IncidentThe Cussac Encounter (29 August 1967, France)

Francois Delpeuch (~13) and his sister Anne-Marie (~9), minding cattle near Cussac, reported four small dark figures (~1-1.2 m, ‘all black’ with a shiny surface, long thin arms) beside a very bright silver sphere ~40-80 m away; the beings appeared to levitate or dive headfirst into the sphere, which rose spirally and departed with a soft high-pitched whistle, leaving a sulfur odor and disturbed grass. A gendarmerie report was filed, noting the children’s distress, the sulfur smell, and the dried grass; the case was studied by GEPAN (the CNES UFO unit) and re-opened from scratch by its successor GEIPAN in 1988, which concluded the phenomenon ‘cannot be assimilated to any phenomenon known to us’ and that the elements ‘all go in the direction of the reality of the children’s statements’ (file released publicly in 2007). It is a rare CE3 with child witnesses that received formal government scientific scrutiny, strengthening the corpus’s French/official-investigation and child-witness dimensions alongside Ariel School and Broad Haven. Its weight comes from the quality of the official process, not from corroborating physical evidence, which is sparse (an odor, disturbed grass, and one internal inconsistency over landing legs).