The Alencon Spaceman

Unearthly Rumours

Alencon, a small town in rural Normandy, is normally associated with the sedate art of lace making. However, two centuries ago it was allegedly the scene of an event so bizarre that word of it even reached Paris.

The authorities promptly dispatched a police inspector to investigate the strange rumours. When he returned to the capital convinced that an extraterrestrial was roaming the French countryside, his superiors were predictably unimpressed, dismissing his report as "ludicrous".

So, what exactly had happened in the remote hamlet to lead the inspector to such wild conclusions?

Crash Landing

At 5am on June 12 1790, the early-rising peasants of Alencon saw a red metallic sphere descend erratically from the dawn sky and plunge into a hilltop. The impact threw up a shower of soil and vegetation, and the grass around the object burst into flames.

Did images like this inspire the Alencon hoax?

The villagers rushed up the hill bearing pails of water and quickly extinguished the fire. News of the landing spread fast, and a crowd of onlookers including the mayor and the local doctor soon gathered at the scene.

While the crowd were debating what to do next, a hatch slid open in the lower half of the sphere and a man wearing tight-fitting overalls climbed out. He jabbered incomprehensibly at the spectators and gestured to them to clear the area. Then he took to his heels and fled into the nearby woods.

The sphere began to rumble ominously, and the villagers nervously backed away. Moments later, it exploded - scattering debris across the hillside and sending up a mushroom-shaped cloud. The remains of the craft sizzled in the grass for a few moments then disintegrated into ash.

Despite a thorough search of the surrounding area, the sphere's occupant was never seen again. A police inspector named Liabeuf arrived from Paris to co-ordinate the hunt for the stranger and question the witnesses. Despite his initial scepticism, Liabeuf concluded that the stranger in the sphere was probably "a being from another world".

Whodunit?

Recent research has revealed the tale of the Alencon Spaceman to be a hoax perpetrated by a mischievous Italian Ufologist named Alberto Fenoglio.

In a similar vein, Fenoglio also claimed to have uncovered an account of a giant mechanical eyeball that landed in rural Russia in 1796. He later announced that a 5000-year-old clay tablet had been unearthed in Nineveh detailing the extraterrestrial adventures of a certain King Eitan, who had been taken around the Solar System by friendly blond spacemen.

As with the Alencon crash, there was a complete lack of corroborating documentary evidence to support either of these 'discoveries'. Still - why let the truth ruin a perfectly good story?

Sources

Thomas Slemen: The Giant Book of Strange But True, pp64-67.
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