The article below was published in the daily newspaper Le Pays, France, on August 18, 2015.
They crossed the Loire sky within a few seconds but still feed the conversations. Figment of the imagination, astronomical hazard proven events or presence of curious visitors, the mysteries remain.
The UFO phenomenon is not new. Any time, any place, writings telling puzzling observations were kept. For proof, NASA published in 2014 a report on UFO reports by the Romans, headlined unidentified flying objects in classical antiquity.
And the Loire is no exception to the rule. On October 11, 1954, in Saint-Genest-Malifaux, a delivery driver said he saw in the sky a huge multicolored glow, moving away at high speed and moving through the cloud. Another witness, that of a young motorcyclist in Roanne on December 14, 1979: he reported seeing six oval objects, very bright; which moved quickly in the sky, training threes.
Hoax in Feurs
If these two cases are unexplained, many UFO observations, in the department, were quickly resolved. The witnesses were undoubtedly in good faith, but what they took to an unidentified flying object was something else. This was the case in Saint-Just-Saint-Rambert on July 25th 2009. Towards 7 p.m., several people watched the passage of a white object moving silently in the valley, with a regular speed and height. The object suddenly gained altitude, sped and disappeared immediately into the sky. Strange, indeed. Yet this UFO was probably a weather balloon.
Other observations find their explanation through astronomy, like that of 13 August 1998 in Saint-Chamond. One family said they saw a very bright stationary object which emitted red lights, green and yellow. The next day, an enlightened astronomer explained that it was actually the star Antares, which by its low position on the horizon, was prone to chromatic and luminous distortions.
Finally, some observations can result from a simple hoax like that of September 15, 1954, in Feurs. A group of four Saint-Etienne residents, immobilized by a breakdown on a country road, saw an object shaped like an egg, with a red shell, that landed near the place where they were. They saw coming down from the "spacecraft" a little creature with the appearance of Hitler who fled when he saw them?! It was of course a joke having the great wave of French UFO in 1954 as frame.
Both troubling to Montbrison
In Montbrison, one finds traces of two troubling observations. The first of April 26, 1970: five witnesses observed for at least ten seconds a white ovoid object whose path was complex and regular. The second took place a few months later, on 9 September 1970, a witness observed a spot moving among the stars. A second person scanned the same object with binoculars and certified that it was not a plane...
Finally, more recently, a UFO was filmed in Riorges at the end of July 2013 and the video was posted on the YouTube website on August 5, 2013. This video gives everyone the opportunity to make his own opinion... always keeping in mind that a UFO remains an unidentified flying object that is not necessarily synonymous with aliens?!
Source. "The new mysteries of the Loire" Philippe Marconnet, De Boreas publisher in 2011.
Ségolène Perret
