Valensole UFO incident

Valensole UFO incident

Type	Case (close encounter of the third kind)
Date	About 5:45 a.m., 1 July 1965
Place	Lavender field at "Olivol", about 2 km northwest of Valensole, Basses-Alpes (now Alpes-de-Haute-Provence), France
Witness	Maurice Masse (1924–2004), lavender farmer
Reported craft	Egg- or rugby-ball-shaped, the size of a Renault Dauphine, on six legs with a central pivot
Beings	Two, about 1 m tall, in close-fitting suits
Traces	Cylindrical hole 18 cm across and 40 cm deep, with four shallow grooves
GEIPAN classification	Unexplained
Proposed explanations	Army Alouette helicopter; fertiliser tank; story inspired by a comic
Also known as	Valensole, Maurice Masse

The Valensole UFO incident, known in French as the rencontre de Valensole, is the report by Maurice Masse, a 41-year-old lavender farmer from Valensole in southern France. He said that early on 1 July 1965 he saw a small egg-shaped craft land in his field and met two small beings, one of whom paralysed him with a tube-like object. The gendarmes recorded an unusual hole and grooves at the site, and lavender reportedly failed to grow there for ten years. Skeptics have proposed that he saw an Army helicopter taking part in nearby manoeuvres, or invented a story inspired by a comic. GEIPAN, the French space agency's office for studying unidentified aerospace phenomena, lists the case as unexplained.^[1][2]

The witness

Masse was born in 1924 and was married with two children. A press agency report described him as a child of the area, with a sun-carved face and broad shoulders, a good hunter and fisherman. He was known in the village for his easy manner and colourful talk. According to the same report, he sometimes told tall tales, such as of trout "that big", and passed for a good storyteller. According to Patrick Gross, everyone in Valensole said he would never have invented such a story, and every field investigator who spoke with him reached the same view.^[2][3][5]

The encounter

According to the press, Masse was in his lavender field a few kilometres from the village at about 5:45 in the morning. Patrick Gross gives 5:45 p.m. He heard a whistling sound and expected to see a helicopter, but instead saw a craft land in the field. He described it as the size of a Renault Dauphine car and shaped like a rugby ball or egg. He said it had a sliding door in the side, a transparent upper part, and six metal legs with a central steel-coloured pivot. Beside it were two small beings. In the gendarmerie's summary, one was about a metre tall and heavily built, wearing a one-piece suit with its head bare. It stepped out briefly, and then the craft vanished "at the speed of lightning". Masse told Le Monde the being was "the size and stoutness of an eight-year-old child". When it saw him it jumped back into the craft, which took off with its companion "at a surprising speed". One press report said he described the suit as orange.^[2][3][4][5]

On 18 August Masse gave the gendarmes new details. He said he had come within about seven metres of the craft and seen the two beings crouching by a lavender plant. One pointed an object at him, and he was unable to move for several minutes. He could still see and hear. In accounts collected by ufologists, he described them as the size of eight-year-old boys, in tight grey-green suits, with large bald pumpkin-like heads, slanted eyes, lipless mouths and pointed chins. They made grunting noises while looking at the plants. They went back inside, watching him through the wall, and the craft retracted its legs with a thump. It floated silently about twenty metres away and simply disappeared.^[1][2][3]

Masse ran back to Valensole in a panic. According to Gross, he told the owner of the Café des Sports part of what happened, leaving out the beings for fear of ridicule. He told his family and friends. According to his wife, Masse said he received some kind of communication from the beings, considered the encounter a spiritual experience, and regarded the site as "hallowed ground" to be kept in the family forever.^[1][3][5]

The gendarmerie investigation

Masse reported the encounter to the gendarmerie the next day, 2 July, at 8 p.m., and was questioned again that night from 11:15 to 11:30. Gross says the questioning lasted eight hours. The gendarmes' summary records that at the site Captain Valnet noted traces that "could possibly correspond to the actual landing of a craft". Another brigade inspected the site on 2 and 3 July and drew up a report with measurements and photographs on 5 July. It recorded an "unusual trace": a cylindrical hole 18 centimetres across and 40 centimetres deep, at the centre of four shallow grooves forming "a sort of cross". Le Monde gave the hole as 20 cm across and 80 cm deep. A further statement was recorded on 23 August after Masse's new details. The local gendarmerie commander, Adjudant Oliva, was swamped with calls, including from New York and London.^[2][3][4][5]

