The article below was published in the daily newspaper L'Union, Reims, France, on August 16, 1998.
Suspicious traces in an orchard and noises heard by several people, Monday and Friday in Prothoy, a village south of Langres in the Haute-Marne, lead residents to believe that a flying object landed in their town.
"On Monday, at 11 p.m., several of us heard a loud, long noise, less shattering than the noise of an airplane," said Mayor Philippe Badet. For him, it was "a flying object, but not an airplane." About twenty people saw lights, he added.
A neighbor saw "two red lights and a white one in the sky, which did not move."
On Friday, suspicious traces were discovered in an orchard. These traces of dry grass form two parallel lines about 25 m long and 70 cm wide, and are about 8 to 9 m apart, with a triangle in the middle, according to the mayor's testimony.
Firefighters and gendarmes from Langres and Chaumont took photos on site. Soil samples were taken. All the results are negative, we learned from the gendarmerie. A radioactive research and identification team carried out radioactivity readings, which also turned out to be negative. Earlier this week, a UFO was observed by at least 150 people in the Sedan region.
