This article was published in the daily newspaper Le Dauphiné Libéré, France, on March 24, 1976.
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Saint-Jean-en-Royans. -- Mr. Jean Robert, 29-year-old, living in La Beaume d'Houston, workman at the Secma factory of Saint-Hilaire-du-Rosier, returned on Sunday March 21, from a family meeting in Saint-Martin-du-Vercors. It was 09:10 p.m. approximately, when the young man at the wheel of a Ford Escort, was going to enter the last turn of the RN 512, after the "Grands Goulets", at approximately 1.500 km [sic, meters] before the bridge of Echevis. Suddenly his attention was drawn by a white gleam:
- I first of all thought of the headlights of a foreign car [Foreign because the headlights of the French cars were yellow at that time ], said Mr. Robert. When suddenly, in the turning of the road I discovered on the slope, on my left, a kind of luminous cigar, high of a meter twenty approximately, extremely dazzling. I slowed down short and cut the engine. It resembled an oval object with two kinds of dark red port-holes on the edge of which escaped very sharp lights. I do not know why, I was suddenly very afraid, A fear as I had never felt before...
This thing blinded me. I put my hands in front of my eyes during I do not know very well anymore how much time... When I wanted to look again at it the thing had disappeared! I did not see it leaving... I cannot say what it was... I had ever seen something so shining, I had never been afraid like that!
After this puzzling sighting, the young man rushed into first dwelling met on his way, the Bridge-in Echevis restaurant where he told what he had seen.
After the mayor of Echevis, the restorer and Mr. Robert went on the spot of observation without discovering anything strange one, the witness presented himself to the gendarmerie of Saint-Jean-in-Royans where he made a statement on the strange phenomenon observed.
