ALSACAT:

ALSACAT is my comprehensive catalog of UFO sighting reports in Alsace, the region is the North-East of France, whether they are "explained" or "unexplained".

The ALSACAT catalog is made of case files with a case number, summary, quantitative information (date, location, number of witnesses...), classifications, all sources mentioning the case with their references, a discussion of the case in order to evaluate its causes, and a history of the changes made to the file. A general index and thematic sub-catalogs give access to these Alsatian case files.

◀ Previous case Next case ▶

Case of Alsace, in 1996:

Case number:

ALSACAT-1996-00-00-ALSACE-1

Summary:

Julie, of Mulhouse, told her sighting via the website of the Swiss ufology group GREPI.

In the summer of 1996, in Alsace with a female friend, she was looking at the sky when they saw three bright dots no bigger than a star that moved slowly, always forming the same triangle.

This seemed to them to be outside the atmosphere. Then these three points all went in opposite directions (left, right and up) at incredible speed, since in one second that they were out of their field of view while the sky was clear and they had a complete view of the southern sky to the northern sky, with the west in front of them.

She took the opportunity to tell that a witness report she read on the GREPI website recalled a similar experience she had when she was 10 and always took for a hallucination: one night, beside her bed, a meter of her and two meters from the ground, two red eyes appeared to her. She looked for three seconds and then hid under the duvet.

Data:

Temporal data:

Date:	1996
Time:	?
Duration:	?
First known report date:	2012
Reporting delay:	16 years.

Geographical data:

Department:	?
City:	?
Place:	In Alsace, UFO in the sky.
Latitude:	48.336
Longitude:	7.574
Uncertainty radius:	90 km

Witnesses data:

Number of alleged witnesses:	2
Number of known witnesses:	1
Number of named witnesses:	0
Witness(es) ages:	?
Witness(es) types:	?

Ufology data:

Reporting channel:	By the web to the Swiss ufology group GREPI.
Type of location:	?
Visibility conditions:	?
UFO observed:	Yes
UFO arrival observed:	No
UFO departure observed:	Yes
Entities:	Yes, unrelated.
Photographs:	No.
Sketch(s) by witness(es):	No.
Sketch(es) approved by witness(es):	No.
Witness(es) feelings:	Puzzled.
Witnesses interpretation:	?

Classifications:

Hynek:	?
ALSACAT:	Unidentified, and hypnagogic hallucination.

Sources:

[Ref. gri1:] WITNESS REPORT TO THE G.R.E.P.I. WEBSITE:

Summer 1996 in Alsace. With a friend we watched the sky when we saw three bright spots no bigger than a star that moved slowly, always forming the same triangle. It was apparently outside the atmosphere. Then these three points went each in opposite directions (left, right and up) at an incredible speed. In one second they were out of our field of vision while the sky was clear and we had a full view of the sky from the southto the north, with the west in front of us.

Another thing: After reading the testimony of John (Bagnols-sur-Cèze) (page 46 - GREPI), I remembered having had a similar experience that I had always taken for a hallucination: I was ten years old and, one night, next to my bed (one meter from me and two meters from the ground) appeared to me two red eyes. I looked at it for three seconds then I hid under the duvet.

I would like to get in touch with John if possible because he says he found answers.

Thank you for your website.

Julie (Mulhouse - France)

Discussion:

The observation of the summer of 1996 is very interesting and I'm hard pressed to give a trivial explanation. However, there is almost no information. It is not known if it was by day or night, there is no date or precise location, etc. Too bad.

The experience of the childhood obviously has no connection with this observation; it has the features of a hypnagogic hallucination. The witness herself had always thought of a hallucination...

How and why hypnagogic hallucinations occur can be discovered by reading these references:

"The Old Hag phenomenon as sleep paralysis: a biocultural interpretation", paper by R.C. Ness, in Cultural and Medical Psychiatry, vol. 2 N.1, pp 15-39, March 1978.
"Lucid Dreaming: The Paradox of Consciousness During Sleep", book by Celia Green and Charles McCreery, Routledge publishers, U-K., 1994.
"Wrestling With Ghosts: A Personal And Scientific Account Of Sleep Paralysis", book by Jorge Conesa Sevilla, Xlibris Corporation publishers, U-K., 2004.
"Hallucinations and pathological visual perceptions in Maupassant's fantastical short stories - a neurological approach", paper by L.C. Alvaro, in Journal of the History of Neuroscience, vol 14, N.2, pp 100-115, June 2005.
"Effects of hypnagogic imagery on the event-related potential to external tone stimuli", paper by N. Michida, M. Hayashi, T. Hori, in Sleep, Vol. 28, N.7, pp 813-818, July 2005.
"Sleep and Society: Ventures into the (Un)Known", book by Simon A. Williams, Routledge publishers, 2005.
"Mental representation of space: Insights from an oblique distribution of hallucinations", paper by T.A Girard, D.L. Martius, J.A. Cheyne, in Neuropsychologia, vol. 45, N.6, pp 1257-1269, 2007.
"Parasomnias", paper by D.T. Plante, J.W. Winkelman, in The Psychiatric Clinics of North America, Vol. 29, N.4, pp 969-987, December 2006.
"Paranoid delusions and threatening hallucinations: A prospective study of sleep paralysis experiences", paper, draft, by J.A. Cheyne, T.A. Girard, to appear in Consciousness and Cognition, for April 2007.

Evaluation:

Unidentified, and hypnagogic hallucination.

Sources references:

* = Source is available to me.
? = Source I am told about but could not get so far. Help needed.

[gri1] * Witness report made to the ufology group GREPI, Switzerland, not dated, found 2012, at http://www.ovni.ch/temoign/temoig60.htm

File history:

Authoring:

Main author:	Patrick Gross
Contributors:	None
Reviewers:	None
Editor:	Patrick Gross

Changes history:

Version:	Create/changed by:	Date:	Description:
0.1	Patrick Gross	February 27, 2016	Creation, [gri1].
1.0	Patrick Gross	February 27, 2016	First published.

This page was last updated on February 27, 2016.