The article below was published in the daily newspaper Le Parisien Libéré, France, on January 6, 1994.
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A family from Tronville-en-Barrois, the Lopez, are certain that they saw, during the night of Monday to Tuesday, a vehicle from another world a hundred meters from their house. The police is investigating.
Nancy. -- Pierre Roeder
Did extraterrestrials make a quick visit to Tronville-en-Barrois, a small town in the Meuse, during the night of Monday to Tuesday? A very official investigation has been entrusted to the Ligny-en-Barrois gendarmerie brigade. Three military men were dispatched to the village to look for traces of the possible passage of visitors from another world. They have, for the moment, still found nothing.
The "close encounter of the third kind" occurred shortly after midnight. Michel Lopez, living on Rue des Coquelicots, is woken from his sleep by "an extraordinarily dense light coming from a nearby vacant lot". "A hundred meters", specifies a policeman. The strange light invades the room. "We were literally blinded but the light did not hurt our eyes", explains Michel Lopez. Michèle, his wife, and Priscilla, seven years old, rush to the window, at the moment when the flash of light is replaced by a multitude of "fluorescent" beams. Delphine, the couple's second daughter, joins them, and like them, makes out "a sort of saucer covered with a transparent dome". "Three tall silhouettes dressed in white" emerge from the unidentified craft. Michel Lopez is concerned with precision and, above all, he does not want to "be taken for a madman".
The whole family finds itself on the lawn in front of the house, advancing cautiously towards the vision. "It was a strange, very bright, circular craft, which emitted a strange whistling sound," admits Michèle Lopez. Driven by growing curiosity, they wanted to get even closer, when the craft "fleeed into the wild", after having "brightly lit up". The Lopez family found themselves alone in the night.
The police were notified. They received a call from a neighbour, who gave a more "earthly" version of the events. Alerted by Michel Lopez, Mr Fontaine claimed to have seen through his binoculars a vehicle with all its lights on, with a person on board. The person had apparently walked around his car with a flashlight, before leaving. A testimony denied by the entire Lopez family, and in particular by Priscilla who, since that night, has been blackening white sheets of paper with sketches of flying saucers.
[Photo caption:] Since the visit of the "extraterrestrials", Priscilla Lopez, seven years old, has only drawn flying saucers.
