The article below was published in the daily newspaper L'Indépendant, France, on September 29, 2001.
During the night from Wednesday to Thursday, a young woman from Saint-Laurent-de-la-Salanque said she saw a strange object moving in the sky. Atmospheric phenomenon, American B2 or UFO?
In Saint-Laurent-de-la-Salanque, from Mermoz and Saint-Exupéry, we have a long aeronautical experience.
In terms of mystery, with the ultra-secret "DGSE" base of the pond, we are not behind either. So here, perhaps, is the birth of another domain of the Laurentine exception, that of UFOs!
It was during the night from Wednesday to Thursday. Clear sky and stars on Saint-Laurent, it was two o'clock in the morning. "I had just turned off the TV and went to the window. I heard several dogs barking at the same time in the street and a few moments later, I saw in the sky this triangular shape coming from the right, quite quickly, from the direction of Narbonne and going towards Perpignan. The shape stood out quite well in the sky which was quite bright. It must have been six or seven hundred meters from me. It was in the shape of a triangle, quite dark in color, with rounded corners each bearing a fixed point of light. The object seemed quite rounded and it was flying horizontally and much faster than an airliner and I couldn't hear any particular noise but perhaps the distance..."
Hallucinatory phenomenon, bad dream? At two in the morning, anything is possible!
"No, not at all. I was perfectly awake and I even noted the time very precisely: two hours and eight minutes. I don't drink, I don't smoke, I think I'm perfectly balanced and I saw this object, I'm sure of myself."
Yesterday, we called the air traffic control at Perpignan-Rivesaltes airport: nothing to report. On the side of the gendarmerie, which collects testimonies of this type, nothing either. Apparently the young woman is the only witness to this strange phenomenon on which we can orbit ourselves in hypotheses. However, there remains this triangular shape of the object which can make one think of the identically shaped wing of the discreet American plane, the famous B2. Had he stopped at the secret base or had he got lost while looking for Afghanistan?
The observer to whom we showed the photos of the plane and drones (pilotless planes) was categorical: "No, it wasn't a plane, there was something strange about it that didn't resemble anything we commonly see in aeronautics." She was the one who would pronounce the word UFO, even specifying her feelings on the phenomenon of unidentified flying objects... "If I wanted to testify publicly, it was to find out if others besides me had seen this object. It would reassure me to know that I wasn't the only one." But in these times of high tension, who would really be reassured to know that at night, strange craft pass over our heads?
Michel Lloubes
