The 1954 French flap:

THE INVASION OF SAUCERS AND CIGARS, IN OUR REGION
FIND AN EXPLANATION IN BEUVRY-LEZ-BETHUNE AND LILLE

1. Our special correspondent participated in the launch of a
"flying cigar"

one of the 5,800
hot air balloons
sent by Mr. Oliveira
above the rooftops
de Beuvry-l.-Béthune

The unfortunate combination of circumstances which had until now deprived journalists of hanging, them too, "their" saucer or "their" cigar in the register of various facts and personal memories have just been swept away by the wind. I saw a flying cigar which, at night, shows the famous red glow... I felt it from every angle and even participated in the launch of one of these craft that some claim to be coming from another planet. This is neither a crazy story, nor even a debauchery of the imagination after reading some anticipatuin novel. There is no need to pinch yourself to be convinced of the reality of the thing. The clarity of the evidence would have struck the most skeptical minds and those most reluctant to the hypothesis of an exploration of the earth by some space travelers.

It is a long, a very long story whose starting point is in Portugal at the beginning of this century. H.C. [sic, G.] Wells, the author of "The War of the Worlds" did not yet have the slightest awareness of his advance on the Future... In fact of flying machines, Clément Ader and the Wright brothers were only trying to give practical application to the theories of "heavier than air"...

In a small Portuguese village, when the light wind coming from the sea subsided, a young boy, Victor Oliveira, made "hot air balloons" which he then inflated with hot air... The well-known principle of the lighter than the air made fly these graceful envelopes, which drifted according to the whims of the wind.

Arrived in France shortly before the 1914 war, Mr. Oliveira bravely fought and took part in the battle of La Couture. After a short stay in Portugal, he settled in 1922, in Beuvry-les-Béthune. Until his retirement last December, he held the post of burner operator at the Beuvry Power Station.

However, the favorite pastime of his younger years did not suffer from the well-known phenomenon of disaffection that stamp collections suffer, for example, in adolescence. Married, surrounded

Read more on the last page, under the title: "CIGARS"

2. A professor from the Faculty of Sciences
de Lille shows that last Sunday
the flying saucer was only a lunar phenomenon

Mr. Antoine Bonte, I.D.N. engineer, professor of applied geology at the Faculty of Sciences of Lille, kindly provided us with a scientific explanation of the phenomenon observed by dozens of people on Sunday evening in our region. He writes to us: "I was impatiently awaiting this morning's newspaper and I took great pleasure in reading the accounts of your correspondents, because on Sunday evening I also saw the 'flying saucer'."

"The descriptions given of it agree in every way with my personal observations. I only disagree with their interpretation because, in this case, it was simply a moonset.

"Sunday, at nightfall, the moon shone on a clear day first in the form of a crescent. Later it disappeared into the hazy area above the horizon, only to reappear for a few moments, reddish is distorted - which is normal at this height - and crossed out with a line when passing behind a stratus. Finally, it faded definitively when entering again in the clouds.

"So, in this particular case, it is quite a trivial phenomenon that our fathers would not have even paid attention to.

"Moreover, in most of the other cases, it is about analogous phenomena as I could note it several times. The psychosis of the flying saucers is a phenomenon of collective hallucination which responds to a natural need for the marvelous maintained by a large-run press and fed by a whole category of illustrations for children or... adults. The descriptions of the so-called Martians are so close to Tintin-style spacesuits that we cannot stop smiling.

Continued on last page,
in the sixth column, under the title
"SAUCERS"

The flying saucers

"If the Martians - assuming they existed - were really to visit us, do you think they would have exactly our physical looks, that they would use devices and clothing similar to those designed by our engineers or who only saw the light of day in the overflowing imagination of the authors of anticipation novels: do you believe above all that the nature and the degree of their scientific evolution can be analogous to ours. improbabilities!

"Happy journalists who haven't seen your flying saucer! Take comfort in thinking that, for serious readers, this is a guarantee of honesty and objectivity. But do more, by welcoming only with undisguised skepticism the testimonies of correspondents whom-we-can-be-trusted, in good faith or who prefer to remain anonymous. It is even your duty to fight against this weakening of critical thinking which characterizes our era of culture, universal, but far too superficial."

90% OTHERWISE 99% OF CASES
CAN BE EXPLAINED

In a study that he was kind enough to share with us, Mr. Bonte also examines several cases of celestial phenomena reported in recent years and gives an explanation for each of which we will appreciate the strength. He demonstrates that the majority of alleged flying saucers are natural phenomena that occur at high altitude. He observed and photographed in particular, in the region of Lons-le-Saulnier, "a luminous trail that was red orange and stood out clearly against the dark background of the sky. This trail came from a dot which moved slowly from the south to the south - north in the western part of the sky of Lons-le-Saulnier.

"Witnesses of this display would have gladly seen in this meteor a manifestation of a flying saucer; they unhesitatingly rallied to my explanation.

A JET PLANE

"This was the wake of a jet plane moving at great altitude and at great distance, hence the apparent slowness of the luminous trail and the lack of the characteristic roar. The red in the wake was simply due to the altitude of the aircraft which was still lit by the sun, although it had been set down for a long time. Everyone saw stratus clouds colored in red above the horizon after the disappearance of the sun, which obviously corresponds to the same phenomenon."

"... There are also other phenomena which, unknown to the uninitiated or even to specialists, have credited the legend of the flying saucers... The Director of the Algiers meteorological station has revealed that the alleged saucers observed in this region were none other than sounding balloons equipped with a luminous device; the currents prevailing in the upper atmosphere made these devices move in an apparently disconcerting manner.

CLOUDS

"The illumination of clouds by powerful light sources can also give rise to bewildering maneuvers of shiny objects. The intersection of the light beam with the surface of a cloud can give images of all shapes from the circle up to more or less elongated ellipses, the images being able to be uniformly bright or, on the contrary, dark in the center, and brightly lit at the edges. This phenomenon could explain the extraordinary speed of certain "saucers" and their instantaneous changes of direction, characteristics reported by some observers.

A POSSIBLE CONSEQUENCE
OF NUCLERAR
EXPERIMENTS

"Recently, an American physicist, Mr. W, Scott, demonstrated that it was possible to artificially produce meteors similar to flying saucers in the laboratory, as spheres surrounded by shiny rings. This is not unlike the rings that occur when puffs of smoke are passed through a circular hole, and all smokers have had fun "making circles" with their mouths. Atomic experiments may not be unrelated to the formation of previously unknown meteors.

"Scott's experiment has been criticized by Professor G. Ray Watt, of the Carnégie [sic, Carnegy] Institute in Washington, who claims that the conditions necessary for the formation of these rings do not exist in upper atmosphere. Meteorology is, however, a very young science to authorize such assertions: the normal atmosphere is already not so well known, let alone the upper atmosphere.

THROUGH THE SAUCERS

"The most important argument to demonstrate the inanity of flying saucers is certainly this information which comes to us from America. A formation of flying saucers having been reported in the skies of Washington, Andrews Air Force bases and of Ballingfields are ordered to intercept them at all costs. Courageously, the jets rushed at 1,000 an hour, one can say "in the fog", and cross without suffering the slightest damage, their supposed adversary who was nothing else than kinds of clouds.

"What then to think of certain disturbing testimonies emanating from informed observers such as airplane pilots, professor of scientific institutions, etc.? Let us first recall that the phenomena which occur in the atmosphere are far away to be all known, even from specialists. On the other hand, critical thinking is sometimes lacking even in respectable scientists. Finally for those who know the atmosphere of certain military circles, the mystification is not excluded vis-à-vis of some more naive comrades.

"Meteors have been observed all along, but they weren't given the same attention as today when everyone wants to see their flying saucer. This is a trivial case of collective illusions from which scientific circles themselves are not exempt.

