The index page for the 1954 French flap section of this website is here.
Reference for this case: 30-Sep-54-Willer.
Please cite this reference in any correspondence with me regarding this case.
On October 5, 1954, the regional newspaper L'Alsace in its French edition at least, reported on page 10 that "flying saucers" were seen in the sky of the Sundgau, the area south of the Haut-Rhin.
The newspaper reported that in the afternoon at about 4 p.m., two girls from Willer who worked in the fields, B. M., aged 16, and her sister C., aged 20, saw in the sky, passing at high speed, two dark-colored and oval discs one on the top or above the other.
These objects reportedly emitted absolutely no light and made no noise. They quickly disappeared in the direction of Windenhof.
The newspaper adds that farmers from Grentzingen said they also saw, the same day, at the same hour, the two mysterious craft.
The case later appeared in the UFO literature with a wrong date and almost no details, probably because it was found by ufologist Aimé Michel in a later article in L'Alsace that mentioned it again but did not give the date and the details.
[Ref. lae1:] NEWSPAPER "L'ALSACE":
Thursday afternoon around 4 p.m., two girls of Willer who were working in the fields, Misses B. M., aged 16 and her sister C., aged 20, saw in the sky, passing at high speed, two dark superimposed discs, of oval shape...
They emitted absolutely no light and made no sound. The two dark "objects" quickly disappeared in the direction of Windenhof. The same day, at the same hour, other witnesses, some farmers, also of Grentzingen, also say they saw the two mysterious craft.
[Ref. ppe1:] NEWSPAPER "PARIS-PRESSE":
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AFTER the saucers, cigars, spheres, pots, here is the flying barrel. It was in the Charente that it was "seen" by a motorcyclist, Mr. Jean Allary. It was "studded with golden nails" and was swinging by the side of the road.
In Annoeullin, near Lille, a worker who was smoking a cigar (a real one) in his garden, saw a luminous object in the shape of a crescent landing twenty meters from him. At his shouts, ten billiards players came running from a nearby cafe; the saucer had taken off, but a dozen "luminous dots" were moving above them.
Saucers, cigars, discs, balls and other "flying" objects were spotted in Chancelade (Haute-Vienne), Willer (Haut-Rhin), Gouesnach, near Quimper, Bautignecourt, Ambazac (Haute-Vienne), Dijon, Marcoing, near Cambrai, Pommier (Indre), Rouen, Ajaccio, La Rochelle, Quimper, Cholet, Vannes, Lyon et Le Havre. A la Combe-au-Chèvres, in the Haut Jura, also, but it was just a rain gauge.
[Ref. ars1:] NEWSPAPER "L'ARDENNAIS":
(Continued from the first page)
[...]
Saucers, cigars, discs, balls and other "flying" objects were seen at Chancelade (Haute-Vienne), Willer (Haut-Rhin), Gouesnach, près de Quimper [Oct. 2], Beutignecourt, Ambazac (Haute-Vienne) [Oct. 1], Dijon [Oct. 2], Marcoing près de Cambrai [Oct. 3], Pommier (Indre) [Oct. 3], Rouen [Oct. 3], Ajaccio, la Rochelle [Oct. 2], Quimper [Oct. 2], Cholet [Oct. 2] and Vannes [Oct. 2].
[...]
[Ref. lae2] NEWSPAPER "L'ALSACE":
The newspaper reports on October 6, 1954, with no other information, that there was a sighting in Willer, the Haut-Rhin. The date is not given but the sighting is mentioned among others that took place on October 2 and 3, 1954.
See the article here.
[Ref. aml1:] AIME MICHEL:
Aimé Michel reports that there was a sighting on October 2, 1954, in Willer, France.
[Ref. jve5:] JACQUES VALLEE:
| 185 | -007.31900 | 47.58500 | 02 | 10 | 1954 | WILLER | F | 151 | C** | 170 |
[Ref. pis2:] UFOLOGY BULLETIN "PHENOMENES INCONNUS":
In this ufology bulletin, Alain Barbe published a map with cases (but not all the 61 cases or more) for October 2, 1954, including that of Willer, which he, like Aimé Michel did, thooght to often be "aligned" beyond mere chance:
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[Ref. aldl:] MRS. GUEUDELOT, "LUMIERES DANS LA NUIT" ARCHIVE:
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SEPTEMBER 30, 1954.-
WILLER - GRENTZINGEN. - (68)
Time: about 4 p.m.
Two young girls from WILLER who were working in the fields, Miss Bernadette MULLER, 16 years old, her sister Colette, 20 years old, saw in the sky passing at high speed, two superimposed dark oval-shaped discs.
It emitted absolutely no glow and made no noise. The two dark-colored objects quickly disappeared in the direction of the WINDENHOF.
The same day, at the same time, other witnesses also farmers, from GRENTZINGEN, also claimed to have seen the two mysterious craft.
(sent by Mr. Mourier)
[Ref. gep1:] UFOLOGY GROUP "GEPO":
| 09/27/54 | (night) | Alsace Haut-Rhin F | x | 300XV2 |
[Ref. lcn1:] LUC CHASTAN:
Luc Chastan indicates in his database that in the Haut-Rhin in Willer on October 2, 1954, at an unknown hour, there was an observation of a disc.
The source is indicated as "M.O.C. by Michel Aimé ** Arthaud 1958".
[Ref. pcs1:] PATRICK COMBES:
Patrick Combes copied the [lcn1] source, crediting it by a link.
