The 1790 Matemblewo, Poland sphere account — left: the event as described in UFO literature, a flaming globe over a Polish farmscape; right: the debunk record tracing the case to Italian fabricator Alberto Fenoglio's Clypeus article, with researcher Edoardo Russo's 1975 finding that no contemporaneous French or Polish source for Inspector Liabeuf or the crater has ever been located. Both registers documented. Both matter.
THINK ABOUTIT ENTITY ENCOUNTER REPORT
1790: Matemblewo, Poland Entity Sighting
EDITORIAL NOTE:
Matemblewo, the Alençon Duplicate, and the Fenoglio Fabrication
This page describes an event that is, in every detail, identical to the widely circulated “Alençon sphere” case — the flaming globe, the hillside landing, the brush fire, Inspector Liabeuf’s report to the Académie des Sciences, and the occupant in a skintight garment who fled into the woods. The location given here — Matemblewo, Poland — is a real village near Gdańsk in northern Poland, but it has no connection to the events as described, which are set in Normandy, France. This entry appears to be a variant or mislabeled version of the Alençon account circulating in secondary UFO literature with an incorrect geographic tag attached.
More significantly, the Alençon event itself was investigated by Italian researcher Edoardo Russo in 1975, who traced the earliest known source to Italian writer Alberto Fenoglio — a contributor to the UFO magazine Clypeus who is documented to have invented or heavily embellished a number of historical UFO cases. No contemporaneous French archival source for Inspector Liabeuf, his report, or the crater near Alençon has ever been located. The case is almost certainly a fabrication, circulated in good faith across dozens of languages and publications since the 1960s. Both this page and the Alençon page are retained in the archive as a record of how a compelling fabricated case propagates through the UFO literature — and as a reference for researchers who encounter the story and want to understand its origins.
Date: July 17, 1790
Sighting Time: 5:00 in the morning
Day/Night: night
Location: Matemblewo, Poland
Urban or Rural: –
No. of Entity(‘s): 1
Entity Type: Humanoid
Entity Description: This person was dressed in a very strange fashion. He wore a suit which clung to his body
Hynek Classification: CE-III (Close Encounter III) Close observation with animate beings associated with the object.
Duration: awhile
No. of Object(s): 1
Size of Object(s):
Distance to Object(s):
Shape of Object(s): sphere
Color of Object(s):
Number of Witnesses: multiple
Case Status: Explained — Probable Fabrication (Fenoglio, Clypeus, pre-1975; debunked by Russo, 1975).
Source:
Summary/Description: At 5:00 in the morning, several farmers saw a huge globe in the sky, surrounded by flames. They first took it to be a balloon that had caught fire, but its speed and the strange whistling sound coming from it led them to think otherwise. The globe descended slowly, touching the top of a hill, where it tore up the plants along the slope. The flames from the object set fire to the small trees and the grass. Fortunately, the locals managed to stop the fire from spreading. In his report on the incident, police inspector Liabeuf wrote that the sphere was still hot in the evening. It showed no signs of damage despite the heat. “It stirred up so much curiosity that people came from all directions to see it.” After some time, a much unexpected thing happened. A door burst open in the sphere and a human came out! “This person was dressed in a very strange fashion. He wore a suit which clung to his body, and when he saw all this crowd he said a few words which could not be understood, and ran to take flight in the woods.” The peasants drew back from the sphere instinctively – which was fortunate for them because the object exploded, throwing pieces everywhere.
A search was undertaken to find the mysterious visitor but he was never discovered.
