Stories from the edge of explanation.
About 4 min readOn 8 January 1981 a farmer in southern France watched a lead-coloured saucer land in his field — and the ground it left behind was scorched, compressed and chemically changed. Forty years later, no explanation has held.
About 4 min readIn 1924 a farmer’s cow fell through the ground on a small farm in central France, and a 17-year-old boy dug up clay tablets covered in an unknown script. Within four years the find had divided French archaeology, brought police into a farmhouse, and put a teenager on trial for fraud.
About 4 min readFor 34 years an unidentified prisoner was moved between French fortresses under extraordinary secrecy, dying in the Bastille in 1703. The record is real, the prisoner was real — but his name, and the reason for the mask, have never been found.
About 4 min readMore than 3,000 granite standing stones march in long parallel rows across the moorland of Brittany, raised by Neolithic hands some 6,500 years ago — and archaeologists still do not know why.
About 6 min readBetween June 1764 and June 1767, a series of attacks in the Margeride mountains of south-central France killed more than a hundred people, drew in the King of France — and left historians still arguing over what the Beast actually was.