On samedi 19 the author and his wife (a psychologist by training) visited the site of the Trans-en- Provence phenomenon in the company of Dr. Bounias. Weather conditions were dry and clear as we arrived at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Nicolai, who collaborated fully with our requests and patiently answered our questions over the next two hours (Figure 1).
Mr. Nicolai told us that the well, which is clearly seen as one reaches the property from the west, had been built in 1966 at the same time as the main house. Water was found at a depth of 44 feet. The well is located in the front yard, on the opposite side of the house from the site of the event. The witness also showed us the small shack he had been building at the time of the sighting. It was designed to house a new pump, immediately above the front yard. From that position one does have a long view down to the flat area behind the house on the east side.
We noted several other structures nearby: a small, one-story stone house near the pump shack, the ruins of a one-room stone cabin higher on the hill, and a round cavity lined with stones at the far eastern side of the property. It was used at one time as a garbage dump. Only the small house and the pump shelter show evidence of masonry work over the last ten years.
At the time of our visit, most of the site was overgrown with wild grass and weeds. There were some bare spots along the path but any trace of the event had long been obliterated.
We questioned Mr. and Mrs. Nicolai at length about the sequence and the nature of the work to which the area had been subjected since they had performed by CNES. However, there remained one avenue of verification, namely a comparison of the soil on the surface of the ring itself with the soil at the same spot but just below the surface. Mr. Velasco kindly supplied the author with samples (labeled Q1 and Q2) that had been gathered at the same time as the main samples but had not been used in the CNES analysis. We were able to perform a series of tests on these samples.