assumed ownership. They told us that they had bought the property in 1966 and that the area where the event took place was initially planted in vines. Two years later (in the 1968-69 time frame) they moved some of the dirt from the hillside in order to level that piece of ground, consolidating the slope with a retaining wall that extends from the main house to the Eastern boundary of the property. A dirt trail curves back from that area to the unpaved access road which meets the two-lane highway below. The site is about 12 feet above the level of the access road.

When asked about the use of chemicals, construction materials, tractors, or other equipment at the site, Mr. Nicolai stated that he had definitely not dumped cement or any similar substances on the ground in that vicinity. It is important to note that a second well has been dug, to a depth of 110 feet, about 60 feet east of the back wall of the house and about 100 feet west of the site of the event itself. Equipment was indeed brought to the area for this work, Mr. Nicolai told us, but the drilling tools were brought from the main driveway and the tractor did not crawl over the site of the event. Most significantly, this work took place in 1984, three years after the sighting. The most recent plant samples gathered by Dr. Bounias had been collected in 1983, one year before the drilling of this well. No pump has been installed and the well has not been placed into operation, pending the possible sale of this parcel of the property.

A private conversation with Mrs. Nicolai disclosed her feelings at the time of the sighting: after her husband told her what he had seen, she was seriously worried about his health. Some time earlier he had suffered from cardiac problems and the doctor had prescribed frequent rest. Was he starting to hallucinate? She was so concerned she was unable to sleep that night. The next day she took her neighbors (Mr. and Mrs. Morin) into her confidence, not to engage in idle gossip but in search of advice; and it was out of a sense of civic duty that Mr. Morin, a tax inspector, insisted that the Gendarmerie must be called.

Our impression of Mr. Nicolai was that he was a quiet man who highly valued his privacy. The hypothesis that the witness had engineered a hoax in an attempt to gain publicity was not supported by observation of his behavior, either at the time of the event or in subsequent years. Indeed he has turned down several opportunities to appear on French television and to give media interviews, except for a single televised panel at which representatives of CNES were present. It is also difficult to believe that, if the initial report had been a joke, Mr. Nicolai would not have confessed it to his wife when he realized to what degree the event was upsetting her.

When we confronted Mr. and Mrs. Nicolai with the allegations that had been made about the presence of drilling equipment on their property, they quietly asserted that no drilling work had been done prior to 1984, and that the neighbors who had made such reports must simply have been mistaken about the date. None of the compounds (such as cement) cited as possible causes for the changes noted in the local plants were found in the soil analysis