CERGY-PONTOISE

Opening

In the early hours of 26 November 1979, three young men in Cergy-Pontoise, a new town north-west of Paris, were loading a car with jeans to sell at the market in Gisors. Jean-Pierre Prévost and Salomon N'Diaye told police that a ball of light, with three or four smaller glowing spheres, came down and engulfed the car with their friend Franck Fontaine inside.

When they reached it, the car was empty. Fontaine reappeared a week later in a cabbage field nearby, in the same clothes, saying he had fallen asleep at the wheel and had no idea a week had passed. France had its most famous abduction case. In 1983 Prévost said he had made the whole thing up.

Timeline

26 November 1979, early morningPrévost and N'Diaye report Fontaine missing after the light. The gendarmerie opens a missing-person inquiry. The car is still there.

Following daysPolice search the area. The story fills French newspapers and radio. Science-fiction writer and ufologist Jimmy Guieu arrives with a hypnotist.

3 December 1979, early morningFontaine is back in the field. He goes to find his friends and learns the date.

December 1979 to 1980Prévost says he is receiving messages from the beings who took Fontaine. Guieu's book Contacts OVNI Cergy-Pontoise presents the case as genuine and argues the beings' real target was Prévost. GEPAN, the French space agency's UFO unit, looks at the case and finds nothing of scientific value in it.

1983Prévost tells a journalist he organised the hoax and that Fontaine spent the week hidden in a friend's flat. Guieu refuses to accept the confession.

Key figures

Franck Fontaine, the missing man, told the thinnest story: sleep, then cabbages. He described no craft and no beings.

Jean-Pierre Prévost reported the abduction, then said he was in contact with the abductors, then said he had invented it.

Salomon N'Diaye was the third witness to the light.

Jimmy Guieu, a popular science-fiction author, became the case's champion and never accepted the confession.

Physical and documentary trail

The record: the gendarmerie missing-person file, the press coverage of the week, GEPAN's assessment, Guieu's book, and Prévost's 1983 confession.

Still missing: any witness to the light besides the three friends, any physical trace, and independent confirmation of where Fontaine spent the week.

Things you might not know

• It started with a jeans run. The three were loading stock for a market stall in Gisors at dawn.
• The abductee remembered nothing. Unlike most abduction stories, Fontaine's own account had no beings, no ship and no examination.
• The story moved to the friend. After Fontaine came back, it was Prévost who began claiming contact with extraterrestrials and messages for humanity.
• The believer outlasted the hoaxer. Jimmy Guieu kept defending the case after Prévost had confessed.

Competing explanations

A hoax. Prévost's own account: he staged the disappearance, hid Fontaine and fed the story to the press, for attention and to spread his ideas. GEPAN's finding of nothing fits this.

An abduction. Guieu's view, and the view of believers who distrust the confession: a light, an empty car, a week gone. It rests entirely on the three friends.

Later life of the case

Cergy-Pontoise is still France's best-known abduction case, and is now mostly retold as a famous hoax.

Finding

One of the three men at the centre of the story has said he invented it, and no evidence outside the trio has ever backed the abduction. The best explanation is that the week was spent in a flat, not aboard a craft.

What still will not resolve: which flat, and who else knew.