UFOs in the daily Press:

IN ALSACE ...

This is perhaps a serious testimony about UFOs, these unidentified and so mysterious flying objects. Eleven people observed in the sky of Bantzenheim, between 0:40 and 0:55, in the night of Friday to Saturday a mysterious craft moving at approximately 400 m of them, and between 150 and 200 m of altitude. These eleven people, from four different families, are apparently not storytellers. It all started when Isabelle, Christian Lemoine's fiancée, got out of their caravan to take the key they had left on the door.

Christian, 21, who is a locksmith, says: "I heard Isabelle scream, call me. I went out in my pajamas. Isabelle was shaking. I then saw a big ball of light, 400 m in front of us in the direction of Mulhouse (south-west direction), above the forest, close enough to the electricity pylons. The craft was huge, like a house, full of red and orange lights, as if there were inside a game of ice. So I said to myself that it is a saucer. At one point the craft seemed to descend, then it went up and took the shape of a cigar, with very clear lines. Two or three minutes later, we saw the mysterious craft take the shape of a half-sphere, the base turned towards the sky, still with perfectly delimited contours, and with brighter red color."

Isabelle and Christian then alerted the other members of the Lemoine family, Christian's brothers and sisters who were with their friends inside the house. "Even the cat had followed us, he was afraid," Christian adds. They were thus eleven people to see this saucer which looked like a cup and which progressed gradually in the sky. "Beams left vertically from the half-ball, lighting the sky. It was as if there had been very powerful projectors in the craft," the other witnesses confirm.

Michel Lemoine, 23, and his friend Serge Benoit rushed into the car, and all lights out, headed towards the craft. "It looked like it was going away from us," says Michel. Then the UFO changed shape once again, taking that of a triangle that was narrowing, point turned towards the sky. It was in this final metamorphosis that the craft gradually disappeared, at a steady speed in the sky. Without leaving a trail, and without the slightest noise.

"The whole time we saw this saucer, the whole sky was lit up. When it had disappeared, it was pitch black. In any case, it couldn't have been a plane, we would have heard it" concludes Christian. Who adds: "Besides, a good time later, we heard a plane pass (which was checked to be the Mulhouse Strasbourg postal plane).

The fact remains that this appearance cannot be doubted. At the Colmar - Meyenheim air base, it was reported that nothing was detected, but also that no military aircraft was flying in the area at this time. And several people from the region - including Christian and Michel Lemoine, but also others - have already witnessed such phenomena. "But never so clearly" says Michel. As for their parents, they regrets not having been awakened. And Christian Lemoine still bites hhis fingers: he had, that night, no film in his camera.

Jean-Marie STOERCKEL