This article was published in the daily newspaper Le Dauphiné Libéré, France, on January 27, 1976.
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Grenoble. -- A resident of Uriage will remember a long time the the adventure he lived, last Thursday, January 21, in the early morning. Mr. Albert Meritto, 35-year-old, who owns an household appliances store in the charming thermal spa had waken up early, for he had a lot of work to do. His first concern, that morning, was to go to his father's, who is a mechanic in Tavernolles, in order to leave for his round at the steering wheel of a van.
It was 7 o'clock and it was still night, when Mr. Albert Meritto left Uriage to take the "olympic road", which was going to carry him to the plate of Brié.
He went, in the car, in the rise and then he saw, at the side of the hill, lights, like headlights and flashing lights.
"There must be a serious accident", he thought. And he accelerated to arrive quickly on the spot. But it was not an accident. At the level of the garbage dump and on the right of the road, Mr. Albert Meritto saw an enormous thing, very illuminated, which stationed, very close to the ground, to touch it. "It was large like a house, he says. And there was, above, two cones, like horns, on which strong lights shone".
Mr. Albert Meritto had a short moment of hesitation and one understands that. Then he decided to approach. He arrived at about sixty meters of the "the thing" [sic]. And then, he did not believe his eyes: the latter rose, passed above him, and, at a tremendous speed, went "to be perched" above Chamrousse. "In a few seconds, Mr. Albert Meritto tells, the craft crossed the kilometers which separated it from the top of the mountain, and, up there, it swung in the air ".
Two cars followed that of Mr. Albert Meritto, their drivers, just as that of a 2 cv [car] which went up from Vaulnaveys by a small road, stopped and saw the object.
We ask them to contact us to give their testimony.
Seized a strong emotion, Mr. Albert Meritto left in a hurry and, a few minutes later, he woke his father up, in Tavernolles. The latter, Mr. Honoré Meritto, a 73-year-old man who owns his garage since 1932, has both feet on the ground - I was in two wars, he says, and you don't tell me stories."
Mr. Honoré Meritto rushed outside, in pajamas, and he too saw the strange thing. At this time there, the object moved towards Tainster and quite fast, all fires lit, it disappeared towards Italy.
"UFOs, says Mr. Honoré Meritto, I did not believe in that. Well, now, I changed my mind. You must see it that to believe in it!" And he looses himself in assumptions on the nature of the object in question, like we do, by the way.
We went to the place where the object was when Mr. Albert Meritto "discovered" it. No trace could be found.
Another observation, but dates back, that one, to January 12. That day, towards 05:50 p.m., Mr. Henry Dubois, a 73-year-old pensioner, who lives 1, boulevard Joseph Vallier in Grenoble, drove, by car from Heyrieux towards Saint-Pierre-de-Chandieu, the limit of the Rhone and Isère. Suddenly, he sees, in the air, in front of him, rather high in a clear sky, a very luminous object appear, much larger than a star (the tenth of the Moon, he estimates) which moved at a very high speed, from left to right (that is the South-western, North-eastern direction) and which could actually have moved at the vertical of Lyon.
"It was whitish and greenish, specifies Mr. Henry Dubois. Its trajectory was rectilinear and it crossed all my horizon in a few seconds. Then the object seemed to die out suddenly" [meteor?].
At his age, Mr. Dubois is still fit. Recently still, hunting, he showed that to some people younger than him. "I still have good reflexes, he says. But I acknowledge that there I was nailed on the spot".
Roger VIGNERON
