Gujan-Mestras, France: Town lights fail as red oval object approaches, witness faints

At 1:30 a.m. Franck Pavia and Jean-Marc Guitard had stopped at the side of a road in Gujan-Mestras, Gironde, France, to repair a turn signal when all the lights in the town suddenly went out. A powerful rumble startled them, and they saw an oval, red object surrounded by white flames flying toward them at an altitude of 11,000 feet. Jean-Marc was unable to breathe and fainted; the object then changed direction and shot away, and the visibly terrified pair knocked on the door of a baker named Varisse to tell their story. At about the same time a restaurant manager named Bachère, driving toward Bordeaux, saw a large, very bright orange ball hovering above La Réole at about 1,000 feet; it disappeared and reappeared at the same spot a minute later. Eberhart cites Jacques Vallée's analysis of optical power output in the Journal of Scientific Exploration (1998). The account follows the entry in George M. Eberhart's chronology UFOs and Intelligence (CUFOS) and the sources cited there; it is not an independent determination by From Beyond Space.