At 5:45 AM on July 1, 1965, 41-year-old lavender farmer Maurice Masse was tending his field on the Plateau de Valensole near the village of Valensole in the Alpes-de-Haute-Provence department of southeastern France when he heard an unusual whistling sound. He walked around his tractor to investigate and saw, approximately 60 metres away, an object about the size of a Renault 4 — elongated, roughly egg-shaped, mounted on four slender legs and a central pivot — that had apparently landed in his lavender field. Approaching, Masse came within 5 metres of two small figures approximately 1.2 metres tall, wearing close-fitting grey-green one-piece garments, with disproportionately large bald heads, pointed chins, and enormously large eyes.
One of the entities pointed a small metallic tube at Masse, who immediately experienced complete paralysis while fully conscious. He watched the two beings examine his lavender plants, communicate with each other in what he later described as a 'gurgling' sound, and then re-enter the craft through a sliding door. The object rose vertically, hovered briefly at treetop level, and disappeared horizontally at extreme speed. Masse remained paralyzed for approximately fifteen minutes before he was able to move again. He reported the event to the Valensole gendarmerie within hours.
Investigators from the local gendarmerie, and subsequently from the French Air Force (via the GEPAN/GEIPAN program), examined the landing site and documented four circular depressions in the lavender field consistent with the craft's legs, plus a central deeper impression. The lavender plants within the landing circle died within days, and the surrounding field suffered significant growth-rate anomalies over the following months. Masse himself experienced persistent effects including severe drowsiness, inability to perform his usual work for weeks, and repeated nightmares; he refused subsequent interviews from most researchers and to his death in 2004 insisted on the reality of the encounter. The Valensole case is one of the foundational European close-encounter incidents and is widely cited alongside Trans-en-Provence as the cornerstone of French UFO research.