NEW AIRCRAFT

"It is possible, however, that new aircraft sometimes cross the sky. There is no doubt that the Americans and the Russians, each on their side, are seeking to develop new weapons and some of the flying saucers are perhaps a reality. But both sides have an interest in ensuring that their research is ignored by the adversary, hence the flood of contradictory news.

"It is announced, for example, in America, that the flying saucers are a myth; the next day a craft of the same name is discovered in Spitsbergen and its measuring devices bear inscriptions in Russian language. As if by chance, the drop-off point is in an uninhabited region.

"Depending on the circumstances, we feign ignorance or, on the contrary, we boast of an unbeatable superiority. We know too much, to have suffered from it, of the misdeeds of propaganda to be influenced by information that is lacking impartiality. If there really are new aircraft, there will always be enough time to worry about them when they are used, if they are ever used. There is absolutely no need to worry beforehand.

"In conclusion, it can be said that 90%, if not 99%, of the alleged flying saucers are due only to incomplete observations of natural phenomena and are a matter of pure imagination. Some are undoubtedly attributable to meteors of known or new origin. Finally, in a few special cases, they may be new aircraft being tested.

"As for the extraterrestrial origin of the flying saucers, it is not based on anything positive and we could sleep soundly if we had only this apprehension. We have, alas, more to fear from our neighbours than from Martians."

Cigars

of his children, Mr. Oliveira continued to glue paper and inflate his hot air balloons. Somewhat surprised at first, his neighbors were quick to put this little dangerous distraction into the realm of normal things. Mr. Oliveira? Ah! yes, the one who makes hot air balloons? "Some breed pigeons, assures Mr. Oliveira, others train roosters for fights. I do this..."

Of medium height, mischievous eye behind large-rimmed glasses, tanned complexion, wearing a gray jacket and patched knee-length pants, lively despite his sixties (he looks barely forty) Mr. Oliveira seems completely surprised by this sudden entry into the news. Sometimes he wants to send journalists and photographers to hell and barricade himself in the shed cluttered with paper from packing cases, which serves as his manufacturing workshop.

He lives in fact with his children, Mr. and Mrs. Lenfant, who run a food house, route de Béthune, in Beuvry.

Spread over a few crates, the carcass of one of the machines awaits inflation. Something to inspire the imagination of some people in need of flying saucers and contact - at a distance - with the Martians or other neighbors of our planet, since it now seems accepted that the "evening visitors" can come from another system as that where the Earth continues its eternal gravitation.

Applications
of hot air

The appearance of the hot-air balloon immediately reveals the primary character of a technique that dates back several centuries. The one that will serve as experience and testimony is about three to four meters. It takes the shape of a diamond very swollen in the center and made of simple wrapping paper, thin and resistant. A circular opening, reinforced with a thin wire, serves as a base. Apart from the frame itself, Mr. Oliveira has a tripod of wire which holds a large piece of tow soaked in petroleum, gasoline or oil. The fuel issue is hardly a problem.

Now let's tackle the "launch" part of the balloon. It is kept in the vertical position. Under the opening, Mr. Oliveira has some newspapers in a baste [sic] terracotta pot... We are far from the ramps of V1, V2 and others... Under the action of the hot air, the carcass inflates rapidly and tends to undertake its upward movement. Mr. Oliveira then inflames the gasoline rag, hangs the tripod on the wire which keeps the opening rigid and... the machine begins its course which can be prolonged very far if it encounters favorable winds; which gives it very few jerks. During an experiment made in the morning, the hot air balloon lay down and caught fire about ten meters above the ground.

Beware of illusions

Spirits beiieving in the probability of flying saucers will smile. Those who claim to have seen one of these craft in their exploration of the earth's crust will shrug their shoulders in a gesture of generous commiseration. The fact remains that, in the dark, the red glow given off by the flaming rag, combined with the reflections which it makes dance on the paper, can abuse the most reasonable. It would also be necessary to possess a critical mind and a very extraordinary amount of modesty not to proclaim oneself the witness of the phenomenon that one automatically assimilates to the "incomprehensible."

Since 1922, Mr. Oliveira has launched nearly 5,800 hot air balloons. No one in the area is moved by it anymore. But outside of this small circle, some people are likely to be troubled and their certainty of not being the victim of a hallucination further strengthens their intransigence. To such an extent that a person from Sailly brought back to the Beuvry police station a hot-air balloon spotted on the inside with drops of oil and blackish marks. Everyone laughs and the carcass, with burnt shreds, does not even constitute evidence.

What begins almost like a fairy tale can end like a fable dear to La Fontaine. How to disentangle the illusion from reality? The difficulties encountered by this concern for accuracy and truth only make the problem more complex. But it also serves as a reassuring argument for those who fear an interplanetary invasion.

We do not believe that we are authorized, because of this personal experience, to settle the debate. Let us only wish that this report inspires more measure and restraint to some people. Flying saucers and cigars get really bulky. There are jokes that should not be prolonged too much beforehand.

[Photo caption:] Mr. OLIVEIRA had a lot of fun reading, in a sensational weekly, a report on flying saucers.

Jean MAERTEN

AN AMANDINOIS
CLAIMS TO HAVE SEEN
TWO DWARFS
UNDER CELLOPHANE

The region of Saint-Amand-Nivelle would also have had its flying saucer, at least according to the words of young Marcel Sénéchal, 20, living in Saint-Amand at a place called La Pannerie.

It was in the night from Saturday to Sunday, around 1 a.m.

That evening, Marcel Sénéchal had, as usual, spent the evening with his fiancée in Hauterive-Nivelle. He then returned by bicycle to Saint-Amand along the course of the Scarpe.

Arrived at the level of the "Vandeville pasture" he suddenly heard a conversation in an unknown language, which came from his right.

Turning his head quite naturally in this direction he then saw to his great agitation, a luminous mass in the shape of a haystack and two 1.20 meter-tall human in shining garment. A ray of light came out of the mysterious craft.

The frightened young man pedalled away at full speed to return to his home where quite upset he reported these facts to his family and neighbors.

Informed by public rumor, the commissioner of Saint-Amand, Mr. Gravet and two inspectors in charge of the Air Police, attached to the Lesquin aerodrome, went to the scene yesterday and proceeded to research. They could not find any trace.

Flying saucers in the Picardy sky

NEW AND NUMEROUS TESTIMONIES
including that of an Amiens motorist
who made a "fantastic trip" on Sunday evening

It will one day be necessary for scientists, these worthy gentlemen who know so much and who are ultimately only fifty or one hundred years ahead of the average citizen, to explain the celestial mysteries that intrigue us today.

It is not sufficient to say "The flying saucers do not exist and to leave in ignorance people in good faith who, every day, see incomprehensible phenomena.

Of course! There are the incorrigible pranksters, around 50%, including the manufacturer of hot air balloons whose odyssey will be read elsewhere. These are probably the ones who give the most details: Martians without arms, with a special radar antenna and webbed feet. There, we laugh, and that's normal.

But "apparitions" like those on Sunday evening were checked by many people, all trustworthy and whom we were able to interview separately before they had practically time to get in touch.

So there is "something". It is the opinion of many people. Weather balloons? unmanned vehicles? interstellar ship? No one knows.

The orange disc

Yesterday we talked about the passage on Boves and Demuin of an orange disc which probably moved at low altitude. A third testimony had been collected by our informant from Moreuil before the publication of "Courrier Picard" bearing the date of October 5. Too scrupulous, our correspondent was afraid of transmitting a hoax and it was only yesterday that he noticed, on reading his newspaper, the disturbing coincidence with ours, of the statements collected by him.

These were, in this case, observations made in the evening, by a Moreuil resident, Mr. Julien Bédier, baker, rue Thibeauville.

He was returning, with his wife and children, Mr. and Mrs. Quenehen, butchers in Péronne, by car, on the Amiens-Saint-Quentin road when, between Foucaucourt and Estrées, he saw, towards 9:15 p.m., a luminous object moving at ground level, in the direction of Montdidier, at a distance it was, it will be understood, impossible to assess.

