The Green Disc on the Donzère Road

It was around 11pm on 3 December 1980. A driver near Donzère saw a large circular object about 150 metres ahead, glowing fluorescent green and hanging still some ten metres above the road. He stopped to look. The object began to move without a sound and drifted slowly towards the car. Frightened, he pulled away and drove straight underneath it. It followed him for about a kilometre. At a crossroads he saw it leave at high speed in the opposite direction, and it was quickly gone. The whole encounter lasted three to four minutes.

What is on the record

The source is GEIPAN's file on the case. GEIPAN's one-line summary calls it a close sighting of a plate-shaped craft, with fear and no noise. The driver was a man of 30. His questionnaire records the object as ten metres across and two metres high with a luminous halo, and puts it as close as ten metres. It gives the time as 10.45 to 11pm.

A second witness told investigators of a blue glow that evening. GEIPAN calls that testimony "très succinct" (very brief), and the questionnaire puts it at 9.30pm, far off to the south and moving slowly. An appeal for witnesses and an inquiry at the scene turned up nothing more. GEIPAN does not list hypotheses it tested for this case. It files the phenomenon as one that "reste inexpliqué" (remains unexplained), in class D. That class means GEIPAN investigated and could not explain it.

The two questionnaires are filed under the nearby communes of Roussas and Les Granges-Gontardes, so the exact spot on the road is not fixed by the case name alone.

Why it sits where it does

The page grades L0 · SINGLE ACCOUNT. GEIPAN withholds its witnesses' identities, so the record carries no identified witness. A tier measures sourcing, not the quality of the investigation. What hung over the road near Donzère is not resolved here.