The Valensole Landing

Valensole sits on a high plateau in Provence, in what was then the Basses-Alpes. In summer the land turns purple with lavender. Maurice Masse grew it. He was about 41, married, a father of two. The local paper Le Provençal called him "a solid mind, a serious man who generally does not talk in vain."

Thursday, 1 July 1965. Masse had left home around 5 a.m. At about 5:45 he sat behind a small hillock at the Olivol locality, about 2 km north-west of the village, to smoke. Then came a whistling sound. He assumed it was a helicopter.

He walked around the hillock and saw a craft in his lavender, about 30 m away. It was shaped like a rugby ball, matte, about the size of a Renault Dauphine car. It stood on metal legs around a central pivot. He compared it to a "monstrous spider." There was no rotor, and no blades.

In his first account, one figure stood outside, "of the size and stoutness of an eight year old child," in a one-piece suit, bareheaded. A second was inside. Seeing him, the figure jumped aboard. A sliding door closed.

By 18 August 1965 his statement had grown, and he now said he had approached to about 7 m and seen both beings crouching in front of a lavender plant. He later described large bare heads, slanted eyes, lipless mouths and pointed chins, and said they made grunting noises. Then: "One of the two made a gesture with his hand, in which I made out an object; at that moment I was immobilised." He stayed unable to move for several minutes, until after the craft had gone. He had left the beings out at first, for fear of ridicule.

The legs began to turn. The craft rose "in a deaf noise which has nothing to do with that of a plane or that of a helicopter." It "took off obliquely with a whistling sound," wrote the Washington Post. The gendarmes said it left at lightning speed. From first sighting to empty sky, about 30 seconds.

A central hole, 18 cm across and 40 cm deep in the gendarmerie report, with four grooves radiating from it in a cross. Masse said the soil was almost liquid mud right after take-off, then set hard as cement. The lavender died, and no radioactivity was found. Masse suffered too. He was reported in the grip of a nervous breakdown, and for weeks he slept about 10 hours a day.

On 2 July Adjudant Oliva of the Valensole brigade took his statement. Captain Valnet recorded traces "that might possibly correspond to a craft actually having landed." Masse was questioned for about 8 hours in total. Investigators including Pierre Guérin and Jacques Vallée met him and judged him sincere. In June 2015 GEIPAN released the three gendarmerie reports and classed the case "unexplained," category D.

Doubt came fast. Le Monde declared: "The flying saucer was certainly a helicopter," an Alouette from the "Provence 65" manoeuvres. But the Alouette has a three-wheel undercarriage, and Masse insisted there was no rotor. Others proposed the SNECMA Coléoptère, a US Sixth Fleet helicopter, a fertiliser tank, a comic strip, or a hole dug with an auger. Thierry Rocher saw inconsistencies but called the testimony "troubling."

According to his wife, Masse called it "a spiritual experience," and the site "hallowed ground." In 2025 the story reached cinemas as Valensole 1965.