The shape, the size (apparent) of a "four pound bread" (sic) curved on the top, the "thing", the color of minium, was motionless, and the occupants of the car, after stopping, could observe it at leisure, while making the most diverse assumptions. A dark vertical bar, occupying about 1/5th of its width, appeared in the middle of the luminous spot, and stayed there for the duration of the observation, about 10 minutes.

Having resumed their travel, our travelers lost sight of the craft, after having, at Warfusée, taken the Marcelcave road.

M. and Mme Bédier are careful not to draw conclusions. They saw a luminous, strange object, at ground level, and that's it. It was not the moon. On this point, Mr. Bédier is formal: "Well, at the age of 65, we know what a quarter of the moon is, anyway."

Other people also confirmed the passage of the orange disc in the Picardy sky, and in particular M. and Mrs. Bielecka and Miss Janine Boitel who, returning from Paris by car, noticed the "object" all along the road from Saint-Just to Boves, passing through Montdidier and Moreuil.

A coach driver, Mr. Caron, who drove the Roye-Amiens line on Sunday evening, had his attention attracted by a child sitting not far from him and who suddenly exclaimed "Oh, the funny moon!". But a good driver watches his route, and Mr. Caron could only take a quick glance, sufficient nevertheless to assess the diameter of the mysterious craft: about three meters. But how far was it?

Did the saucer
come from the seaside?

It will be understood that it is impossible for us to search for witnesses and to interrogate them in all the villages of the Somme overflown by the alleged saucer. It would first be necessary to be able to reconstruct the "flight line".

From Boves to Santerrre, it is pretty much done. Before, we find a passage on a suburb of Amiens: Montières (witness also trustworthy) and on Dreuil, passage controlled by a peacekeeper.

Did the saucer come from the seaside? It is quite possible since, shortly before it was seen in Picardy (about 20 minutes) a Boulognes engineer, Mr. Marcel Thiebaut noticed, while driving in the car on the Tingry plateau, halfway between Boulogne and Montreuil, two moving red discs. Many motorists also stopped to scrutinize the firmament carefully.

Between Tingry and Dreuil, there was obviously a "hole", but yesterday at the end of the evening, we collected an interesting statement which allows us to complete at least the itinerary of one of the mysterious craft. We will therefore read with interest the following wird statement.

An Amiens motorist
followed by a saucer
between Hérissart and Rainneville

A shopkeeper from Amiens, Mrs. Nelly Mansart, grocer, 6 rue de la Morlière, lived, indeed, on Sunday evening, pathetic minutes whose simple evocation once again moved this young woman, yesterday afternoon, when she told us about the event she witnessed.

Mrs. Mansart had gone to spend the afternoon at her parents' home in Hérissart and around 9:00 p.m., she was returning by car to Amiens, in the company of neighbors, Mr. and Mrs. Delarouzée who live at 5, rue de la Morlière.

While driving and leaving the village of Hérissart, Mrs. Mansart saw on the right a bright ball in the sky. This ball actually was roughly the shape of a mushroom collar and was bright orange in color. Its diameter was around 6 to 8 meters.

Jokingly, Mrs. Mansart said to her friends: "Look, it looks like a flying saucer!..." Then, observing the glow with more attention, Mrs. Mansart noticed, as well as her passengers, that this "mushroom" let out flames turning from purple to greenish at the top, while some kind of cables hung below.

But, let Mrs. Mansart speak: "This strange orange-colored mushroom verging on a fire color impressed me and my friends very much. I admit that I was afraid. It makes you feel funny and I was in a hurry to come gome.

"The "saucer" followed us for ten kilometers, it was flying low, about 150 meters from us and its gleam was reflected in the windows of my car, so much so that Mr. Delarouzée opened the door to better observe it. When we crossed a village, the craft bypassed it and reappeared at the exit. After Rubempré, the scarlet ball went on the hamlet of Septenville then joined us at the top of the hill of Pierregot. At that moment we had the impression that the "saucer" was diving towards us and I was very scared.

I kept on driving in an indescribable state of excitement and I had all the trouble in the world to control myself. The craft did not emit any noise and no doubt it was watching us. At the exit of Pierregot I stopped at the last houses. The "Saucer", which had bypassed the village, was waiting for us and stood still then it moved away as I restarted. It began to spiral for three or four hundred meters and the "mushroom" changed shape to take that of an elongated crescent and overturned with a ball in fusion at the upper horn. We were followed to Rainneville and being at the height of terror, I slowed down at the exit of this country. I was followed, at that time, by a 2 CV that I prevented from bypassing us because I was so afraid. At this moment, the "Saucer" accentuated its gyration then moved away towards the west of Amiens, to get lost in the infinity, in the space of a few seconds, at an incomparable speed."

As soon as she came home, Mrs. Mansart gave her impressions to her husband who remained skeptical but Mrs. and Mr. Delarouzée corroborated her statements. And the next morning the little girl of Mrs. Mansart, three years old, who was part of the fantastic trip and had also seen the phenomenon, said to her mother as she awoke; "Mom, did you see the big moon" and saying that the little girl took a towel to which she gave the shape of the craft seen the day before...

Other events
of unknown craft

Two workers, working in Amiens, but domiciled in Pont-Remy, also claim to have seen a saucer distinctly in the latter locality, Monday evening, around 10:30 p.m.

These are MM. Serge Hetru, radio repairman, at Mr. Van Béghin's, and André Cahon, laborer.

The craft, which was in the countryside, at ground level, apparently, had the shape of a disc swollen in the center and surrounded by a strange blue violet glow. The two men estimated that it was a hundred meters from them and that it had - seen from this distance - about three meters in diameter. It rose noiselessly, diagonally, but along a line closer to the vertical than the horizontal.

We smiled while listening to Mr. Serge Hetru's words and he seemed very upset by that. Besides, his boss did tell us later that he was an excellent worker, serious and incapable of making a joke of this magnitude.

Finally, the last testimony for today, that of a young Amien resident who wrote to us, signing, to tell us that he saw on Monday, around 1 p.m., while he was on the road from Doullens to Amiens, two kilometers from the latter city, a metallic craft spinning at around 1,000 meters of altitude.

Blue-gray color; Oval shape; no noise.

"I think I can tell you that it was a flying saucer", writes our correspondent whose name we do not mention because it was in vain that we tried to reach him yesterday, to make him confirm by voice the terms of his letter.

We would have liked, in conscience, to be as assertive as he is...

In the district of Abbeville

The district of Abbeville, even though thousands of inhabitants do not notice it, is currently the center of mysterious apparitions of flying saucers and cigars - since everyone calls them that - which hit the headlines by generating the most diverse comments.

A cigar on the go
from Berck to Rue

Mr. Georges Galland, butcher on rue Gaston-Caudron in Rue, returned by car from Berck on Sunday evening with his wife and son. All three were followed well before Rue by a mysterious craft which had the shape of a cigar.

Legitimately worried, the driver slowed down the speed of his vehicle and stopped twice. The closer and closer object was still there.

It was a big ball, we were told yesterday evening on the phone, but elongated and orange in color.

From Pont-à-Cailloux to Herre-les-Quend, Mr. Galland, his wife and son, who were starting to worry about the aftermath of the adventure, clearly saw the cigar-saucer which did not move any more, they declared, than 50 km an hour, their car not rolling, to allow them to see the mysterious machine better, more than with 20 or 30 per hour.

The occupants of the car finally saw the craft disappear in the direction of Saint-Quentin-en-Tourmont, towards the sea.

Another detail to note: Mr. Georges Savary, from Rue, working for Mr. Savreux, transporter, saw the same day around 9:15 p.m., a machine resembling a brightly colored spinning top which landed about 400 meters from his home. He wanted to approach it but the mysterious craft took off gently in the direction of Le Crotoy. He climbed vertically at breakneck speed.

