Cussac close encounter
Two children herding cattle in Cantal saw four small black figures enter a shining sphere that rose and flew off.
1967 CE · 44.99, 3.10 · status: unexplained
The account
On 29 August 1967 a 13-year-old boy and his 9-year-old sister said they first thought the figures were 'black children'. The case was studied by civilian investigators and, in 1978, by the official French agency GEPAN under Claude Poher, which treated it as genuine and unexplained.
The sceptical view
Later investigators found differences between the 1967 and later versions; critics such as Éric Maillot proposed a helicopter and the influence of publicity.
The researched reading
A sincere children’s report investigated officially. A helicopter or a story that grew in the telling are plausible, but the case was never resolved.
| Explanation | Weight | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Genuinely anomalous | 26% | Two children reported small figures entering a sphere; the gendarmes and later GEPAN found them sincere and the case unexplained. |
| Something known, misidentified | 22% | Éric Maillot proposed a helicopter with crew in dark suits; at 70 m children can misjudge scale and shape. |
| Perception, memory or mind | 20% | Later accounts differ from the 1967 version, and publicity can reshape children’s memories. |
| A hoax or fabrication | 15% | Two children inventing or exaggerating a story is not rare, though the sulphur smell and eye irritation were reported promptly. |
| Undetermined | 5% | The share the reading had given to fabrication on doubt rather than evidence: the record does not settle it either way. |
| Secret human technology | 4% | No military aircraft was linked to that day. |
| A known natural phenomenon | 4% | Natural phenomena do not explain the figures. |
| A poorly understood natural phenomenon | 4% | A rare atmospheric light could explain the sphere only. |
Official position: GEPAN, the French official agency, treated the case as genuine and unexplained in 1978.