The 1954 French flap:

After the saucers and the cigars

It is a barrel, studded with golden nails, that appears in the Charente sky

Paris. -- From various places, reports continue to come in of saucers, cigars, and diverse objects invading the skies of France and abroad.

Several Parisians declared they saw, yesterday afternoon, [fly]ing saucers moving across the sky of the capital. Passersby claimed to have seen one around 4:30 p.m., near the Porte-Dorée.

A BARREL

Mr. Jean Allary, near Villebois-Lavalette (Charente), saw very clearly, "in the light of his moped's headlamp, a sort of barrel about 1.80 m tall, studded with golden nails, swaying on the edge of the road." When Mr. Allary passed the mysterious craft, he turned around, at a distance of about ten meters, but saw nothing more.

Witnesses saw, the next day, at the very spot indicated by Mr. Allary, traces about seven meters long in the grass bordering the road.

MUSHROOM BLOOM

A curious phenomenon has just been reported in the Dordogne.

During the night, on rue Louis-Belin in Bergerac, to Messrs. Defiz and Labonne appeared a mysterious craft streaking across the sky.

At 10 p.m., a glow was visible in the sky. It descended, taking the shape of a rocket. It landed in Mr. Labonne's garden. The craft came down on a strip of land 3 m by 5 m. In the morning, at the edge of this plot, about twenty mushrooms of an unknown species had sprouted. These mushrooms are said to have disappeared at the first light of the sun.

At Ambérac, in Charente, two municipal councilors of the village of Marais, Mr. Marcel Chevrier and Mr. Marius Laidet, saw a flying saucer above the locality.

IN GIRONDE

Some Bordelais saw, on the Allée de Tourny, a luminous cigar or fountain pen. At Le Bouscat, at La Teste, similar observations were made.

IN DAX

Some residents of Dax saw fireballs of a somewhat unusual kind:

These objects, which were moving, had nothing in common with parachutes, balloons, planes, or other bodies that one sometimes makes out in the sky; curiously, they left no smoke and no trail. These phenomena were confirmed by several people.