Mrs. Savary also noticed the phenomenon, as did Mr. Maurice Véron, truck driver.

A saucer
in Millencourt-en-Ponthieu

Two other appearances of flying saucers, a story we hold from reliable people, were noted Monday evening, around 7 p.m., in the triangle formed north of Abbeville by the municipalities of Millencourt-en-Ponthieu, Agenvillers and Saint-Riquier.

An owner of Caours-l'Heure, who only wanted to entrust his adventure to his children domiciled in Abbeville, saw, at the top of the Millencourt hill, a huge illuminated mass. First he thought it was a heavy truck driven by people he mistook for cattle thieves...

He stood guard for a few minutes, saw nothing but was dazzled. Suddenly feeling tired, he turned around and tried to find his bicycle. The bike had been put down in a usual place, but he did not find it until after ten minutes of search, somewhat upset by the light which came from from the machine, which he had seen shortly after above the wood of Saint-Riquier.

These luminous demonstrations in the sky of the district of Abbeville leave perplexed all those who, over the days, do not claim to be victims of hallucinations.

New testimonies
about the flying saucers

Sunday, around 9 p.m., Mr. Georges Galand, butcher in Rue (Somme), was returning from Berck by car, accompanied by his wife. He was in the territory of Quend, at a place called "Le Pont à Cailloux", when he saw in the sky, a mysterious craft in the shape of a cigar. Mr. Galant slowed down the speed of his car and continued to observe the cigar-saucer following National Road 40, moving at low altitude and at a reduced speed.

For 8 kms, the motorists continued to follow the craft, which then veered towards Saint-Quentin-en-Tourmont.

In the meantime, Mr. Galand had gotten out of the car twice to observe better, and he heard no noise.

Another testimony corroborates Mr. Galand's statements: it is that of Mr. Georges Savary, living in Rue who, a few moments later, around 9:15 p.m. would have seen the craft land in a grassland four hundred meters from his home, and immediately set off again in the direction of Crotoy.

As almost always, no trace was found at the landing spot; for Mr. Savary, the craft had the shape of a red disc.

The waltz of the saucers
continues

A BAKER
OF THE FINISTERE
CLAIMED TO HAVE MEET
A "MARTIAN"
WITH THE FACE COVERED WITH HAIR

Around 4 a.m. yesterday morning, M. Pierre Lucas, a baker in Loctudy (Finistère) who was busy fetching water from the bakery courtyard, suddenly saw a machine in the shape of a 2 m saucer overnight. 50 to 3 meters in diameter. He saw an individual about 1 m tall come out of it. 20 who approached him and tapped him on the shoulder, articulating unintelligible words. The worker-baker managed to keep his cool by going back to the bakery where the individual followed him.

In the light Mr. Lucas was able to stare at the visitor: he had an oval face, all covered with hair and eyes the size of a crow's egg. The young man called his boss but, before he had time to come down, the stranger had disappeared as well as the saucer of which no trace was found.

A Concarneau beer merchant stated that he saw in the sky two luminous discs in the shape of round tables extended of a kind of tail. One of the disks was stationary while the other was moving nearby. The two discs disappeared after ten minutes after launching a rocket.

Saucers ... everywhere

Two saucers were seen on Tuesday around 6:45 p.m. near Clermont-Ferrand, the first, 10 kilometers from Beaumont. The witnesses declared that the object approached them and became less and less brilliant. When it was only 150 meters away, they felt a "curious feeling" and were frozen on the spot. At that time there was a smell of nitro-benzine. As soon as the craft moved away, the discomfort ceased and the "saucer" disappeared.

The other saucer was seen above the Chanturgue hill, near Clermont. It moved vertically and was bright white.

A saucer was also seen in Billom by a group of 30 people.

- Several residents of Saint-Brieuc saw on the night of Tuesday to Wednesday, a flying saucer which took the shape of a cigar before disappearing. They were able to observe it for over an hour.

The same phenomenon was observed in Trégueux where a cyclist returned home frightened by what he had seen.

- Several people from Thouare-sur-Vie (Vendée) also saw in the sky a dozen luminous objects having an elongated shape and passing at a very high speed and at high altitude.

IN THE REGION

White glow... in Dunkirk

Last Monday, around 8:10 p.m. while he was maneuvering the American S8, doctor Leven, in the airlock of the Watier lock in Dunkirk, captain Emmanuel Dubois, 20-year-old, 34 rue Carnot in Mers-les-Bains saw a white glow that ran along the coast, heading from East to West.

Observing this phenomenon for several seconds, he suddenly thought of the flying saucers and called his crew to make them check out what he saw. But when the first sailor arrived, the glow had suddenly disappeared.

Reddish disc... in Cassel

Yesterday around 10:15 a.m., while waiting for the bus, 3 residents of Cassel, MM. Guy Ver[?]ghe, 27, Grand-Place, Romain Scheerf, rue de Lille and Guy M[?] rue Constant Moncelay, saw a reddish disc in the shape of a saucer which moved a few hundred meters above their heads.

After observing the phenomenon for a good minute, they saw it suddenly disappear on the horizon.

... and orange in the Picard sky

In the evening of Sunday an orange "disc" moving at near ground level was seen and observed at length by several residents of Boves and Demuin near Amiens. The statements of these individuals, collected separately, are absolutely consistent. The "orange disc" followed almost at ground level, a west-east direction.

Another testimony confirms the presence of this saucer in the Picardy sky. It is a baker from Moreuil, this time, who reports it. Mr. and Mrs. Dedier, indeed returned from Moreuil, with their children Mr. and Mrs. Quenneben, when, around 9:15 p.m., between Foucaucourt and Estrées, they saw the luminous object.

Same description as that given by previous witnesses, same observations on the direction of travel.

Amazing story
from a shopkeeper from Amiens

But the most astonishing tale is that of a shopkeeper from Amiens, Mrs. Nelly Mansart, grocer, 8 rue de la Mari[]e who, Sunday returned from Hérissart. Mrs. Mansart was accompanied by neighbors, Mr. and Mrs. Delaf[?]rée.

Motorists had just left Hérissart when they saw a bright ball in the sky which, when better observed, then appeared to them like a rim of a bright orange mushroom. The diameter was about 6 to 8 meters. The "mushroom" let escape from its upper part, flames turning from purple to greenish, while some kind of cables hung below.

Mrs. Mansart, who was driving the car, was frightened, all the more so since the "saucer" seemed to follow the progress of the car, standing at a distance of about 130 meters and flying at low speed.

When we crossed a village, Mrs. Mansart said, the craft bypassed it and reappeared at the exit, It followed us like this for ten kilometers approximately.

When I left Pierregot, I stopped. The saucer stopped and waited, turning in a spiral for three or four hundred meters. As I restarted, it followed us again.

It was only in Raineville, near Amiens, that the craft left us definitively, heading west to get lost in infinity at a prodigious speed."

You will agree that this is an impressive story. We must also add that of a butcher of Rue (Somme), Mr. Galland who with his wife and son, was returning from Berck by car. They too were followed, for a time, by a mysterious craft of elongated shape and orange in color.

The object was flying at low altitude at a speed not exceeding 30 per hour. It finally disappeared in the direction of St-Quentin-en-Tourmont, towards the sea.

Other people also observed the phenomenon, always at the same time, around 9 p.m., Sunday evening.

Did the facetious resident of Beuvry
who had not planned
THE SAUCERS PROBLEM
commit Code violations?

The discovery of generous distributions of (fake) saucers by a Beuvry retiree caused a stir and the police, like the gendarmerie, endeavored to seek yesterday the disturbances which could have been caused by the persistent joke of Mr. D'Oliveira.

How many people have mistaking the paper balloons, cleverly adjusted by the Portuguese, for mysterious spacecraft from Mars? We will probably never know.

