Marliens Landing Trace, the "Mauve Powder" Case

May 1967. Marliens is a small village in the canton of Genlis, about 20 km south-east of Dijon. Its mayor, Émile Maillotte, owned a clover field known as Le Champ Terraillot, 550 to 800 m from the Genlis to Longecourt road. During the first week of May, his son Camille found something in that field, though some accounts name Émile as the finder.

No UFO was observed. There were no lights, sounds or beings, only a mark of about 30 m² usually described as a six-pointed star. At its heart was a depression 1.30 m across, with earth so compacted that samples had to be broken out with a hammer. In the middle sat a hole 40 cm wide and 30 cm deep, crossed east to west for 85 cm by a bent cylindrical imprint 12 cm wide. Inside lay broken flint, crushed earthworms and dried clover leaves.

Six furrows radiated outward. They averaged 12 cm wide and 25 cm deep, with hardened walls coated in a gray-mauve powder. Larger holes ran 15 to 40 cm deep, and smaller holes angled at 45° reached as far as 1 m. Each ended on a flat stone dusted with the same powder. Soil moisture was reportedly gone within an 8 m radius, but investigators found no vehicle tracks, footprints or radioactivity, and the plants were not burned.

Wednesday, 10 May 1967. Adjutant Geslain and gendarmes Journaux, Mercier and Guilbert of the Genlis brigade visited the field, wrote their report and took aerial photographs. One shows the trace as it was discovered. Commandant Gerlach of the fire service confirmed the soil was not burned.

The powder went to the laboratory. The Paris municipal laboratory found a refractory oxide, silica or alumina, that had partly melted. The rounded edges of the quartz grains pointed to at least 1,500 °C. At the Dijon Faculty of Sciences, X-ray spectrography confirmed the partial melting.

Then came the radar claim. Air-navigation engineer M. Bois phoned journalist and ufologist Charles Garreau for details of traces from a UFO reportedly seen near Genlis, after an unidentified echo had been detected by the Creil military radar. No primary radar record has surfaced. Garreau linked the echo to the trace and dated the landing to 10 May, but other investigators put the discovery at 5 May.

A thunderstorm hit the region on 5 May. Partly melted silica is typical of lightning strikes, and radiating channels of fused material fit a strike into the ground. Later summaries, including RR0, therefore point to lightning or ball lightning.

But Camille Maillotte remembered finding the trace before the storm of 5 May. And the plants were not burned. No hoax has ever been alleged.

France-Soir and La Nouvelle République carried the story on 12 May 1967. In July, Lumières dans la Nuit placed Marliens on its "aligned" cases, the French theory of orthoteny, on a line through Nevers. Flying Saucer Review asked on its cover: "Was it a landing at Marliens?" The Condon Committee's report gave it a single line, as an example of unusual ground features blamed on UFOs without supporting evidence.

In 1971 the gendarmerie captain Guillaume Kervendal cited Marliens and Valensole as significant of a real and serious problem. Jacques Vallée listed the case too, and Patrice Vachon later devoted a 63-page CNEGU study to it. It predates GEIPAN, which holds no record of it. A local account joked that from Marliens to martiens was only one consonant away.