The 1954 French flap:

Three children from Pournoy-la-Chétive (Moselle) saw a 'Martian in a cassock' emerge from a 'three-legged saucer'

METZ, October 11 (dispatch "France-Soir").

In POURNOY-LA-CHETIVE, near Verny (Moselle), three children claim they saw a flying saucer and its passenger.

They told their parents, the mayor, and their teacher Mr. Martignon. One of them swore he had a conversation with a Martian, and since Saturday, Pournoy-la-Chétive has been divided into two camps: those who believe it and those who laugh at it.

As for the three children—Gilbert Calba, 12 years old, Daniel Hirsch, 9 years old, and his brother Jean-Pierre, 5 and a half—here is what they declared:

– It was 6:30 p.m. on Friday. The three of us were roller-skating when suddenly, near the cemetery, we saw something luminous. It was a round object, about 2.5 meters in diameter. It landed very close to us. The craft had yellow and white stripes. It landed on three legs.

"Soon, a man came out of it. He was holding a lit flashlight in one hand. This light blinded us, but we clearly saw that the man had large eyes, a hairy face, and was very small—about 1.2 meters tall. He wore a sort of black cassock, like the priest's. The man looked at us. He said something we didn’t understand. He turned off his light and, scared, we ran away.

"As we turned back, we saw something in the sky flying away, very high, very fast, and very bright."

Another resident of Pournoy-la-Chétive, Robert Maguin, 16 years old, also said he saw the mysterious craft, but he wasn’t close enough to see the details.

Coincidence: a "Martian" matching the same description (shiny eyes, thick mustache, and a flashlight, but no cassock) was seen in Lavoux (Vienne) by Mr. Roger Barrault, a laborer.

In All Colors

• A STRANGE GLOW moving slowly and changing colors (white, yellow, red) was seen by six people for three minutes in Dienville (Aube).
• A BLOODY MOON was seen above Nice by Mr. Lyon Béranger, General Councilor of the Alpes-Maritimes and Mayor of Saint-Laurent-du-Var, along with two other witnesses. The "flying moon" left a luminous trail behind it.
• DESCRIBING ARABESQUES, a noisy orange disc rose above Colmiane, a winter sports station 60 kilometers from Nice.
• A TRANSFORMING SAUCER was seen by several residents of Calais. The mysterious craft was blue and luminous but turned white after circling above the Calais road.
• A BRIGHT BALL, that changed from white to red, then to orange, was seen yesterday by two young men near Espartignac (Hte-V.).
• TWO HUMAN FORMS inside a spherical object, part-metal, part-plastic, were reportedly seen yesterday afternoon by a motorist, Mr. Jean Bertrand, a mechanic from Carcassonne.
• RUE DE ROME, at the corner of Rue des Dames, Mrs. Mathelin saw, on Sunday at 10:30 PM, a white disc, similar to a full moon, moving from NW to SW "faster than a plane."
• FOUR SILENT "MARTIANS" WERE REPAIRING THEIR "CIGAR" on Saturday night near Münster (Westphalia), according to Mr. Hoge, a cinema projectionist by trade.
  Mr. Hoge, stunned and not daring to approach, watched them work for ten minutes. Eventually, the "Martians" returned to their craft using a ladder. Then the "cigar" took off and transformed into a saucer, projecting a dazzling light.