The article below was published in the daily newspaper Le Midi Libre, France, on February 3, 1974.
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Montpellier. -- It's definitely a UFO that two boys from Fabrègues, near Montpellier, Fernand Perez, 14 years old and Jean-Paul Dazevedo, 15 years old, saw posed near the chapel on the evening of December 6, 1973.
Who makes this statement? A science fiction fan? A professional in the occult? No. A scientist whose position is particularly courageous, in a field that has been singularly controversial for almost thirty years. This is Mr. Claude Poher, head of the rocket section of CNES (Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales de Toulouse.
While today, the testimony of the two high school students from Fabrègue that "Midi Libre" reported exclusively on December 22 comes to the forefront of "extra-terrestrial" news - particularly intense news these days - we owe it a little to "Concorde". We know that on Friday, at 7:00 p.m., the regional station of Midi - Pyrénées will present a special broadcast, coupled with Montpellier, on the mysterious luminous spot photographed from the supersonic plane on June 30, 1973, during an observation mission of a solar eclipse above Fort-Lamy (Chad).
During the debate which followed the projection of the considerably enlarged photograph, viewers expected participants to give their opinion on the enigmatic neighbor of the "Concorde" flight. It was then that Mr. Claude Poher launched his "bomb". The researcher who, for the purposes of a study carried out for four years on a personal basis, submitted to a C.N.E.S. computer. thousand observations including two hundred and twenty made in France refused to consider to be UFO the phenomenon revealed by the photographs of the supersonic plane. He notably declared that too many elements were missing to be able to assert that the spot impressed on the photo was indeed the image of a UFO.
On the night of December 6
But on the other hand, Mr. Claude Poher considers the landing of an unidentified flying object on December 6, 1973, between Montpellier and Sète to be a reality. The same one witnessed by the two young people from Fabrègues.
"On the Saint-Baudille plateau, they confided to "Midi Libre", two weeks later, there was a circular craft. It had the color of aluminum. It was placed on feet. It was a real flying saucer. It had lights on the side that flashed like the position lights of an airplane. Once a red flash, once a white flash. At the top of the dome, there was a sort of bubble which was more lit than the rest."
This story was surprising. The mails we received at the time proved at least one thing: the interest and curiosity aroused by the mystery. For Mr. Claude Poher, who confirmed his statements on Friday evening, also on France-Inter, it now seems established that the witnesses were not the victims of a collective hallucination.
We will note with the same little satisfaction of self-esteem that the head of the rockets and probes section of the C.N.E.S. of Toulouse relies in particular on the seven testimonies that "Midi Libre" had collected on site, from the comrades of Fernand Pérès and Jean-Paul Dazevedo and their parents who also saw an unusual red glow near the chapel.
The lentils test
Alongside these testimonies which "match perfectly", there was also a very simple experience. It was carried out by a Sète resident, Mr. Claude Carriès, a young laboratory technician from the Scientific and Technical Institute of Maritime Fisheries. This official investigator from "Lumières dans la nuit", a private research organization (I), carried out a most disturbing test.
"On Monday December 24, he explains, after reading "Midi Libre" of the 22nd, I went to Saint-Baudile with the young witnesses. I took two samples of soil - these are of very clayey soil - one at the place where they saw the UFO, the other about twenty meters from the landing area. I sowed lentils in the two samples enclosed in absolutely identical jars. After a week, that of the sample from the vicinity of the UFO location, germinated normally and the stems appeared. In the days that followed, the lentils developed normally despite the poor quality of the soil. In the other jar, nothing happened."
The results of this simplest test were communicated to Mr. Poher and it seems that they reinforced his conviction about the Fabrègues phenomenon. The two samples will now be analyzed by a laboratory in Bordeaux because an explanation must be found for this plant anomaly.
Electromagnetic phenomenon
"The land which was in contact with the UFO may have been caught in a powerful electromagnetic field," says Mr. Carries. In many cases of landing it was noted that the grass had been burned and that it was not growing anymore."
For Mr. Norbert Glambasl, a young physicist from the Faculty of Sciences of Montpellier, it would rather be a radioactive effect:
"Wherever UFOs have landed, he says, the radioactivity emitted by the counters has been stronger than normal. Plants have been killed, others have undergone mutations. Mushrooms, for example, have grown disproportionately."
Let's not go further into hypotheses.
"We are getting closer to the truth," a quiet American, Mr. Richard Niemtrow, does not hesitate to say in Montpellier. He is the representative in France of the "Aerial Phenomena Research Organization", the largest study group in the USA, headquartered in Tucson (Arizona).
On December 7, at 5:30 a.m., his magnetic detection system sounded like an alarm clock in his apartment. It was the day after the Saint-Baudile party. One more mystery. We would give a plate of lentils to finally know the truth about these strange phenomena which disturb the nights of Languedoc.
UFO be it!...
