Cannes To/From/Between LA Bocca, FR being encounter — March 1931

Later accounts place Mr Blanc on the Cannes–Saint-Raphaël route near Cannes-la-Bocca at the end of March 1931, around 3 p.m. Described in the fuller French sources as a bus driver, he reportedly braked before a grey-white luminous cloud across the RN7. The cloud seemed to open, revealing a humanlike form less than twenty metres away. The figure wore a close-fitting white dress, a broad blue belt and a veil. It held its arms forward as if signalling him to stop. Blanc, a practising Catholic, interpreted the appearance as the Blessed Virgin. The form moved sideways toward the cloud and disappeared within it. The cloud rose and travelled toward Nice, described in different versions as a lens or ovoid, leaving a luminous trail. Accounts differ over its speed and the figure’s height. Patrick Gross compares later publications citing an investigation by Henri Julien. Some render the vehicle as a streetcar, and passengers reportedly saw the cloud without clearly seeing the figure. A contemporary Nice newspaper story and an interview conducted about forty years later are cited but their originals were not recovered here. Religious interpretation and later UFO interpretation remain distinct; neither establishes the figure’s identity or a metallic spacecraft.