1981.01.08
Due to the French privacy laws, the case was originally published with the witness name replaced with the pseudonym Renato Collini; however the witness name is by now well known to the UFO community as Nicolai.
(ufoevidence.org)
17.00
At about 5.00 pm, Mr Collini, in the words of the French Government’s UFO study group GEPAN, “was working quietly in his garden at Trans-en-Provence. Suddenly his attention was attracted by a low whistling sound that appeared to come from the far end of his property.”
(UFO: The Government Files, Brookesmith)
A farmer called Renato Nicolai…’s house sat astride a slope built into a series of terraced orchards in the valley of the river Nartuby.
(The Complete Book of UFOs, Hough and Randles)
The report continues: “Turning around, (Mr Collini) saw in the sky above the trees something approaching a terrace at the bottom of the garden…”
(UFO: The Government Files, Brookesmith)
[It was a] “device in the air at the height of a big pine tree… not spinning, coming lower towards the ground.” It was like a slightly elongated egg with four circular openings on the base. As he walked towards it he saw that it had touched down on the slope.
(The Complete Book of UFOs, Hough and Randles)
“The witness moved forward and observed the strange phenomenon behind a small building.
Less than a minute later, the phenomenon suddenly rose…”
(UFO: The Government Files, Brookesmith)
“Right away it lifted off, still emitting a slight whistling sound”. It “kicked off a little dust when it left.” The object – slightly smaller than the size of a car – climbed about twenty feet up and then sped away to the northeast. Nicolai said it was “the colour of lead. The device had a ridge all the way around its circumference.” Two of the holes “could be reactors or feet. There were also two other circles which looked like trapdoors.” There were two small legs at one point on the base. He had no doubt that it was a constructed machine.
(The Complete Book of UFOs, Hough and Randles)
“Mr Collini immediately went to the apparent scene of the landing and observed circular marks and a clear crown-shaped imprint on the ground.”
(UFO: The Government Files, Brookesmith)
1981.01.09
On 9 January 1981 police at Draguignan, a town in south-eastern France long plagued with UFO sightings, received a… report [from Nicolai].
(The Complete Book of UFOs, Hough and Randles)
Gendarmes arrived… to take soil and vegetation samples.
(UFO: The Government Files, Brookesmith)
The police did not merely have Nicolai’s story but also physical evidence, for there was a curious ring in the earth where the object had landed. It was several inches wide and over six feet in diameter. They took samples.
(The Complete Book of UFOs, Hough and Randles)
1981.01.12
GEPAN were contacted three days later and the gendarmerie were instructed to take further, more specific samples, including controls from outside the ring area. Scientists from GEPAN then made their own study.
(The Complete Book of UFOs, Hough and Randles)
1981.03.20
On 20 March, GEPAN investigators took further samples and interviewed Mr Collini. The tests showed that the witness “had no psychological problems and that his testimony was internally and externally consistent” – in other words, he did not contradict himself, and there was evidence that something had landed at the spot he described… The plants there were prematurely aged and had lost up to 50 per cent of their chlorophyll. No residual radioactivity was evident.
Clearly, something physically real did land on Mr Collini’s property that evening…
(UFO: The Government Files, Brookesmith)
Further biochemical analysis of the vegetation and soil samples was conducted by Professor [Michel] Bounias of the National Institute of Agronomical Research. The studies “demonstrated a qualitatively large-scale incident producing a ground heating to between 300 and 600 degrees Celsius and probably the depositing of trace quantities of such materials as phosphates and zinc,” wrote Velasco in a summary of the case. Prof Bounias documented significant biological and biochemical mutations in wild alfalfa samples, such as significant loss of chlorophyll, published in GEPAN’s famous Technical Note No. 16, Analysis of a Trace.
(ufoevidence.org)
The leaves on the grass had aged “in some way that neither natural processes nor laboratory experiments could duplicate.” There were also major deformations of the ground which could not be explained. GEPAN said in conclusion “We cannot give any precise or specific interpretation for this remarkable set of results… but we can state that there is nevertheless confirmation from them that a very significant incident took place on this spot.”
(The Complete Book of UFOs, Hough and Randles)
GEPAN’s report noted… marks on the ground corresponding to the craft’s “landing legs”…
(Borderlands, Dash)
[Click images to clarify and enlarge]
Part of the GEPAN report detailing the Trans-en-Provence case
1981c
It was soon after the completion of the research on this case that GEPAN went underground.
(The Complete Book of UFOs, Hough and Randles)
1987.06
In June 1987 Jenny [Randles] met, in Washington, engineer Jean-Jacques Velasco, the new head of GEPAN. Velasco was very impressed by the calibre of the Provence case (which Alain Esterle, GEPAN director at the time, had also enthused about, saying: “We have a combination of factors which induce us to accept that something akin to what the witness described actually did take place”)…
[Velasco] suggested that an electromagnetic field, rather than an irradiating energy source, was more likely to have caused the plant and soil changes.
(The Complete Book of UFOs, Hough and Randles)
1988.11
In November 1988, ufologist Dr Jacques Vallée visited the site and interviewed Nicolai in the company of plant specialist Bounias. Samples were taken back to California where a prestigious scientific institute conducted further tests on Vallée’s behalf. The institute wished to remain anonymous because it preferred not to be publicly associated with UFOs (which is, sadly, still a common problem). It could offer no mundane explanation, even after bombarding the material with x-rays and testing it under an electron microscope.
(The Complete Book of UFOs, Hough and Randles)
1990
In a paper written for the Journal of Scientific Exploration in 1990 Bounias himself also had his say about these effects. He was baffled, he said, because no normal method such as ionising, thermal or hydro factors could explain the changes that he had found.
(The Complete Book of UFOs, Hough and Randles)
The case has impressed ufologists, not only because Nicolai seemed uninterested in his experience and professed to know nothing about UFOs, but because it was investigated by the local police and an official French Government agency, GEPAN, the Groupe d’Etude des Phénomènes Aérospatiaux Non-identifiés.
(Borderlands, Dash)
A near-identical object had landed on the snowy slopes of a hillside at Meanwood, West Yorkshire, in February 1979 amidst a major two-day flap…