Valensole

Valensole and the Lavender Field

On the morning of 1 July 1965 a farmer named Maurice Masse walked out onto his lavender field on the Valensole plateau and saw an egg-shaped craft on six legs, with two small beings beside it examining the plants. By his account one of them pointed a tube at him and he could not move until the craft had gone. The gendarmes recorded a depression in the ground and the marks of the legs. The lavender at the landing spot grew badly for several years afterwards, which the neighbours noted too. Masse was a respected man, a member of the Resistance, and visibly disliked the attention: he refused journalists for decades. The case remains among the most cited in the French literature.