It was possible that the numerous Sunday appearances throughout northern France were caused by the Beuvry resident. But no, we have to find another explanation for these. Because, that Sunday, Mr. D'Oliveira had not devoted to his favorite pastime. This point could be quickly verified. What could have troubled the brave Santennese?

Certainly, if one of these craft had struck against a haystack, it caused the risk of causing a fire. Mr. D'Oliveira protested moreover forcefully: he uses, as he says, asbestos, thus taking all precautions. And yet the hot air balloon landed at Sailly-Labourse was indeed starting to burn, three meters from a haystack by the way.

And that's why Mr. D'Oliveira will "benefit" from a fine. Could this be the end of his invention? An old law of May 31, 1924, rules the use of aircraft, establishing that they can only be launched into the sky with the authorization of the prefect, on the advice of the mayor.

And the legal requirements define that any object capable of rising in the air must be considered as an aircraft.

These are therefore 5,000 aircraft that Mr. D'Oliveira has delivered to the clouds!

Rest assured that he will not be a fined for all of them, he began his exploits before 1918, at a time when that law did not exist. And there is prescription for crimes prior to 1931.

This being stated very seriously, of course.

- Partly explained by -
a professor from Lille and a retiree
- from Beuvry-les-Béthune -

The mystery of the "flying saucers"

There is novelty on the flying saucer horizon. The mystery remains, but some of the cases were explained. And, for those, the story ends there.

We now know that the craft that were seen in the Beuvry-les-Béthune region were "Paper hot air balloons", sent by a retiree, Mr. Oliveira, passionate about "lighter than air" gear. We announced it in our previous issue.

On the other hand, Mr. Antoine Bonte, I.D.N. engineer, professor of applied geology at the Faculty of Sciences of Lille, gave a scientific explanation of the phenomenon observed by dozens of people, Sunday evening, in the Lille region. Mr. Bonte himself saw the "flying saucer" which was only a lunar phenomenon.

Finally, rockets had been seen Sunday evening, off Calais. "It was like the luminous wake of flying saucers", some said. In fact, it was the signals of distress launched by the spherical balloon of Mrs. Paulette Weber.

So that's a series of solved cases. The others remain. They are disturbing. We will see it below. And we will not fail to compare them with the statements made by Mr. G. Duncan Fletcher, vice-president of the Astronomical Association of Kenya.

This eminent astronomer believes that "visitors from another world are observing the earth and probably mapping it."

But that's just a guess. We are not satisfied yet!

IN THE FINISTERE

A "Martian" follows
a baker boy
into the bakery

Quimper, 6. -- Around 4 a.m., yesterday morning, Mr. Pierre Lucas, worker-baker in Loctudy (Finistère), who was busy drawing water in the courtyard of the bakery, suddenly saw in the night a craft in the shape of a saucer of 2.50 m. to 3 meters in diameter. He saw come out of it an individual measuring about 1.20 m. who approached him and tapped him on the shoulder, mouthing unintelligible words. The baker managed to keep his cool and returned to the bakery where the stranger followed him.

In the light, Mr. Lucas was able to stare at the visitor: he had an oval face, all covered with hair and eyes the size of a crow's egg. The young man called his boss but, before the latter had time to come down, the stranger had disappeared along with his saucer, of which no trace was found.

A beer merchant of Concarneau, for his part, declared having seen in the sky two luminous disks in the form of round tables extended of a kind of tail. One of the discs was stationary while the other moved nearby. The two discs disappeared after ten minutes after launching a rocket.

Lezignan, 6. -- Two residents of Lezignan, MM. André Gardia and André Darzens, who were driving in a truck on the D-3 departmental road, claimed to have seen a disc-shaped craft land in a field between the village of Lagrasse and the hamlet of Villemagne (Aude).

The craft, they said, was about ten meters in diameter. Before they could approach it, it enveloped them in a bright glow and disappeared.

Bergerac, 6. -- Mr. Jean Defix, firefighter in Bergerac, and Mr. Jean Labonne claimed to have seen land in the garden of the latter a luminous disc about three meters in diameter, supported by three crutches.

Dinan, 6. -- In Mégrit (Côtes-du-Nord), a young farmer, Mr. Henri Lehérisse claimed to have seen in the yard of his farm a craft of a diameter of about 1 meter inside which appeared two human shapes, motionless and the size of a child.

La Rochelle, 6. -- Mr. and Mrs. Guillemoteau were in front of their farm when they saw, about one meter above the ground, a spherical saucer that could measure 2 to 3 meters in height and with a diameter of 5 meters. The craft, which produced no noise, stopped for a few minutes, then rose vertically. Mr. Guillemoteau, the next day, went to the place where he had seen the craft and was able to find oily traces on the grass.

* * *

Valenciennes, 6. -- Mr. Marcel Sénéchal, 20-year-old, from Saint-Amand-les-Eaux, was along the Scarpe canal, in the night from Saturday to Sunday. He was coming up to a pasture when he suddenly heard a conversation held in an unknown language and seeming to come from his right. He turned his head in this direction and to his great astonishment then saw a luminous mass in the shape of a haystack as well as two human forms of 1.20 m. in height approximately, covered with shining garments. A ray of light was coming out of the craft.

Mr. Sénéchal pedaled away at full speed.

A car
followed
by a saucer!

Amiens, 6. A grocer from Amiens, Mrs. Nelly Mansart returned to Amiens on Sunday evening, around 9 p.m., coming from Hérissart in the company of her neighbors. She saw, in the sky, a glowing ball from which hung some kind of cables hung and letting out flames. The "saucer" flew low, about 150 meters above the ground, and followed the car for 10 kilometers.

"When we passed through a village, said Ms. Mansart, the craft bypassed it and reappeared at the exit.

It was making no noise and was definitely watching us. On leaving Pierregot I stopped at the last houses. The "Saucer", which had bypassed the village, was waiting for us and hovered then it moved away as I started again. It began to spiral for three or four hundred meters and changed shape to take that of an elongated, inverted crescent with a molten ball at the upper horn. At Rainneville the "Saucer" increased its gyration then moved away in the direction of the west of Amiens, to lose itself in infinity, in the space of a few seconds, at an incomparable speed."

Italian saucer

Mantua. -- Traffic was interrupted for more than an hour in the center of Mantua by groups of people gathered to observe a strange "white object" which, at a great height, stood out clearly against the background of the blue sky.

After performing extremely rapid moves, the spherical craft - which, according to some witnesses, was part of "a formation of flying saucers" - remained motionless in the sky for some time, before disappearing at the horizon.

Also, the "Martians" seem to want to visit Italy as well. A fisherman from Roverbella, in the province of Mantua, said he was approached last night by a "mysterious individual", dressed in red, who would have said "unintelligible words" to him and who would have quickly moved away, before the fisherman had time to call his wife.

In the century of flying saucers

After the basin
here is the... flying hive

Two young people saw this
mysterious apparatus on a road near Vron

It's the talk of the day.

"Did you see a flying saucer?"

No... and you... However, I seemed to me that I saw something strange, said a sales representative to a customer in our town these past few days.

And you gendarmes, who are often on tour day and night, did you see anything?

- Absolutely nothing...

And yet, there are some of these mysterious craft in the Picardy sky... of different shapes... and little men who, dressed in spacesuits, wander around this craft which transmitted electric rays making the approach difficult.

It is Friday, around 6:45 p.m., that two young men from Vron, Bernard Duvoisin and René Condette, 18 years old, who were returning from their work site following the road from Ligescourt to Vron, had their attention attracted to a craft... which had landed on the path they were following by bicycle.

This craft was orange, and how was this mysterious craft?

bell-shaped, they said.

And when we were about 70 meters from it, this bee hive ... without bees, but supposedly containing two little men, flew away and disappeared into the horizon.

So, everywhere cigars, saucers, basins, discs, light trails and odd people are seen...

The future will tell us what these craft are... but we remain skeptical while awaiting events.

