The article below was published in the daily newspaper L'Union, Reims, France, on August 16, 1998.
By taking an interest in the luminous phenomenon observed in the Ardennes during the night of last Monday to Tuesday and reported in our issues of Wednesday 12 and Thursday 13 August, the national media also launched calls for witnesses.
The result was immediate. Jean-Luc Lemaire, head of the UFO study centre France (CEOF) in Charleville-Mézières, has already collected 280 apparently credible testimonies (others have been discarded) and concentrated in an axis crossing France from south to north. "The phone rings every three minutes" he admits, surprised by the scale of the reactions, many of which mention "a strange plane".
On the same evening, a similar phenomenon was observed in the Var, near Dijon, near Troyes, in the Aisne also (La Ferté-Milon, Sains-Richaumont), in the Ardennes of course (Sedan-Carignan sector), and even in Belgium and Luxembourg.
The events that occurred in the sky of Prauthoy near Langres in Haute-Marne (our issues of Sunday August 16) may not be of the same nature: the time of observation does not correspond (the mayor of the commune Philippe Badet cites 11 p.m. while the other testimonies from the Var to the Ardennes are in a range from midnight to two in the morning). Investigations are currently underway in this commune - notably by the gendarmerie - where the noise of the machine compared sometimes to that of a bomber or a jet plane at low altitude surprised many people, although accustomed to the passage of military aircraft. As for the traces on the ground noted a few days later, they probably have nothing in common with the noises and lights observed on Monday. It was in fact only while mowing her orchard that a lady discovered these prints which could - this is only a hypothesis - mark the location of an old building.
With the exception of the particular case of Prauthoy, the other testimonies in relation to the phenomena for the moment unexplained which occurred during the night of Monday to Tuesday last seem to agree. Both as to the time, as to the triangular shape of the machine, on its noise and its altitude. In the absence of other more exploitable documents, nothing allows the slightest certainty on the exact nature of the object. Doubt, on the other hand, opens the door to all kinds of suppositions.
Logically, the SEPRA (service for expertise in atmospheric fallout phenomena) headed by Jean-Jacques Vélasco (it is attached to the CNES, the national center for space studies in Toulouse) must have been informed of these phenomena. In any case, its opinion is awaited with the greatest interest.
Jean-Michel François