[Ref. cvn2:] CHRISTIAN VALENTIN:
Former journalist Christian Valentin published in 2012 a very interesting book telling the story of UFO sightings, flying saucers sightings, in Alsace, from the beginning to 1980.
In this book, he lists the case for Thursday, September30, 1954, at 16:00 in Willer in the Haut-Rhin.
He documents it by giving the source, the article of the newspaper L'Alsace, for Tuesday October 5, 1954, page 10 of the French issue, saying:
Thursday afternoon around 4 p.m., two girls of Willer who were working in the fields, Misses B. M., aged 16 and her sister C., aged 20, saw in the sky, passing at high speed, two dark superimposed discs, of oval shape...
They emitted absolutely no light and made no sound. The two dark "objects" quickly disappeared in the direction of Windenhof. The same day, at the same hour, other witnesses, some farmers, also of Grentzingen, also say they saw the two mysterious craft.
[Ref. spa1:] UFOLOGY GROUP "SPICA":
| City | Date and hour of observation | General shape Identification |
General color Hypothesis |
Conclusion |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| WILLER-SUR-THUR | Saturday 2 October 1954 | Circular, round or disc (2D) Unidentified |
information not communicated None |
Unsolved -lack of info |
[Ref. ubk1:] "UFO-DATENBANK":
This database recorded the case 3 times:
| Case Nr. | New case Nr. | Investigator | Date of observation | Zip | Place of observation | Country of observation | Hour of observation | Classification | Comments | Identification |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 19541002 | 02.10.1954 | Willer | France | |||||||
| 19541002 | 02.10.1954 | Willer | France | |||||||
| 19541002 | 02.10.1954 | Willer | France |
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It is not at all my habit to "advertise" a book or anything, and I have no interested relationship with the author, but I wanted to say a word on the book by Christian Valentin, "Mythes et Réalités des Phénomènes Aériens Non Identifiés" (i.e. "Myths and Realities of Unidentified Aerial Phenomena" (cover on the left), ref. [cvn2]; which, as its subtitle indicates, is about Alsatian UFO sighting reports and the saucer lore in Alsace.
I think Alsatian ufologist and generally people interested in the UFO question, or in the history of Alsace, my region, would probably like this book.
The 144 pages book is sober but well presented, unbiased, richly documented and illustrated. It is the first work in print specifically about UFO sightings in Alsace. (There was another one a few years ago, but it was partly made by copying - pasting without mention of the sources, portions of my website, especially the Alsatians cases I almost exhaustively documented in my catalog of UFO sightings in France in 1954, and copies from another websites; the trivial explanations I proposed or gave there being almost always stripped off!)
The author does not want to prove or disprove the possibility of extraterrestrial visitors or some other so-called "extraordinary" explanation, he rather offers a chronologically ordered review of Alsatian UFO reports, starting from the origin and stopping in 1980, based on known sources ufology, on the articles of the regional Press, and cases less known or even unreleased so far that he collected directly with the witnesses. His own comments are printed in a different color, references to the sources are always given. A very nice work in my opinion!
The author currently has a blog where he shows what libraries in Alsace have the book available, see: christian.valentin.overblog.com
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Without the first article in the newspaper L'Alsace for October 5, 1954, it was not possible for me to see that the date given by Vallée, Michel, Chastan, was wrong. The description, very meager, was not right either as this was not "one" disc but two, etc.
So we have here a case that became stranger again than it was in the UFO literature case, with among other things, what seems to be independent witnesses.
Unfortunately it was apparently not investigated and many details are missing, such as angular size, angular speed, distances, etc. So there is not way to disprove that it may have been planes of helicopters, as in the distance they make look like oval-shaped, and silent.
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Above:
Willer, Grentzingen, distant from center to center of about kilometers. We do not know where the witnesses were, we only know the girls were from Willer and the men from Grentzingen.
The Windenhof, near Jettingen, seen from the start of the arrow would be in the direction indicated by the arrow. But again we do not know where the girls were so the arrow does not tell us anything absolute.
(These keywords are only to help queries and are not implying anything.)
Willer, Willer, Haut-Rhin, disc, ovoid, silent, daylight, fast, two, independent witnesses
[----] indicates sources that are not yet available to me.
| Version: | Created/Changed by: | Date: | Change Description: |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1.0 | Patrick Gross | March 20, 2009 | First published. |
| 1.1 | Patrick Gross | June 3, 2010 | Addition [lae2]. |
| 1.1 | Patrick Gross | June 20, 2010 | Addition [jve5]. |
| 1.2 | Patrick Gross | February 19, 2014 | A search on the web and my file revealed no other information. Addition of the Summary. |
| 2.0 | Patrick Gross | March 26, 2014 | Additions [lae1], [cvn2]. Change of case date, was previously September 2, 1954. Summery rewritten according to [lae1]. The old summary said: "The regional newspaper 'L'Alsace' reported on October 6, 1954, with no other information, that there was a sighting in Willer. It may have occurred on October 2 or 3, 1954." |
| 2.1 | Patrick Gross | December 18, 2014 | Addition [pcs1]. |
| 2.2 | Patrick Gross | July 15, 2015 | Addition [spa1]. |
| 2.3 | Patrick Gross | January 21, 2017 | Addition [ubk1]. |
| 2.4 | Patrick Gross | October 4, 2021 | Additions [ars1], [ppe1], [pis2]. |
| 2.5 | Patrick Gross | April 7, 2022 | Addition [gep1]. |
| 2.6 | Patrick Gross | August 6, 2023 | Addition [ald1]. |