***

AND STILL A SAUCER
IN THE REGION OF RUE
AND QUEND

Sunday, around 9:10 p.m., Mr. Georges Galand, butcher in Rue, who drove a car and had his wife by his side, was at a place called "Pont-à-Cailloux", Quend territory, when he saw a strange craft having the shaped like a cigar.

Having slowed down the speed of his car to better observe it, he noticed that this machine was flying at a reduced speed and at low altitude. This is how the Galland couple were able to follow it for eight kilometers.

It then turned towards Saint-Quentin-en-Tourmon.

Also, Mr. Georges Savary, of Rue, also had his attention attracted by the presence of a machine, having the shape of a red disc, which, according to his declarations, would have landed in a grassland about 400 meters from his home.

This craft would have left a few minutes later, in the direction of Le Crotoy. No traces were found at the landing site.

***

A BALL OF FIRE IN
THE SKY OF NOYELLES

Around 9:10 p.m., Mr. Carton, employed at the Saint-Frères factory, in Abbeville and living in Grand-Lavier, saw in the sky, about 8 to 10 kilometers away, in the direction of Noyelles-sur-Mer, a ball of fire, spinning and giving the clear impression of changing color.

This ball had the shape of two thirds of the moon and did not seem to fly at a crazy pace, since during a few minutes he followed it with the eyes as well as the Lecomte couple and two other people.

Then this mysterious ball... disappeared in the direction of Boulogne.

RUE

(Continued from the First Page)

And here are
FLYING SAUCER
and CIGARS of the same name
manifesting themselves
in our region

When the newspapers devote a long article to the appearance of Flying Saucers, many people shrug their shoulders thinking and sometimes even saying: "This is a joke!"

Admittedly on our behalf we are not very convinced of the existence of these craft. Yet disturbing facts have just occurred in our region.

Last Friday at 6:45 p.m., two young residents of Vron, aged 18, masons at the company Delpierre of Vron, were returning by bicycle from Ligescourt, where he had worked all day.

These two young men who named René Condette and Bernard Devoisin, were in the vicinity of La Caplette, a few kilometers from Ligescourt, when Devoisin, who was driving ahead, suddenly saw in the middle of the road, 150 meters of him, a mass with something on the left which was moving and which seemed to him to be an animal.

The young man thought of the flying saucers and alerted his comrade, who also saw while they were about 70 meters from it, the saucer flying away!

***

Our colleague Enderlin of "Le Courrier Picard" interviewed the two young masons. Devoisin told him that he saw a man he had first taken for a child and then for an animal. It looked like a diver, he said. I did not see him for long because he bypassed his craft which left immediately.

As for this craft, about 2 meters high, it was shaped like a beehive or a haystack and it was orange in color.

From the information we have gathered, it appears that Devoisin and Condette are two serious young people unable to forge a story of this kind. We can take the facts they told and who had disturbed them for that matter to be absolutely exact.

***

But here on their return, residents of our good city of Rue saw, with their eyes saw, not a saucer but a flying cigar. It is Mr. and Mrs. Galland, the well-known butchers on Caudron Avenue.

Last Sunday, in the evening, they were returning from Berck, by car, with their son Patrick.

Around 9:15 p.m., while they were on the old Pont à Cailloux, they saw in the sky a flying object, of orange color, having the shape of a cigar.

This craft descended about 200 meters from the ground and followed the road from Quend to Rue to Herre. It was flying silently and seemed to want to escort us, says Mr. Galland.

But when it got to Herre, it branched off to disappear from sight. We had the impression that it had landed on the ground.

Mr. Galland adds: I would have liked to search for it and find it to look at it more closely; but my wife and son were not very reassured. And we went back to Rue.

Let's add that the same evening and at the same time two truck drivers belonging to the Oscar Savreux company in Rue, MM. Georges Savary and Maurice Véron, as well as Madame Savary, saw in the foraine bleue, about 400 meters from Rue, a brilliant colored craft, in the shape of a top, which landed on the ground.

Mr. Savary wanted to approach it, but the top flew away vertically at an extraordinary speed.

So in two days two mysterious flying craft crisscrossed the sky of our region. Will we stop there and will we soon know what it is, where it comes from and what is the aim of these enigmatic craft?

SAUCERS or MOON BEAMS?

Our estimated neighbor, "Le Journal de Rue", recounts the weird encounter that two of our fellow citizens made on Sunday evening in Pont-à-Cailloux.

"This is Mr. and Mrs. Galland, the well-known butchers on avenue Caudron.

"Sunday October 3, in the evening, they were coming back from Berck, by car, with their son Patrick. Around 9:15 p.m., while they were on the old Pont à Cailloux, they saw in the sky a flying object, orange in color, shaped like a cigar.

"This craft descended about 200 meters from the ground and went along the road from Quend to Rue to Herre. It was flying silently and seemed to want to escort us, says Mr. Galland.

"But arrived in Herre it branched off and disappeared from view. We had the impression that it had landed on the ground.

"Mr. Galland adds: I would have liked to search for it and find it to look at it more closely; but my wife and my son were not very reassured. And we returned to Rue."

Let's look for the explanation.

The professor of the Faculty of Sciences of Lille, Mr. Antoine Bonte, I.D.N. engineer, gives us one in the "Croix du Nord":

"I also saw, on Sunday evening, flying saucers.

The descriptions which are given agree in all points with my personal observations. Only I do not agree with their interpretation because, in this case, it was simply a moonset.

"On Sunday, at nightfall, the moon shone on a clear day in the form of a beautiful crescent. Later, it disappeared in the misty zone which surmounted the horizon, only to reappear for a few moments, reddish and deformed - which is normal at this level - and crossed out in a line as it passes behind a stratus. Finally it fades definitively on returning to the clouds again.

"In this particular case, therefore, this is a totlla ordinary phenomenon to which our fathers would not have even paid attention.

"Besides, in most of the other cases, these are analogous phenomena as I have seen it several times. The psychosis of flying saucers is a phenomenon of collective hallucination which responds to a natural need for marvelous, maintained by a press with large coverage, and fed by a whole category of for children or... adults comics. The descriptions of the so-called Martians are so close to the Tintin spacesuits that one cannot stop smiling."

And Mr. Bonte to conclude, in full agreement with us on this point:

"It is even your duty (that of journalists) to fight against this weakening of the critical mind which characterizes our epoch of universal but too superficial culture.

"90% if not 99% of the cases can be explained."

When will there be an indisputable photograph of one of these craft?

The waltz of the flying saucers

A BAKER OF THE FINISTERE CLAIMS HAVING MET A "MARTIAN" WITH A FACE COVERED IN HAIR

Around 4 a.m. yesterday morning Mr. Pierre Lucas, a baker in Loctudy (Finistère), who was busy fetching water from the bakery courtyard suddenly saw a machine in the shape of a saucer 2.5 to 3 meters in diameter in the night.

He saw an individual about 1.20 m tall come out of it, who approached him and tapped him on the shoulder, articulating unintelligible words. The worker baker managed to keep his cool and returned to the bakery where the stranger followed him.

In the light, Mr. Lucas could stare at the visitor: his face was oval, all covered with hair and eyes the size of a crow's egg. The young man called his boss but, before he had time to go down, the stranger had disappeared as well as his saucer, of which no trace was found.

A Concarneau beer merchant said that he saw two luminous discs in the sky of the shape of an extended round table with a kind of tail. One of the disks was stationary, while the other was moving nearby. The two discs disappeared after ten minutes after launching a rocket.

SAUCERS ... EVERYWHERE

Saucers were seen on Tuesday around 3:15 p.m., near Clermont-Ferrand, the first, 10 kilometers from Beaumont.

The witnesses said that the craft approached them and became less and less brilliant. When it was only 150 meters away, they felt a "weird sensation" and were like nailed in place. At this time a smeel of nitro-benzine was released. Soon the craft went away, the discomfort ceased and the saucer disappeared.

