Buzzing in Somme, France

On October 31, 1954, at around 8 p.m., a farmer (T1) and his employee (T2) on a tractor observe, upon arriving in a pasture, about twenty meters from the path they were following, a luminous phenomenon that frightens them. T1 describes a "luminous device spinning a few meters above the ground." T2 describes "a ball of fire spinning about 4 meters above the ground" with "rays of various bright colors surrounding it." T1 turns off the tractor's lights, and the witnesses see the object rise at an angle at a "normal" speed toward the South, crossing the valley of the Somme River. When the witnesses turn the headlights back on, the object appears again, spins again, and leaves toward the Southwest. No trace on the ground is seen by the shaken witnesses. The next day, the farmer tells the deputy mayor that the object had a "circular shape with a diameter of an ordinary round table" and that he had the impression of having heard "the same buzzing as a swarm of bees leaving its hive." The bright colors seen were orange, the center was blue, forcing him to close his eyes for a moment, and the upper part was brighter. The gendarmerie learns of this observation through the press and verbally interviews the witnesses, then takes their statements on November 4. The gendarmes are taken to the observation site, but they find no trace in the grass. The gendarmerie investigation also turns up two other witnesses: a shopkeeper in Long (T3) who observed on the same day and at the same time "an orange-colored ball" giving off "glows of various colors similar to the glows of electric arc welding," "one meter in diameter," moving toward the Southwest "fairly quickly." A pork butcher (T4) reports to the gendarmes having seen above the trees bordering the Somme "a cylindrical-shaped device" that, as it moved away toward the Southwest, had "an elongated, even oval shape" and "gave off several orange glows." A few moments later, these two people see the first two witnesses arrive with faces "drained" by fear. This observation case, with two groups of two witnesses at two different locations in the commune, is of very good consistency. There is no doubt about the existence of the phenomenon. Several aspects of the phenomenon suggest ball lightning: the spinning, multicolored, blinding appearance, the buzzing sound of a swarm of bees. Nevertheless, we lack information to confirm this hypothesis (weather felt by the witnesses, meteorological records from the time). GEIPAN classifies this case as C due to a lack of meteorological information.