France's space agency puts its secret UFO archive on the Web

PARIS -- The saucer-shaped object is said to have touched down in the south of France and then zoomed off. It left behind scorch marks and that haunting age-old question: Are we alone?

This is just one of the cases from France's secret "X-Files" -- some 100,000 documents on supposed UFOs and sightings of other unexplained phenomena that the French space agency is publishing on the Internet.

France is the first country to put its entire weird sightings archive online, said Jacques Patenet, who heads the space agency's UFO cell -- the Group for Study and Information on Unidentified Aerospace Phenomena.

Their oldest recorded sighting dates from 1937, Patenet said Friday. The first batch of archives went up on the agency's Web site this week, drawing a server-busting wave of traffic.

"The Web site exploded in two hours. We suspected that there was a certain amount of interest, but not to this extent," Patenet said.

In this 1989 photo released on Friday, March 23, 2007 by France's space agency CNES, an investigator inspects and takes measurements on the site known as "Le trou normand", or the Norman hole, with traces allegedly left by a UFO at an undisclosed location in Normandy, France. (AP Photo/CNES/HO) ** NO SALES **

The archive includes police and expert reports, witness sketches (some are childlike doodlings), maps, photos and video and audio recordings. In all, the archive has some 1,650 cases on record and about 6,000 witness accounts.

The space agency, known by its French initials CNES, said it is making them public to draw the scientific community's attention to unexplained cases and because their secrecy generated suspicions that officials were hiding something.

Lights in the sky

"There's always this impression of plots, of secrets, of wanting to hide things," Patenet said. "The great danger would be to leave the field open to sects and charlatans."

He said many cases were unexplained lights in the sky. "Only 20 to 30" could be classified as "Objet Volant Non Identifie" -- UFOs that appeared to be physical objects, leaving "marks on the ground, radar images," he said.

"In 1954, there was a wave of sightings of phenomena in France, and it went up to the highest levels of state. Gen. de Gaulle himself assigned ... an aide and told him, 'Look into this for me, study it to see if something needs to be done,'" Patenet said.

That year, there were hundreds of sightings over several months, but generally there are 50 to 100 reported each year.

Only 9 percent of France's strange phenomena have been fully explained, the agency said. Experts found likely reasons for another 33 percent, and 30 percent could not be identified for lack of information.

Other cases were impossible to crack. The most baffling were labeled "Class D aerospace phenomena" -- which the agency defines as "inexplicable despite precise testimonies and the [good] quality of material information gathered." Some 28 percent of sightings fall into this category.

A wok with legs

Patenet singled out the January 1981 case of the saucer-shaped object that a witness said he saw land in Trans-en-Provence, a village inland from the French Riviera.

Some 8 feet across, the zinc-colored object made a whistling noise as it landed. The witness later drew a picture: It resembled a wok with a lid and legs.

"The machine stayed a few seconds on the ground and then left very quickly but it left marks that were analyzed and allowed us to determine that the ground had been heated up, that the object must have weighed several hundred kilos, and that surrounding plants underwent biological changes," Patenet said.

"So something really happened. It really defies analysis," he said.

The agency said everything in the archive would be published, except for psychological reports about witnesses and their names.

On the Net:

www.cnes.fr