Alengon, France — 17 July 1790
Crashed UFO, the pilot escapes!
This is another account in the long series of “crashed UFO with occupant” stories. At 5:00 in the morning, several farmers saw a huge globe in the sky, surrounded by flames. They first took it to be a balloon that had caught fire, but its speed and the strange whistling sound coming from it led them to think otherwise. The globe descended slowly, touching the top of a hill, where it tore up the plants along the slope. The flames from the object set fire to the small trees and the grass. Fortunately, the locals managed to stop the fire from spreading. In his report on the incident, police inspector Liabeuf wrote that the sphere was still hot in the evening. It showed no signs of damage despite the heat. “It stirred up so much curiosity that people came from all directions to see it.” After some time, a much unexpected thing happened. A door burst open in the sphere and a human came out! “This person was dressed in a very strange fashion. He wore a suit which clung to his body, and when he saw all this crowd he said a few words which could not be understood, and ran to take flight in the woods.” The peasants drew back from the sphere instinctively - which was fortunate for them, because the object exploded, throwing pieces everywhere. A search was undertaken to find the mysterious visitor but he was never discovered. The Alengon incident has been included in many anthologies of UFO reports, dozens of books, and has become one of the best-known “folkloric” cases in the field. The reader may feel a little disappointed, therefore, though perhaps not very surprised, to discover that the event never really occurred. The earliest reference to this case comes from an article published by Italian author Alberto Fenoglio, whom we’ve already met in connection with the supposed ufological deeds of Alexander the Great. A writer known to have invented some UFO reports in his time, Fenoglio seems to have created the story about Inspector Liabeuf for a purportedly serious article about sightings in ancient history, published in the Italian magazine Clypeus. This article was widely distributed and translated into several languages. The truth of the matter finally came to light in 1975 when Italian researcher Edoardo Russo conducted an investigation into Fenoglio’s claims. In spite of this, books and magazine articles presenting the story of the Alengon ‘crash’ as a genuine case continue to be published in good faith every year in many countries. Three or four historical cases may have inspired Fenoglio to compose a story dated June 17 , 1790. For instance, on July 24th, 1790, an incident occurred in the municipality of La Grange de Juillac, France, involving several black “stones from heaven” that fell with a hissing noise before hundreds of witnesses. On April 26 , 1803, at 1:00 P.M., a fireball was seen over Caen, Pont-Audemer and near Alengon. Up to 3,000 stones are said to have fallen amid detonations, one of which weighed 17 lbs. (.Astronomie populaire, Paris, 1840. Tome IV, 225.) More famously, precisely a year before the date given by Fenoglio, a fireball witnessed near the city of Worms, in the Rhineland, led to the writing of a controversial book. The canon of Trier, Worms and Spires cathedrals, Johann Friedrich Hugo von th th Dalberg (1760-1812) saw a meteorite from his family’s country house and was told by neighbours that it had crashed nearby. Dalberg went on to write Uber Meteor-Cultus derAlten, vorziiglich in Bezugauf Steine, die vom Himmel gefallen (On the Meteor Cult of the Ancients, Especially with Regard to Stones Fallen from the Sky), published in 1811, a book suggesting that meteorites originated in space, where they defied gravity and waited for an opportunity to drop. “These Air-stones have from the start an inner, electrical life,” he wrote, “and can consequently stay floating, so long as they are surrounded by the neutral-electric ether… As blazing spheres, sometimes exploding in the upper air, sometimes on their descent, they plunge down towards the heavenly body into whose spherical electrical atmosphere they are drawn.” Did Fenoglio envision one of these plunging down at Alengon? March 1796: Don region, Russia The Devil and the brawling Cossack According to writer Peter Kolosimo, the inhabitants of a Russian village in the Don region were surprised to find a large metal ball in one of their fields. The ball measured ten feet in diameter. People from everywhere flocked to see it, wondering where it had come from. Clearly it had not been delivered by road, as there were no wheel tracks to be seen anywhere in the vicinity. It could only have fallen from the sky, they thought. Except for a regular pattern of circles etched into its surface, the ball was as smooth as marble. The village folk tried to move it but their effort was useless: it would not budge an inch. Then a man named Pushkin arrived. Pushkin was a drunkard and a gambler, even a heretic, and everyone looked down on his ways. But despite his faults, he was also known to be very courageous. They led him to the spot: “He drew his saber, spurred his horse toward it, he cursed it and defied it,” the legend says. “Whether it came from heaven or hell he challenged it to fight back.” The man struck the object with his sword again and again. Suddenly the crowd around him began to howl with terror: one of the circles on the ball had opened up, revealing a single inhuman eye! Pushkin sneered and carried on with his blows against the object. He struck it so hard, in fact, that the blade of his saber snapped off. The peasants fled in fear. When they looked behind them they saw the drunkard and his steed were suddenly becoming transparent, fading into the air like ghosts. They could still faintly hear Pushkin’s voice, cussing angrily, but even this quickly faded away. “The villagers were not unduly perturbed by this,” it is said. “The devil had gotten his own back with the brawling Cossack.” Two days passed: nothing was seen or heard of Pushkin. Then to everyone’s surprise both he and his trusty horse staggered back into the village as if half asleep. He seemed calm enough, but he soon flew into a rage and began to howl that he was going to put an end to the unholy globe and set fire to it and the woods and everything around it. Hearing this, everybody in the village trailed along after him to watch the spectacle, but he never could take his revenge on the mysterious metal ball, for “all that was there to be seen was his sorry mortification. The ball was no longer there.” Unlike the case of the crash at Alengon, we have been unable to prove that this tale is a modern hoax. However, not one Russian specialist we have approached had ever heard of the story, and the general consensus is that it originated as a fictional tale. th Early 19 century, Penrhynisaf, North Wales Three hours’ missing time The Rev. R. Jones’s mother, when a young unmarried woman, is said to have started one evening towards her home, accompanied by a servant man, David Williams, called on account of his great strength and stature, Dafydd Fawr, Big David, who was carrying a flitch of bacon. The night was dark, but calm. Williams walked in the rear of his young mistress, and she, thinking he was following, went straight home. But three hours passed before David appeared. Interrogated as to the cause of his delay, he said he had only been about three minutes behind her. Told that she had arrived three hours ahead, David would not believe it. At length, he was convinced that he was wrong in his timing, and he proceeded to account for his lagging behind: He had observed, he said, a brilliant meteor passing through the air, followed by a ring or hoop of fire, and within this hoop stood a man and woman of small size, handsomely dressed. With one arm they embraced each other, and with the other they took hold of the hoop, and their feet rested on the concave surface of the ring. When the hoop reached the earth they jumped out of it, and proceeded to make a circle on the ground. As soon as this was done, a large number of men and women appeared, and to the sweetest music that ear ever heard commenced dancing round and round the circle. The sight was so entrancing that the man stayed, as he thought, a few minutes to witness the scene. The ground all around was lit up by a subdued light, and he observed every movement of these beings. By and by the meteor which had at first attracted his attention appeared again, and then the fiery hoop came to view, and when it reached the spot where the dancing was, the lady and gentleman who had arrived in it jumped into the hoop, and disappeared in the same manner in which they had reached the place. Immediately after their departure the Fairies vanished from sight. The man found himself alone in darkness, and he proceeded homewards. Unfortunately, we have found no original document to authenticate the circumstances of the story, or even the year of the event, so it has to remain as an interesting fable.
Source: Elias Owen, Welsh Folk-Lore, A Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales, (1896 edition). Facsimile reprint by Llanerch Publishers, Felinfach, Wales Case: W519