UFOs in the daily Press:

THE TWO OBSERVATIONS FROM HOUETTEVILLE, NEAR LOUVIERS.

It was a beautiful night from August 5 to 6, 1977. In Houetteville (Eure), a small village of a few hundred inhabitants located near Louviers, everything is peaceful. It is 1:30 a.m. when Mrs X lights up her kitchen and goes to the window. She can see, among the stars, a brighter light which seems to be heading towards the village.

After a few seconds of reflection, she wakes her husband and they both examine this brightly shining ball which, they no longer doubt now, is heading towards their house. Panicked, they turn off the kitchen light and continue watching. When the lamp is cut off, they realize that the luminous ball has stopped suddenly, approximately 400m from them and at an altitude of 150m.

They notice that this object is surmounted by two sparkling red lights. Then, suddenly, the object rushes into the sky, regains its initial brilliance, turns yellow then orange before disappearing.

The unidentified flying object (UFO) of Houetteville was born. However, no one will know anything about it for a week. The couple remains silent, fearing they will be seen as eccentric.

No longer able to stand it, on August 13, 1977, a Saturday, they went to the Louviers gendarmerie and explained what they had seen. Some gendarmes then went to Houetteville to investigate and learned through public rumor that another resident of the village had also seen a UFO during the night that has just ended.

Heard immediately by the gendarmes, Mr. Y (the witnesses do not want their names to be released) declared that he had actually seen an oval object measuring 2m by 1.20m emitting a high intensity light around one in the morning, so a few hours before his deposition. From his window, Mr. Y examined this craft for about ten minutes, which landed in a recently harvested field of escourgeons very close to the Iton, a small trout river.

For some inexplicable reason, Mr. Y does not even try to take his binoculars, nor does he grab his camera, even though it is equipped with a telephoto lens, thus depriving the investigation of valuable information. Even more disconcerting attitude: after ten minutes without trying to find out more... he goes to bed.

At the end of this hearing, it is 11 a.m. and the gendarmes immediately go to the landing site. They see, at the location indicated by Mr. Y, three holes 6.25 m, 8.80 m and 9.10 m apart and 20 cm deep. The nearest of these holes is 14.25m from the Iton. Over the entire surface of the triangle, the culm is lying on the ground, as if flattened by a powerful breath. In addition, it is possible to extract it from the ground without effort, while elsewhere one has to pull furiously to tear it off.

This file was processed by the Louviers gendarmerie brigade and samples were taken from the ground for analysis.

[Photo caption 1:] The HOUETTEVILLE UFO: three gendarmes mark the position of the traces in the field (Gendarmerie archive).

[Photo caption 2:] One of the traces left by the HOUETTEVILLE UFO (Gendarmerie archive).