Maurice Masse, Valensole
A lavender farmer found an egg-shaped craft in his field and two small beings, one of whom froze him with a tube.
1965 CE · 43.84, 5.98 · status: unexplained
The account
On 1 July 1965 Maurice Masse said he saw the beings looking at his plants and making grunting sounds before they left; star-shaped marks were found and lavender did not regrow at the spot for about ten years. A gendarmerie inquiry was inconclusive, French researchers still regard him as a sincere witness, and he kept to his account until his death.
The sceptical view
Military helicopters operating nearby were suggested at the time; there is little physical evidence and the case remains classed as unexplained.
The researched reading
A single sincere farmer, field marks and a vivid encounter. It cannot be checked beyond his word, so ordinary explanations together outweigh the anomalous one, but none is established.
| Explanation | Weight | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Genuinely anomalous | 26% | Masse was regarded as sincere by gendarmes and investigators, the field showed marks and the plants did not regrow for years; nothing ordinary accounts for the beings. |
| Perception, memory or mind | 24% | At dawn, a startled lone witness can freeze from fear (tonic immobility) and reconstruct a frightening encounter; Masse later spoke of it in near-religious terms. |
| Undetermined | 19% | The share the reading had given to fabrication on doubt rather than evidence: the record does not settle it either way. |
| Something known, misidentified | 14% | Military helicopters operated in the area and could explain a craft landing at dawn, if not the small beings. |
| Secret human technology | 7% | A secret French helicopter or prototype landing in a field was raised but never documented. |
| A hoax or fabrication | 5% | Marks in a field are easy to make and only Masse saw the beings; some researchers suspect the story was a cover for something mundane, such as a local dispute over damaged plants. |
| A poorly understood natural phenomenon | 3% | No known natural phenomenon fits. |
| A known natural phenomenon | 2% | Soil compaction or drought could explain the poor regrowth, not the encounter. |
Official position: The gendarmerie inquiry was inconclusive; French official researchers treat it as unexplained.
Connections in the atlas
- The 'Amarante' case, Nancy
- Marius Dewilde, Quarouble
- Cussac close encounter
- Socorro landing (Zamora)
- GEPAN founded