Intense light, blackout and mass fish death in Saint-Marcel

Summary

On the night of March 11, 1979, residents of Saint-Marcel, Ain, witnessed an intense blue-green-mauve light illuminating the area for about sixty seconds, followed by a widespread power outage. A motorist described a static oval shape 15–20 meters above the ground that vanished abruptly, leaving two reddish dots. A fish farmer, awakened by a strange noise and blinding light, found hundreds of kilograms of fish dead in one of his ponds the next day. A high-voltage line ran nearby and one of its cables broke days later, showing signs of electrical-arc damage. Testing pointed to a viral infection as the cause of the fish kill, though an electrical phenomenon could not be ruled out as a contributing factor.