| Version: | Create/changed by: | Date: | Description: |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0.1 | Patrick Gross | September 16, 2015 | Creation, [lae1], [cvn2]. |
| 1.0 | Patrick Gross | September 16, 2015 | First published. |
