UFO sightings are not an American phenomenon. Almost every country in the world reports about strange images and speeding lights that could never be identified. France is significant to ufologists because it is the first country to make all of their UFO investigations public.
In early 2007, the entire database from the National Space Studies Center went online. The only information altered were the names of the witnesses, in order to protect their identities. These stories are not edited, so you can make your own conclusions. The world press had a field day when they discovered that on the first day the data base went officially online, the site crashed.
This database includes over 1,600 incidents spanning about 50 years. Testimonies on those 1,600 incidents were made by over 6,000 people. Airline pilots’ testimonies are also included with members of the general public. New stories are added in frequent updates, which the public are allowed to send in. Each year, France gets from 50 to 100 new UFO sightings, so that database is likely to rapidly expand.
Perhaps France’s most infamous recent UFO sighting was made by hundreds of concerned citizens on November 5, 1990. Very strange flashing lights were careening through the night sky. The official explanation for this highly-witnessed event was that they were rocket fragments burning up in the atmosphere.
Another case that has no official explanation happened in 1994 on an Air France flight from Nice to London. The cockpit crew saw a metal disc-shaped object that kept on changing color and shape. After a couple of minutes, it disappeared. The witnesses were considered very creditable characters and not the kind to make practical jokes.
Strange scorch marks on the ground were all that’s left of a UFO sighting in January 8, 1981. In the village of Trans-en-Province, an anonymous field worker, startled by a strange whistle, looked up. He was the sole human witness to a zinc-grey UFO about eight feet in diameter landing in his field. Perhaps realizing they were spotted, the craft immediately launched into the sky, leaving very visible scorch marks in the field. Investigators who took samples of the scorched crops cannot figure out what caused the burns.
Maybe ET is getting tired of hanging out in the boondocks of America like a hunted spy and needs a French holiday to get away from it all.
