
Opened in: 2007 CNES
In 2007, France’s National Center for Space Studies made available over 1000 files on UFO cases, that have been researched by the French government for over 50 years. The archives were made available onto its Internet site for worldwide viewing. The files include pictures of possible UFOs, eyewitness accounts, field journals and inter-governmental documents on those sightings. Within three hours of posting the first cases, the French space agency’s Web server crashed because of the flood of viewers seeking the first glimpses of official government UFO files. Jacques Patenet, who heads the Group for the Study of Unidentified Aerospace Phenomena said “the data that we are releasing doesn’t demonstrate the presence of extraterrestrial beings, but it doesn’t demonstrate the impossibility of such presence either”. The French government is the first to release this type of information to the public. Great Britain then followed by releasing their files in 2008. You can go on the French website in English cnes | Le site du Centre national d'études spatiales and the UK site can be found here.
Interesting Fact: One of the more interesting cases included in the files happened on Aug. 29, 1967. A 13-year-old boy and his 9-year-old sister were watching over their family’s cows near the village of Cussac when the boy spotted “four small black beings” about 47 inches tall. Thinking they were other youngsters, he shouted to his sister, “Oh, there are black children!” But as they watched, the four beings became agitated and rose into the air, entering the top of what appeared to be a round spaceship, about 15 feet in diameter, which hovered over the field. Just as the sphere rose up, one of the passengers emerged from the top and returned to the ground to grab something, then flew back to the sphere. The sphere “became increasingly brilliant” before disappearing with a loud whistling sound and left “a strong sulfur odor after departure,” The children raced home in tears and their father summoned the local police, who “noted the sulfur odor and the dried grass at the reported place where the sphere took off.”
UFO Blog: UFO Photographed October 11th, Annecy, France
Last edited: