The article below was published in the daily newspaper France Soir, Paris, France, pages 1 and 7, on October 1, 1954.
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(From our special correspondent Roberts DANGER)
AUXERRE, September 30 (by telephone).
"A flying saucer landed in the Yonne, at Diges, about fifteen kilometers from Auxerre. Two people saw the mysterious craft and its pilot."
Such is, at least, the sensational news spreading throughout the Auxerre region and fueling more or less serious conversations among the population.
For several years now - it has become commonplace - thousands of individuals have spotted flying saucers in the sky.
These usually, so to speak, kept their distance.
This time, if we are to believe the eyewitnesses, not only did the saucer deign to land, but its occupant very simply emerged from it.
One small flaw in this astonishing display of modern progress: the flying saucer of Diges had the shape of a cigar.
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I went to meet the witnesses of this hardly believable incident. Here is, first of all, what Mrs. Geoffroy, a 59-year-old widow who appears to be fully lucid, told me:
- Last Friday, around 9 a.m., I was heading to the washhouse, located below the road that goes from Diges to Les Michauts. Before turning right onto the path to the washhouse, my attention was caught to the left, in the clearing bordered by woods, by a bizarre craft shaped like a cigar, pointed at both ends and bulging slightly in the middle. Near the craft, a man of medium height looked at me as I passed without saying a word. He wore a kind of khaki cap and was about a head taller than what I took to be a flying saucer, which I estimate to have been 5 to 6 meters long and dark brown in color.
"Suddenly afraid, I didn't want to look any longer, and when I passed by two hours later, everything was gone."
Mrs. Geoffroy was about 60 meters from the mysterious figure but was still able to notice that his complexion was darker than his cap, nearly black. As for the craft, it was not shiny, but a dull brown.
This troubling account was corroborated by a second witness, Miss Gisèle Fin, 16 years old, a ward of the state.
That same morning, around 9:15 a.m., Miss Fin was walking some goats along a forest path near the clearing by the washhouse.
The two dogs with her, Dick and Miquette, started barking unusually, so she looked toward the clearing and, less than twenty meters away, saw a scene that left her stunned.
- I saw a craft, she told me, lower than a car, dark and dull in color, about one meter high, five to six meters long, pointed at one end and rounded at the other, resting on very thin legs, no wider than a finger. On top, a door stood upright, open. Beside it, with his back to me, the pilot, dressed in a very dark suit, wore a helmet like a motorcyclist's; he was bent over and seemed to be making a repair. I got scared, left the woods to reach the nearby road, and three minutes later, when I glanced back at the clearing, the craft had already disappeared without making any noise.
Her employer, informed three hours later, went to the site and observed only two marks in the morning dew, about 50 centimeters apart, which seemed to correspond to the craft's legs.
The gendarmes from Toucy, alerted only the following day, could make no observations; they returned empty-handed and, for them, "the mystery remains whole." Despite a few differences in details, the two women remain firm in their accounts. However, Miss Fin only spoke about her discovery after learning of Mrs. Geoffroy's story.
I saw the now-famous clearing (80 meters by 40), framed on three sides by woods, resembling a countryside theater set. Nothing remains, not even the faintest traces of the craft's landing gear, to mark the passage of the flying saucer.
Whatever the case, based on the consistent descriptions of the pilot, he was neither a Martian nor a Venusian come to pay us a brief visit, and the two Diges witnesses, in their quiet little corner of the Yonne, were not at risk of receiving a "kiss from a man from space."
Robert DANGER
In Cabestany (Pyrénées-Orientales) a milkman saw a shining blueish globe emitting a very soft humming sound.
In Augé (Deux-Sèvres) Mr. Picot, a brewer, saw a sparkling yellow saucer.
In Landeda and Aberwrac (Finistère) the residents saw several flying saucers.
In Rebais (Seine-et-Marne) several residents and C.R.S. officers saw "a mysterious craft."
In Montpellier Mr. Picot de la Baume saw a luminous cigar-shaped craft.
In Kouriga (Morocco) a red craft spitting fire was seen.
In Safi (Morocco) a luminous cigar crossed the sky at great speed.
VIENNA, September 30 (A.F.P.). -- The "flying saucers" regularly reported recently in Austria are, according to "Bild Telegraf," remotely guided devices used by certain powers to drop anti-communist leaflets over Czechoslovakia.
The newspaper reports that leaflets written in Czech were found near Eferding, in Upper Austria (Soviet zone), after the passage of two "luminous discs" observed by two gendarmes from a nearby locality.
GRENOBLE, September 30 ("France-Soir" dispatches). -- The testimony of a pilot, Mr. Michel Guyard, chief pilot of Challes-les-Eaux airfield, has brought a more... terrestrial explanation to the saucer observed the day before yesterday by Dr. Martinet of Chambéry. The pilot, who at first also thought he saw a saucer, flew closer and found it was a flock of starlings. Dr. Martinet, who spoke with Mr. Guyard, admitted he might have made the same mistake.
