The Vilvoorde Humanoid

December 1973. Belgium was in the middle of a run of sightings. Reports came in from Romeree, Frameries, Houtain-le-Val and Dilbeek. Then came a report from Vilvoorde, a Flemish town about 12 km north-north-east of Brussels.

At about 2 a.m., a 28-year-old man known only as V.M. got up to use the toilet. Through the kitchen curtain he saw a greenish light and heard a noise "like that of a shovel striking the ground." In the back courtyard stood a small figure, about 1.1 m tall. Its one-piece suit "shined brilliantly", greenish and luminous. A transparent globe covered its head. Its eyes were "oval and yellow" with green rims; at times lids came down over them, and "the face became completely dark for a few moments."

The being held a long bent shaft ending in a thick plate and moved with a slow, waddling gait, passing the device back and forth over a heap of broken bricks the witness had piled up days earlier. To him it looked like a vacuum cleaner. He flashed his torch twice. The being turned its whole body round. It made a "V" sign with two fingers.

Then it walked to the 3 m garden wall. It set one foot flat against it and walked straight up, "with no change of gait except that now he was holding his legs stiff." At the top it made "a complete arc of a circle" and went down the far side.

About 4 minutes passed. A bright white halo appeared behind the wall, with a faint chirring sound. A round object about 5 m across rose slowly, its upper half orange and phosphorescent beneath a transparent dome. The being was visible inside, "bathed in a bluey-green light"; three lights in a row, blue, yellow and red, were "flashing on three times in sequence." Sparks flew from the join between its halves, "resembling the sparks of a cigarette lighter"; below the dome was "a black circle traversed diagonally by a yellow lightning flash."

It rose to about 20 m, rocking gently. Then it accelerated straight up and was gone within seconds. The witness was not afraid. He made himself a light snack, went back to bed and slept well.

The Belgian group SOBEPS took the case. Jean-Luc Vertongen and Yves Vézant carried out the inquiry, and Vertongen's report ran in Inforespace no. 18 in 1974. Gordon Creighton translated it for Flying Saucer Review, which called the case "very thoroughly investigated." No footprints or wall marks were found, and no second witness came forward, although the wall bordered a convent.

The physicist Auguste Meessen interviewed V.M. again. The witness told him he had seen visions before, including one of Christ wearing a crown of thorns. Meessen concluded that he had "waking dreams" and set the case aside. Meessen argued that the witness was not yet fully awake.

A published account by Franck Boitte later claimed that Meessen dropped the case because the witness lacked the social standing to be "publicly presentable." Meessen answered in an open letter dated 24 October 2011: "C'est faux et diffamatoire !" His doubts, he said, were about the visions, not the man's class.

The case remains a single-witness close encounter without traces. The account includes the V sign, the vacuum cleaner and the stiff-legged walk up the wall. Retellings call it the Perpendicular Prowler. David Webb catalogued the case for the Center for UFO Studies as part of the worldwide 1973 humanoid wave.