The article below was published in the daily newspaper Le Dauphiné Libéré, France, on January 8, 1977.
Valence. -- After the observation on January 1, between 8 p.m. and 9 p.m., by Mr Blachier, his wife and two children, for nearly half an hour, of a large object emitting an orange glow (see our January 5 edition), other people have reported witnessing similar sightings in recent weeks. This is how several inhabitants of Nyons reportedly witnessed the moves of a large UFO on December 24, 76.
In Isle-sur-Sorgue (Vaucluse), Mr. Brissac and the five occupants of his car also observed on December 24, a "huge all-black object with small portholes."
The most disturbing observation, however, seems to be that of Mr. and Mrs. François Perez, two residents of Valence who were traveling on the road between Chabeuil and Combovin on the evening of January 1.
"We were going to take our dog to friends, explains Mr. Perez. We had passed Chabeuil, when my wife, who was sitting next to me, noticed a big star in the sky. It grew and seemed to follow the car. I didn't give much importance to the case thinking it was just a helicopter. As we were returning from our friends' house at around 7:45 p.m. my wife insists that we stop at the place where she had best seen the light, some two kilometers from Combovin. It was then that we saw on the left of the road, some four hundred meters from us, an enormous luminous machine, an ovoid shape motionless above the field, it could have been thirty or forty meters in diameter and was surrounded by a halo of white light.
"We didn't dare get out of the car. Our observation lasted maybe ten minutes. I flashed the headlights and a few moments later the thing rose, following an angle of forty-five degrees, then shot off into the sky at lightning speed."
Mr. and Mrs. Perez, strongly impressed by what they had seen, presented themselves at the gendarmerie of Chabeuil where they made a statement. The gendarmes went to the scene of the observation in the company of Ms. Perez on January 5, but they did not discover anything abnormal. It should be noted, however, that in the day following their observations, the two witnesses had pain in their eyes. Ms. Perez's watch has not been functioning normally any more since that evening.
Here, then, is a rather troubling series of observations. The witnesses do not know each other, and could not have been aware of the observations of the others, since these had not been published in the press at the time when they made their respective statements. The descriptions seem to match a priori.
Remember that in 1954, on September 26, a resident of Chabeuil had observed a strange craft and a weird little being in a field. This case was later to be among the classics of ufological observations. (J.L. Ruchon)
