The 1954 French flap:

Who did not see his saucer?

No offense to some bitter minds who accuse the newspapers of maintaining a collective psychosis by the daily report of "visions" in the sky, we continue to do our duty of information by signaling here - with the usual reserves - the testimonies that each day brings us.

Besides, people who are perfectly trustworthy because they offer moral or mental guarantees, come to talk to us about unusual phenomena they have witnessed.

Most wishing to remain anonymous, cannot therefore be accused of "telling stories to have their name on the newspaper."

This discretion therefore seems to reinforce the degree of credibility that can be given to their stories.

***

This is how a young finance official, riding on Monday evening, on a scooter between Moreuil and Amiens, was able to observe a strange circular machine posed a hundred meters from the road and which suddenly rose in a shower of lights. Frightened, the witness, who had stopped his machine, started again without asking for more...

***

Tuesday, in Amiens, between noon and 15 past noon, at the corner of rue Jules-Barni and rue de Croy, more than 70 gathered people were able to observe the presence at a high altitude, of a craft which appeared to spin on itself and was "stuffed" with lights of different colors.

Before disappearing, the craft emitted a beam of green rays which dazzled all the observers. So much so that they noticed (among themselves) that there was still, a few moments later, a retinal persistence that made them see everything, not in pink... but in green!

Note, on the other hand, that the day before, that is to say Monday, around 9, an identical phenomenon had been observed above Saint-Acheul.

***

In Curchy, yesterday morning, a PTT conveyor, who was on a train, saw a disc in the sky initially visible at full surface, sometimes only by the "edge", which gave it the appearance of the famous "cigars".

The apparition was silver-colored.

***

Monday evening, shortly before 9 p.m., Miss Francine Leblond, residing on rue Croix-Saint-Firmin, in Amiens, went in her yard in order to draw water from it, when she saw, in the sky, a kind of luminous cigar which was moving at high speed in the direction of the North.

The girl went home somewhat frightened.

***

Two young people from Croix-Moligneaux, MM. Marc and Gilles Lemaire, and a third, Mr. Jean Yvart, from Douilly, are formal: they saw a mysterious craft.

On Saturday evening October 16, MM. Marc and Gilles Lemaire, as well as Mr. Jean Yvart, went to their work, in Ham. All three are employed at night at the sugar factory, at the S.I.A.S. Mr. Yvart had already noticed in the sky, around 9:23 p.m., on the side of Mr. Mulliez's farm, a red disc followed by a flaming cone which, according to his statements, sailed at the height of a postal plane.

Mr. Marc Lemaire and Mr. Jean Yvart arrived by motorbike at a place called the Bois de Sancourt; Mr. Gilles Lemaire followed at come distance, driving a moped. The Lemaire brothers then saw, far in the atmosphere, a small orange mass whose shape they could not specify because of the distance, but which was moving from East to West.

As the phenomenon was vertical to Mr. Marc Lemaire, the latter's motorcycle suddenly failed from ignition and the headlight stopped functioning. Same disturbance in the operation of Mr. Yvart's machine.

A second later, perhaps only a fraction of a second, and the motorcycles, which benefited from their momentum, started off again. The headlights again scanned the road with their beam of light.

The two men are stunned. Did they see a flying saucer? Should we see a correlation between the passage of this saucer and the mechanical incident?

So many questions currently being asked.

The gendarmerie, for its part, is investigating these rather disturbing facts.

***

Finally, we were informed in many places of the passage of luminous balls barely larger than the stars and which traced in the sky impressive multicolored trails. It seems, if we want some day to clarify the "saucers mystery" that we should no longer dwell on such phenomena, unless their trajectory offers really curious features.

One of our collaborators observed, in Amiens, Monday evening, the fall of a pale green "object", but he did not think for a moment about an interstellar craft. "Meteor," he said without being moved. He was undoubtedly in the truth and it would be hoped that everyone now shows the same composure, when he will have the chance to be in the presence of an unprecedented celestial manifestation...