What happened
Around 815, Archbishop Agobard of Lyon wrote the treatise “On Hail and Thunder” (De grandine et tonitruis), in which he attacked the belief in sorcerers who summon storms. In it he cited the conviction of local people that there was a land called Magonia, from which ships sailed through the sky to carry away grain beaten down by hail. Agobard also described an incident he had witnessed: a crowd brought before him four people in bonds – three men and a woman – claiming they had fallen from such sky ships. The prisoners had been held for several days, and the crowd wanted to stone them. After a long discussion, the archbishop managed to convince those gathered that this was untrue, and the accusers went away ashamed. The story became famous in the 20th century thanks to Jacques Vallée’s 1969 book “Passport to Magonia.”
Witnesses
Agobard, Archbishop of Lyon, and local inhabitants who brought the alleged visitors before him.
Explanations and hypotheses
Historians do not regard this account as a description of a sighting in the sky, but as evidence of folk beliefs in tempestarii – weather sorcerers – and in sky ships that carried off crops. Agobard himself dismissed the whole story as superstition. Ufologists, especially Jacques Vallée, have compared it with 20th-century contact and abduction stories, noting that similar motifs have recurred in folklore for centuries.
Explained The phenomenon has a widely accepted, down-to-earth explanation.
More: Wikipedia (en)