SOMMERECOURT (52) 17.07.1983

Residents around Sommerécourt in Haute-Marne, France, reported nighttime lights on July 15 and 16, 1983. Those observations formed the immediate background to a more serious report on the following night, but the available record does not establish that all three evenings involved the same phenomenon. At approximately 21:30 on July 17, one adult witness went out to observe a nearby hill. He carried binoculars and watched the area where the earlier lights had been reported. A 60-kilovolt electrical transmission line crossed the hill. The witness later said that a yellow-orange ball of fire appeared and caught him up. He claimed that it carried or displaced him and dropped him several kilometres away. The official summary does not provide a continuous visual account of the journey, a verified route, a measured duration or an independent observer who saw him move through the air. Several hours after he left, relatives found him at home rather than at the alleged drop point. He was described as dazed, injured and severely distressed. His account was confused enough, and his bodily condition serious enough, that his family arranged hospitalization. The record does not identify a craft exterior, doorway, cabin or occupants. It also does not explain how the witness travelled from the alleged distant landing point back to his house. Those missing stages are central uncertainties and are not replaced by a conventional abduction narrative. Investigators examined the physical setting and took the high-voltage line seriously. The weather was very stormy, and electrical arcing from the 60-kilovolt infrastructure was considered capable of producing a real luminous phenomenon and an electrical shock. That hypothesis provided a possible explanation for both the ball-like light and the witness's injuries. It did not require accepting literal aerial transport. The investigators regarded the alleged abduction or displacement as unconvincing while allowing that an unusual and dangerous electrical event may actually have occurred. The distinction between observation and interpretation is particularly important here. A witness can experience real light, pain, disorientation and memory disturbance without the proposed mechanism of transport being established. The Atlas preserves the reported sequence and the official alternative side by side. The earlier lights of July 15 and 16 remain contextual reports. Without instrument data or matched trajectories, they cannot be used to prove that the July 17 event had the same source. CE4 is retained because the witness alleged involuntary transport and deposition elsewhere. The classification records the content of the claim, while the dossier makes clear that the official investigation favored an electrical-shock interpretation and did not validate abduction. The portrait reconstructs the moment before the claimed displacement: the witness watches a yellow-orange luminous sphere near the storm-exposed power line. It deliberately includes the pylons and lightning so the official alternative is visible, and it shows no craft or entities. It is an illustrative reconstruction, not documentary evidence.