The other saucer was seen above the hill of Chanturgue, near Clermont. It moved vertically and was bright white.

A saucer was also spotted in Billom by a group of 30 people.

- Several residents of Saint-Brieuc saw in the night from Tuesday to Wednesday, a flying saucer which took the form of a cigar before disappearing. They were able to observe it for over an hour.

The same phenomenon was observed in Trégueux where a cyclist returned home frightened by what he had seen.

Several people from Thouars-sur-Vie (Vendée) also saw in the sky a dozen luminous objects having an elongated shape and passing at very high speed and high altitude.

IN THE REGION
WHITE GLOW ... IN DUNKERQUE

Last Monday, around 8:20 p.m., while he was maneuvering the American S.S. "Doctor Lyren" in the lock of the Wattier lock in Dunkirk, captain Emmanuel Dubois, aged 30, 34, rue Carnot, in Malo-les-Bains, saw a white glow running along the coast, heading east to west.

Observing this phenomenon for several seconds, he suddenly thought of the flying saucers and called his crew to make them check what he was seeing. But when the first sailor arrived, the glow had suddenly disappeared.

RED DISC...
IN CASSEL

Yesterday around 10:15 a.m., while waiting for the bus, three residents of Cassel, MM. Guy Verbruggue, 17, Grand'Place; Romain Schoerf, rue de Lille, and Guy Hennion, rue Constant-Moncelay, saw a reddish disc in the shape of a saucer which moved a few hundred meters above their heads.

After observing the phenomenon for a good minute, they suddenly saw it disappear on the horizon.

... AND ORANGE
IN THE PICARDY SKY

In the evening of Sunday, an orange "disc" moving at near ground level was seen and observed for a long time by several residents of Boves and of Démuin, near Amiens. The statements of these individuals, collected separately, are absolutely consistent. The orange disc followed almost at ground level, an west - east direction.

Another testimony confirms the presence of this saucer in the Picardy sky, the evening of last Sunday. It is a baker from Moreuil, this time, who brings it. Mr. and Mrs. Dédié, indeed returned from Moreuil, with their children, Mr. and Mrs. Quenehem, when, around 9:15 p.m., between Foucaucourt and Estrées, they saw the luminous object.

Same description as that given by previous witnesses, same observations on the direction of travel.

AMAZING STORY OF AN
AMIENS MERCHANT

But the most astonishing tale is that of a shopkeeper from Amiens, Mrs. Nelly Mansart, grocer, 5, rue de la Marlière, who returned from Hérissart on Sunday. Mrs. Mansart was accompanied by neighbors, Mr. and Mrs. Delarouzée.

The motorists had just left Hérissart, when they saw, in the sky, a dazzling ball which, better observed, appeared to them enormous like a rim of bright orange mushroom. The diameter was around 6 to 8 meters. The mushroom let escape from its upper part, flames turning from purple to greenish, while some kind of cables hung below.

Mrs. Mansart, who was driving the car, was frightened, all the more since the "saucer" seemed to follow the moves of the car, standing at a distance of about 150 meters and flying at near ground level.

"When we passed through a village, declared Mrs. Mansart, the object bypassed it and reappeared at the exit. It followed us like this for approximately 10 kilometers.

"On leaving Pierregot, I stopped. The saucer stopped and waited, turning in a spiral, for three or four hundred meters. As I started again, it followed us again.

"It was only in Rainneville, near Amiens, that the craft left us definitively in the direction of the West to get lost in infinity at a prodigious speed."

You will agree that this is an impressive story. We must also add that of a Rue (Somme) butcher, Mr. Galland, who with his wife and son returned from Berck by car. They too were followed, for a time, by a mysterious craft of elongated shape and orange in color.

The object was flying at low altitude at a speed not exceeding 50 per hour. It finally disappeared in the direction of Saint-Quentin-en-Tourmont, towards the sea.

Other people also observed the phenomenon, always at the same hour, around 9:00 p.m., Sunday evening.

RUE

SAUCERS
OR MOONBEAMS?

Under this title, our sympathetic colleagues "Le Journal de Montreuil" and "Le Journal de Berck" reproduced the statement which was made to us last week by Mr. and Mrs. Georges Galland, butchers in Rue, about a flying object seen by them, on the evening of October 3, on their return from Berck.

But these newspapers publish at the same time, borrowed from "La Croix du Nord", an explanation of the phenomenon of flying saucers.

According to Mr. Antoine Bonte, I.D.N. engineer, professor at the Faculty of Sciences of Lille, saucers, cigars, beehives and other flying apparatuses seen for some time by many people, both in France and abroad, are simply "moonsets." Professor Bonte believes that "the psychosis of flying saucers is a phenomenon of collective hallucination that responds to a natural need for wonder, maintained by a Press with large circulation and fed by a whole category of illustrations for children or... adults. Descriptions of the so-called Martians are so close to the Tintin diver that you can't help but smile."

Having been informed of the above, Mr. and Mrs. Galland ask us to say that, whatever Mr. the engineer Bonte may think, it was not a moonset that they attended Sunday, October 3, at 9:15 p.m., but that it was indeed a flying object, shaped like a cigar, that they discovered in the sky. They confirm that this craft flew silently about 200 meters high and that it escorted them up to the village of Herre.

They are, of course, unable to explain this phenomenon scientifically. Is it a nuclear craft, as another engineer declared on Sunday evening during the "Flying Saucer" show? The future will tell. But Mr. and Mrs. Galland refuse to admit, contrary to the opinion of Mr. Professor Bonte, that what they saw on October 3, on their return from Berck, was only a mooset. Not at all hallucinated and not suffering from cerebral anemia, they maintain that it was indeed a flying object, which had the shape of a cigar and moved silently.

It is quite far-fecthed, and going over the top a little to try to make people believe they took moonbeams for a flying saucer!

October 3 [, 1954]

[... other cases...]

Rue/Quend (7 km S.Waben)/Saint-Quentin-en-Tourmont (Somme): car chased by orange luminous sphere.

[... other cases...]

October 3, 1954: Quend (7 km ISL a the S of Waben--Somme): Mr. and Mrs. Georges Galland, traders, and their son (automobile chase on 8 km, by UAP at near ground level, on Rte.Nale.4, until the outskirts of Rue)

October 3, 1954, 09:10 p.m., Quend (France):

Less than 3 hrs after the previsous case, an orange object chased a car for 8 km, then flew away toward the sea. Witness: Georges Galant, a butcher. (France-Soir, Oct. 7, 1954).

185 October 3, 1954, 09:10 p.m., Quend (France):

Less than 3 hrs after case 184, an orange object chased a car for 8 km, then flew away toward the sea. Witness: Georges Galant, a butcher. (P 35, M 116).

TIMELINE OF A FANTASTIC SUNDAY

The weekend of October 2-3 appears on all charts as the maximum-maximum of the 1954 wave. Various newspapers and magazines that I have been able to check for this period give us an almost complete overview, in any case very broadly representative of the regional observations that were reported in the press for Sunday October 3rd. I have included the observations of the Somme which seemed to me inseparable from those of the Nord-Pas-de-Calais and which appear moreover in the chapter entitled "Zigzag on the mining country" of the book by A. Michel: "Mysterieux Objets Célestes." I count, as one case, each observation made by an independent group of witnesses. The astonishing number of observations reported below, once again shows the interest of thoroughly digging into the newspapers archives.

OCTOBER 3, 1954:

[...other cases...]

