The Trans-en-Provence UFO incident of January 8, 1981


Let us journey back to January 8, 1981, to a place in France so delightfully obscure it practically begged for something utterly out of the ordinary to happen: Trans-en-Provence. Now, Trans-en-Provence is, by all accounts, a perfectly normal, entirely un-interstellar sort of village. The kind of place where the biggest excitement is probably a well-baked baguette or a spirited debate about the correct ripeness of cheese. So, you can imagine the sheer, unadulterated bafflement that must have descended upon Monsieur Renato Nicolai, a gentleman of a robust seventy-five years, when his otherwise unremarkable day took a turn for the cosmically peculiar.

Mr Nicolai, being a practical sort, was not the type to gaze at the stars pondering the meaning of life; he was more concerned with whether the pump would survive another Provençal winter. Life, for him, was straightforward: earth, sky, cheese, occasional glass of rosé.

Then came the whistle.

Not a particularly dramatic whistle, mind you. More like the faint, polite sort one might hear from a kettle realizing it has overheated but doesn't wish to make a fuss. Mr Nicolai turned, expecting perhaps a distant train or an overenthusiastic bird, and instead beheld a craft descending from the heavens.

"Plonk" is, of course, the technical term for what happens when an advanced, presumably intergalactic, starship pilot decides that a French vegetable patch is an ideal landing strip. According to Monsieur Nicolai, this object was roughly the size of a small car, sort of like a squat, metallic, upside-down saucer. It emitted a faint, low hum, presumably the universal sound of "Oh dear, we've landed in someone's cabbages."

But here's where it gets truly fascinating, in that slightly uncomfortable, "I think I've left the gas on" sort of way. After a brief and, one assumes, terribly awkward pause – perhaps the occupants were checking their galactic sat-nav, muttering about a wrong turn at Betelgeuse – the object performed a rather impressive party trick. It lifted off, silently, effortlessly, and vanished into the blue.

Unlike most ephemeral sightings of things that go bump in the cosmic night, this particular object left behind tangible evidence. There were perfectly circular indentations in the soil, as if something incredibly heavy had taken a momentary rest. And not just any indentations, mind you, but compressed soil, soil that had been rather rudely squeezed.

But wait, there's more! (As they say in the infomercials for things you don't really need but might buy anyway). The gendarmerie – the French police, who presumably deal with rather more mundane things like stolen bicycles and misplaced poodles – were called. And they, bless their thoroughly terrestrial hearts, took it seriously. They didn't just shrug and suggest Monsieur Nicolai cut back on the strong French wine. They called in the scientific cavalry.

GEPAN (which sounds like a brand of industrial cleaner but was actually the Groupe d'Étude des Phénomènes Aérospatiaux Non-identifiés, or Group for the Study of Unidentified Aerospace Phenomena, because the French do love a good acronym) descended upon the scene. They scraped soil samples. They analyzed vegetation. They did things with spectrometers and chromatographs that would make your average garden gnome weep.

Over the next two years, traces of phosphate, zinc, and iron were found; the ground showed mechanical pressure equivalent to a heavy object that had somehow managed not to leave tire tracks or footprints. No earthly aircraft, experimental or otherwise, could be blamed. Even the nearby military base disclaimed all knowledge.

GEPAN's conclusion? A genuine unidentified phenomenon with physical traces. In other words: something jolly odd happened, and we haven't the foggiest idea what.

The entire incident became, and remains, one of the most rigorously investigated UFO cases in history. Not because it offered definitive proof of little green men (or even little grey men, who are generally much tidier with their paperwork), but because it offered a splendid, irrefutable, and utterly baffling residue.

It's a testament to the universe's delightfully absurd sense of humor that, on a quiet January day in 1981, in a small French village, a humble gardener was presented with a mystery that continues to perplex. A mystery that, much like the exact reason why spoons always seem to fall face down, defies easy explanation. So, next time you're tending your own garden, keep an eye out. You never know what might decide your prize-winning tomatoes are an excellent landing marker.

Location: 83720 Trans-en-Provence, France

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