The traces

No radioactivity was found. The soil from the alleged landing spot was reported to contain 18.3% calcium, against negligible levels in the surroundings. The astronomer and ufologist Pierre Guérin attributed this, and the soil's later infertility, to eddy currents induced by electromagnetic radiation from the craft, rather than to fertiliser spread by Masse. Along the craft's alleged departure path, lavender plants degenerated over about a hundred metres. At the site itself lavender reportedly did not grow back until 1975. Ufologists cite these "landing gear impressions" as significant. The site was quickly disturbed. By Friday 2 July curious visitors were digging at the hole, and within days it was nearly a metre deep. Tourists from all over France and abroad flocked to the field, carrying off stones and earth.^[1][2][6]

Effects on Masse

For several months Masse suffered from hypersomnia, sleeping excessively, which he had never experienced before. By 7 July Var-Matin reported that, deeply hurt by mocking comments, he had fallen into a nervous depression. Poltergeist-type events were also reportedly mentioned at his home afterwards. In 1980 the investigator Pierre Guérin and a psychiatrist, Dr. Beaudouard, published retrospectives on the case in Inforespace.^[2][3][6]

Explanations

A helicopter

From 29 June 1965 the region was the scene of military manoeuvres called "Provence 65", involving Army light aviation (ALAT). Valensole was only 19 km from Manosque, the eastern edge of the exercise area. As early as 3 July, military sources told Le Dauphiné Libéré that the "flying saucer" was an ALAT helicopter, very probably an Alouette II or III. On 4 July Le Monde ran the headline "The flying saucer was certainly a helicopter", reporting that several helicopters had certainly flown over Valensole and perhaps landed nearby. Another report suggested the orange suit might have been a "Mae West" life jacket of the kind helicopter crews often wore. In a 1990 article the researcher Dominique Caudron argued that the details fitted an Alouette II, including the characteristic whistle of the turbine as the rotor stops. Claude Maugé suggested it might have been a helicopter of the U.S. Sixth Fleet on a spying mission. In his view, the authorities preferred a UFO story to admitting a foreign intrusion.^[2][4][5]

Masse rejected the helicopter explanation. "The craft had the shape of a giant spider. I clearly counted six 'legs' and a central pivot," he told Le Provençal on 5 July. He said it took off with a muffled sound unlike an aircraft or helicopter, and had no rotor or blades. "I claim at least to be able to recognise a helicopter. This was not one," he said, adding that he had never called it a flying saucer. Gross notes that officials said no helicopter landing had been logged there.^[2][3]

Other explanations

Caudron also suggested that the marks in the ground came from a tank of liquid lime fertiliser placed by the farmer of a neighbouring field. The ufologist and comics collector Raoul Robé suggested that Masse's story was inspired by "Passagers de soucoupes volantes", a story published in 1950 in the magazine À travers le monde and republished in 1960. It shares a Provençal setting, a saucer landing, small aliens and a paralysing ray. The psychologist Gilles Fernandez thought this unlikely but not impossible, given the few similarities and many differences. The CNRS sociologist Arnaud Esquerre, in Théorie des événements extraterrestres, considers that Masse's account, like the 1979 Cergy-Pontoise case, is not a story of real events.^[2]

French ufologists of the time reached the opposite conclusion. After assembling a large dossier, the bulletin Phénomènes spatiaux of the Groupe d'étude des phénomènes aériens wrote that it was "inclined to think that M. Masse's lavender field was the object of an unusual and, it seems, extraterrestrial visit". The case was later cited in the 1999 COMETA report.^[2]

Legacy

Masse died in 2004. The case was the subject of a 2018 episode of France Inter's Affaires sensibles. The French feature film Valensole 1965, directed by Dominique Filhol and released in July 2025, tells the story and what Masse went through after he made it public. Small beings and paralysis had featured in earlier French reports, such as the 1954 Quarouble encounter.^[1][2]

References

Facts in this article are drawn in part from the Wikipedia articles “UFO sightings in France”, “Rencontre de Valensole — Wikipédia (in French)”, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.