by Charles Lear
On November 26, 1979, police in the French agglomeration community of Cergy-Pontoise received a strange missing person report from two distressed young men. According to Jean-Pierre Prévost and Salomon N’Diaye, their friend, Franck Fontaine, disappeared after a ball of light that was accompanied by three or four luminous spheres engulfed the car he was in. This resulted in not only an investigation by the police but also GEPAN (Groupe d’Études des Phénomènes Aérospatiaux Non-identifiés), the unit of CNES (Centre National D’études Spatiales) tasked with dealing with UFO reports.
According to an article on the case titled L’Affaire de Cergy-Pontoise, posted on rrO.org, Fontaine, 18, Prévost and N’Diaye, both 25, were loading a Ford station wagon with jeans they were going to try and sell at Gisors market. They saw a light heading towards the ground at a “not too fast speed.” Fontaine drove towards where he thought it might have made impact after telling the other two to meet him there. Prévost and N’Diaye went back to their nearby apartments, N’Diaye to get a camera and Prévost to get another load of jeans.
Unable to find film, N’Diaye joined Prévost and the two headed for the car. At 200 meters away, they saw the car surrounded by a “milky” halo of light around four meters in diameter with “three or four luminous spheres” nearby. The light went up into the sky and the men approached the car. When they got there, they saw that the door was open, the engine was stalled, and the car was in gear. Fontaine was nowhere to be seen.
According to an article titled The Cergy-Pontoise UFO Case posted on the Vice magazine website, the light was seen over a power station and the car was parked in a nearby cabbage field when Fontaine disappeared. Cergy-Pontoise Police Commander Courcous was in charge of the case, and although he told journalists he was skeptical, he ordered a thorough search of the area.
The car was still parked in the same spot. The officers did a search and found no sign of Fontaine. They went as far as to sweep the area with a Gieger counter, and checked with nearby military radar stations, but found nothing unusual.
Eight days later, the police got the news from a radio program that Fontaine had reappeared. According to the report, Fontaine was at home after waking up in the cabbage field with no idea that eight days had passed. He was wearing the same clothes, “with no trace of mud,” and had the same amount of money on him (100 francs) as when he disappeared. The station had gotten the news from an anonymous caller, and sometime later, N’Diaye admitted that it had been he.
Fontaine was questioned by the Pontoise prosecutor’s office. He claimed to have remembered nothing after seeing the “luminous balls” surround the car.
The men began speaking to journalists. Fontaine said he was “abducted by extraterrestrials,” that he hadn’t “said everything,” and described his stay with “the little green men” as “pleasant.”
GEPAN asked Fontaine to come to their facility for tests, but he refused. He said at a press conference: “I don’t remember anything until I have a guarantee from the state that I won’t be locked up.”
The case attracted a large number of journalists and also got the attention of Claude Vorilhon, founder of the International Raëlian Movement, and the men were moved to “remain cloistered at home.”
Henri René Guieu, a writer with the pen name “Jimmy Guieu,” contacted the men and arranged to meet them accompanied by a hypnotist. Fontaine refused to undergo hypnosis, but Prévost offered himself as a subject. During a session recorded for radio, Prévost claimed to be in contact with extraterrestrials.
Later, Fontaine claimed to be regaining memories of his experience. Guieu encouraged the men to approach the press and Fontaine gave an interview to Paris Match that was published in the December 21, 1979 issue. According to him, he “regained consciousness in a laboratory” in the presence of orange-sized luminous balls that spoke to him.
Giueu wrote a book with the men titled, Contacts UFO Cergy-Pontoise, that was published in 1980. The three men appeared on the television show Temps X on April 26, 1980, to promote the book. During the show, Fontaine described being in contact with being named Haurrio, who was a handsome creature with a large forehead. Prévost was hypnotized during the show. The men took the opportunity to announce that the entities were in contact and would be returning to meet them on August 15, 1980. When the date arrived, around 2000 people showed up and were disappointed.
The men announced there would be a new meeting on August 15, 1983. In the meantime, GEPAN published a report calling the men’s story a “confabulation.” Then, two months before the anticipated meeting with their alien friends, Prévost had this to say:
The Cergy-Pontoise affair is bogus from start to finish. I am solely responsible for it. It was me who organized everything, everything mounted. I can prove it. Franck Fontaine spent the eight days of his disappearance in a friend’s apartment in Pontoise; I took him there, and I brought him back.
According to Prévost, he did this to bring people together around a message of peace.
Despite Prévost’s confession, Fontaine and N’Diaye stuck to their story and hundreds of people showed up at the cabbage field for another meeting that didn’t take place.
Reasons for the men having possibly invented such a story range from trying to make a profit to being part of a psychological experiment arranged by some sort of shadowy organization. This last idea was reportedly supported by Jaques Vallée in the book UFO: Back to the Cergy-Pontoise Affair.