The Petite-Île Close Encounter: Antoine Séverin and the Michelin Men

La Réunion already had its legend. On 31 July 1968, at Plaine des Cafres, Luce Fontaine reported two beings resembling Michelin men. It became the affair of the "Babas Michelin." Seven years later, a young man from Petite-Île told a story with echoes of it. Antoine Séverin was 21, a driver-clerk born in the town. On the nights of 11 and 12 February 1975 he dreamed of grapes. His partner said it foretold misfortune. He also heard "beep beep" sounds in the dark.

Friday 14 February 1975. About 1 p.m. The sky was clear and the sun almost overhead. Antoine was walking home for lunch, and the beeps were getting louder. "The sounds were more and more intense, sometimes I slowed down my pace."

In a cornfield beside the crater path on Piton Calvaire, about 300 metres west of the town centre, he saw it. A craft the size of an ordinary car. Aluminium-coloured, shaped like a hat on an upside-down saucer, or an egg cut in half on a saucer. "Everything was shining." It hovered about 1.5 metres above the ground, with two rectangular portholes on top and a round one in a turret.

A three-step ladder came out from underneath, tilted at about 45 degrees. It did not touch the ground. Three beings about 1 metre tall moved near the craft, each "a strange little man, sausage-shaped, like Michelin." Shining suits. Antennas on each side of the head. One held a shining object about 30 cm long. Another carried a shining bag. In the turret, a fourth head wore a kind of helmet, like a diving suit.

Then a powerful flash from the upper part of the saucer. "I was then thrown backwards by a powerful flash." The ladder retracted with a hydraulic noise. The machine rose with a very strong whistle. Antoine ran.

That evening he lost his speech. It came back on 19 February. His eyesight weakened. Taken back to the field on 20, 22 and 24 February, he fainted each time, pulse weak, hands pressed to his ears. A force he could not explain, he said, stopped him going forward. An ORTF crew filmed one of these attacks at the site.

His mother filed a complaint with the Gendarmerie Nationale on 15 February. Geiger checks on Antoine and the field were negative. Air traffic control at Gillot reported no aircraft over the island between noon and 2 p.m., and no weather balloons had been launched. A neighbour, Mrs. F., showed investigators three holes in a triangle, but the field was full of similar dips they put down to birds feeding. Everyone described Antoine as sober, honest and balanced. He read no science fiction, and several people said they had never heard of the 1968 case. The report, closed on 6 March 1975, judged that he "was not a simulator."

The object was never identified. Doctor T. diagnosed a "pithiatic crisis," a nervous reaction to "an intense emotional shock, hard to pin down, but real." That explains the symptoms, not what he saw. The Michelin-like beings invite comparison with Plaine des Cafres, a link the gendarmes asked about directly.

The Gendarmerie file circulated in the ufological literature and was transcribed online by Patrick Gross. RFO Réunion rebroadcast the ORTF report in 2005, and Outre-mer La 1ère revisited the case in 2023.