34) 9:15 p.m., RN 40, from "le Pont à Cailloux" to RUE _80_
Mr and Mrs G. Galland and their son were driving towards Rue when on the old "Pont à Cailloux" they observed an elongated orange ball that descended 200 m. from the ground and moved silently along the road as if to escort them. Having slowed down and even stopped twice, they noticed that the object which seemed to approach more and more, moving at 50 km/h; the object followed them for 8 km to Hare les Quend where it branched off to disappear towards St Quentin while turning giving the impression of having landed on the ground. (VdN,-Somme, 10/6, p.6; N.M., p.8, 10/7; Le Réveil de Berck, p.1, 10/10; Le Journal de Montreuil, 10/10, p.1; Abbeville-Libre 10/8, p.1, Le Courrier Picard, p.3, 10/6; Le Journal de Rue, 10/9, p.2; and 10/16; p.2.)

[...other cases...]

[...]

We know that that evening, at 9:30 p.m., the crescent Moon was setting in the southwest and that according to case 9 it was distorted by low clouds...

Disaster! This bundle of suspicions throws a total discredit on this magnificent series of observations, one of the most beautiful that we have ever found yet. We will have to verify certain data, the direction of certain sightings, the weather conditions, but already the doubt is too great for us to be able to classify these sightings as UFOs.

[...]

Rue, France. (9:10 p.m.)

An orange-colored UFO chased a car driven by M. George Gallant for 8 kilometers and only broke off the pursuit when the town limits of Rve were reached. Gallant's wife and son were passengers in the car and also witnesses the phenomenon. 31.

• 31. France-Soir. 7 October 54.

25 - Case of the D. 940, between Waben and Rue, Somme side.

Here is a particularly unusual abuse [of Barthel and Brucker, according to Sider]. This is the testimony of several adults explained by B & B, hold on tight, thanks to the "lucidity" of a three-year-old girl!

On October 3, Mr. Georges Galland, his wife and son, were driving. Suddenly, they notice an orange object following them, as they cross a deserted area consisting of sand and swamps. After 8km of "pursuit", the object suddenly accelerates, turns to the right, and disappears in the direction of the sea. In Le Journal de Rue, Somme, October 9, 1954, page 2, Mr Galland, a butcher in Rue, specifies that he saw a cigar-shaped craft descend 200 meters, follow the road he was following, then turn off as if to land.

You would have thought that B & B had tried to reach Mr. Galland easier to find than Miss Fin... No way! They much prefer to rely on Radar, a Parisian weekly which they accuse of exaggeration in other pages! Because Radar, whose report they exploit in the direction of their reductive ideas, discloses the "extraordinary" testimony of a three-year-old girl, Nadège Mansart, whose mother, Mrs. Nelly Mansart, made an observation substantially identical to that of Mr. Galland and his family, but in another sector of the same region. The little girl, questioned by a Parisian reporter, would have replied: "I saw the big moon". B& B rushed into the breach to triumph and proclaim that Mrs. Mansart, just like the Galland family, not to mention the other passengers in the two vehicles, all identified in the local newspapers, had only observed our satellite! Unbelievable but true! A three-year-old girl would have identified the cause of a phenomenon that confused her mother as well as other people she was not even with! Note that in M.O.C., p. 143, Michel specifies that Mrs. Mansart saw under a luminous phenomenon in the form of a mushroom, sorts of short cables which hung. So according to B& B, the Moon was wired...

B& B, who know nothing about child psychology, did not understand that the little girl wanted to talk about a light source larger than the Moon, because her conceptual universe and her vocabulary are too limited to be understood by narrow-minded people, moreover: ill-intentioned people!

Note in this case that it would have been an elongated Moon that moved at ground level, capable of turning to spin in another direction... A nice performance for our old Séléné! Figuet, for his part, trusts the "work" of one Mr. Caudron, who "explains" all these zigzags in the mining country by confusions with the Moon, but by calling on a professor of geology, Antoine Bonte, of the Faculty of Sciences of Lille. This academic would have deserved long-term unpaid leave for having informed the press of his time that the testimonies of October 3 (including that of two gendarmes!) were "selenography". These ramblings can be found in La Croix du Nord of October 6, 1954, pages 1 and 8. If B & B had referred to it, that would have allowed them to appeal to an equally stupid judgment, but which, at least, would have flattered their taste for pedantry and pseudo-scientific explanations. Note two more things:

1 - Mr. and Mrs. Galland disputed Mr. Bonte's statements published in the press.

2 - In L'Ardennais of October 19, 1954, page 1, two photos appeared which explain very well the "big moon" of Nadège Mansart,n (D.O. 18).

Question: Are two gendarmes capable of taking the Moon for a UFO to the point of making a sighting report to their chiefs?

In Le Journal de Rue, October 16, 1954, page 2, Mr. and Mrs. Galland let known that they vehemently refute the pretentious and ridiculous assertions of Mr. Bonte, specifying that it was a cigar-shaped craft that moved at about two hundred meters altitude, without emitting the slightest noise, and that they are sufficiently lucid not to take the Moon for an aerial craft. Only people who are narrow-minded or eager to indulge in the narrow concepts of rationalism can think otherwise...

Case #016: 03/10/1954, p. 113 (Rue 80120)

3945: 1954/10/03 21:10 15 1:38:20 E 50:18:40 N 3333 WEU FRN SMM 6:8

WABEN>RUE,FR:SCR PACES 3/CAR/SVRL km:>>W to SEA ovr N40/D940:/r217p53+/r8#185

Ref# 49 MICHEL,Aime: FS & STRAIGHT LINE TH: Page No. 116 : COASTLANDS

! 1954/10/03 CHERENG + MARCOING + QUEND + LIEVIN ++, FRANCE: Close Encounters with the Moon!

October 3, 1954 -- Nr. Waben, France.
UFO paced car. [II]

October 3 1954. 2105hrs.

QUEND (SOMME : FRANCE)

An orange object pursued a car driven by Georges Gallant, a butcher from Rue, with his wife and son for 8km at ground level at distance of about 100m, slowing down to 50kph when they did. It accelerated away just before they reached Rue.

• Michel 1958b p116
• Vallee Case 185 citing France-Soir 7 October 1954.

Evaluation - Moon again

The Fabulous day of October 3, 1954

[...]

Chronology of the observations of October 3.

We give here only a summary of what was published in the press of the time, for the nord region, regardless of what the ufologists could later say. We have numbered all these observations, the first of which have nothing to do with the setting of the moon, in order to be able to study them globally in a table. Some are already the subject of a special file.

[...other cases...]

34) 21 h 15, RN 40, depuis "le Pont à Cailloux" jusqu'à HÈRE (80)

- Mr et Mme Georges Galland et leur fils Patrick roulaient vers Rue lorsque au niveau du "Pont à Cailloux" ils observèrent une boule allongée et orange qui longea la route comme pour les escorter. Ayant ralenti et même stoppé deux fois, ils constatèrent que l'objet qui semblait se rapprocher de plus en plus, évoluait à 50 km/h. L'objet les suivit sur 8 km jusqu'à Here les Quend où il bifurqua pour disparaitre vers St Quentin en Tourmont donnant l'impression de s'être posé au sol.

Le Réveil de Berck expliqua que ce n'était qu'un coucher de lune.)

(Le Courrier Picard 6/10 page 3, La Voix du Nord-ed. Somme 6/10 page 6, Nord Matin 7/10 p 8, Libre Artois 8/10 page 4, Abbeville-Libre 8/10 p 1, Le Réveil de Berck 10/10 p 1, Le Journal de Montreuil, 10/10 p 1 et p 4, Le Journal de Rue, 9/10 p 2 et 16/10 page 2.)

[...other cases...]

All this is only a compilation of the information given by all newspapers of the time, including local editions, and of which ufologists only used a part.

We will see that the analysis of this information makes it possible to eliminate the hypothesis of a flying saucer, in favor of those of multiple observations of the moon, whose image was reddened and deformed by clouds, which also gave it a illusory apparent movement.

Analysis of the observations of October 3, 1954

[... other cases...]

34) 09:15p.m., RN 40, from the "le Pont à Cailloux" until HÈRE (80)

Same direttion than the Moon, same apparent behavior than the moon, same disappearance manner

[... other cases...]