The article below was published in the daily newspaper Franc-Tireur, Paris, France, page 2, on October 13, 1954.
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AND TAKING BLADDERS FOR LANTERNS
Michèle Deixonne interviewed Georges Lange yesterday, the founder [1] of an international commission of inquiry into flying saucers. After asking him various questions, she gets to the main one: do flying saucers exist! [2]
"My insistence may seem in poor taste," I continued with my scientist [3], "but who has seen these crafts? A few harmless dreamers [4] who told their story, straight out of science fiction novels [5]. And here's another strange coincidence: these space beings are always dressed just as science fiction writers imagine them [6].
Is it that the writers, by pure chance, predicted correctly? Or have these celestial beings, even more advanced than we might suppose, had these illustrated magazines in their hands and, not wanting to disappoint us, gone so far as to kindly dress up especially for us?
- You're mocking me, if I weren't a gentleman, I'd call your stubbornness... You only believe what you see.
- Not at all! But I'm sure that if I had fun saying that on such a day, at such an hour, I saw a flying ring, there would be two or three crackpots who would insist with all their might that they too saw my ring. And that following this whimsical statement, an epidemic of flying ring sightings would break out all over. It's an experiment I'd like to try [7].
- I see I won't be able to convince you of the existence of saucers on my own! But have you read all the testimonies we've collected at Ouranos? It's Jimmy Guieu who organized them and made a book out of it. You should read it, I'm certain you'd be shaken [8].
After parting ways with my amiable opponent, I hastened to follow his advice, and threw myself into a reading session of this very interesting book: "Flying Saucers Come from Another World".
I'm sorry to say that I am neither convinced nor even shaken. I would go so far as to say that this reading rather reinforced my initial opinion. I searched in vain, examined, analyzed, and found nothing convincing.
And yet, neither material nor testimonies are lacking! What is serious is that in no case is it demonstrated that the witnesses really saw a saucer, or even thought they saw a saucer [9].
Here, it's a motorcyclist who saw a "ball of fire". Two women walking saw a "glow" (?). [10] There, a teacher and his two children supposedly observed a squadron of green balls dropping whitish filaments. They gathered armfuls of them, but unfortunately, what could have been solid proof of the truth of their account "vanished" between their fingers... Truly a pity! [11] And all throughout, the proofs are just as convincing and substantial.
Of course, the author did not fail to highlight the adventure of that American pilot who took off in his jet to chase a saucer and was vaporized in mid-air along with his craft. From there to conclude that evil Martians killed him was only a step that was quickly taken. [12]
These Martians or Venusians or both (who knows) are quite fickle, if you ask me! Sometimes, like that poor pilot, or that scout leader burned on the arm by a liquid thrown by the occupants of a cigar [13], they show hostile feelings toward us. Sometimes, on the contrary, they land and throw their arms around the necks of farmers [14], hikers, or young girls, regardless of age, status, or gender.
Mr. Jimmy Guieu is truly a diligent investigator, since he doesn't limit himself to contemporary testimonies, and, going back through History, he shows us that saucers are nothing new, far from it. Indeed: in 1900, in 1871, they were already mentioned. Then in 1697, 1593, 1390, 1027, there are texts relating appearances in the sky of fireballs and silver disks. Little by little, we get to Jesus Christ, pass him, and reach a certain Zechariah who lived 400 years before our era, and who recounts the appearance of a flying scroll. Then it's the prophet Ezekiel who tells us about his encounter with a "great cloud", which, the author tells us, could obviously only be a saucer. [15]
But where I wondered whether to laugh, or whether Mr. Jimmy Guieu takes his readers for fools, is when he tries to demonstrate that the angel Gabriel, visiting the prophet Daniel, is nothing more than a Venusian arriving in his saucer. Poor Daniel, unaware of the term “saucer”, tells us that the angel descended from a chariot of fire. The similarity is glaringly obvious, and you'd have to be very blind not to see it.
From the angel Gabriel, we move on to the first humans and to the ancient civilizations that have now disappeared: Incas, Hindus, Atlanteans (?), etc. The saucers are already there. We find traces of them in an allegorical form, but easily detectable: in the old legends of all countries, whose origins are lost in the mists of time, there is always mention of flying dragons, gods descending in chariots of fire, of people taken away through the skies... Look no further, these are the saucers and cigars that are the origin. But in those times they weren't afraid to land on Earth, to teach us, and that's why all these old stories speak of benevolent gods, who were none other than the Venusians. This is the author's point of view.
Nevertheless, with great honesty, he presents another explanation by Professor R. Lencement, which truly deserves reflection: "About 300,000 years ago, or maybe even a million (the professor isn't fussed about 700,000 years), an expedition from Mars arrived on a planet populated only by terminal tertiary fauna. Surprised by physical conditions they hadn't fully foreseen, these Martians could barely withstand a brutal reduction of their faculties and were unable to leave – stronger gravity, denser atmosphere, microbial diseases, damaged spacecraft, etc. However, they survived through slow acclimatization and rapid degeneration..."
Are we the distant descendants of these ancestors? That's the question Jimmy Guieu raises. That would reconcile those who believe man descends from the ape with those who believe man descends from Adam and Eve. Unless we descend from all three?...
Michèle DEIXONNE
(To be continued.)
Franc-Tireur was a very left-wing newspaper, and it so happened that the "party line" at the time, presented as "rationalism," was that flying saucers did not exist. They were nothing more than tales told by eccentrics, inspired by science fiction published by "American imperialism." Communist doctrine, on the other hand, aimed to produce a "new" man, free from all irrationalities such as religions, flying saucers, etc.
Franc-Tireur reported flying saucer cases in 1954, like other newspapers, but in a rather different way:
I'm not sure that in this article the newspaper faithfully and accurately reported the views of the "opponent," Georges Lange. I can at least point out the following:
[1] Error. Georges Lange was not the founder of the Ouranos Investigation Commission. The founder for France was Marc Thirouin, in 1951, a lawyer by profession and the first Frenchman to grasp the need for field investigation.
[2] A question mark would have been appropriate here.
[3] Georges Lange was an amateur astronomer, not a "scientist" in any formal sense.
[4] Anyone familiar with the subject knows that there are reports from "gentle eccentrics," but it is dishonest to suggest that all observation reports come from such individuals.
[5] This again amounts to implying that the entirety of alleged witnesses are liars.
[6] Due to the wide variety of descriptions found in science fiction, it's easy to find "coincidences." But the argument doesn't hold. For example, in the sci-fi of the time, "Martians" often had multiple tentacles, more than two eyes, or were "slimy monsters" without any clothing. Sometimes they looked exactly like humans. Sometimes just one feature, like pointed ears, distinguished them. Regarding the 1954 testimonies in France, the "Martians" were not credible (hoaxes, pranks, misunderstandings), so it's dishonest to dismiss all "saucers" based on such arguments.
[7] Clearly, Michèle Deixonne doesn't need to conduct this kind of experiment since she is already "sure" she's right. I conducted this experiment in 2002. A witness appeal in the regional newspaper concerning an observation (real but caused by a plane) prompted about twenty previously unreported testimonies - all of them describing other sightings at different times and locations. It's simple: these people had also seen something but had never reported it because they didn't know to whom or where. Thanks to the witness appeal, they had a "point of contact" and a reason to believe they'd be taken seriously rather than mocked. That "false witnesses" might come forward after a publication isn't impossible, but there has never been any serious demonstration that this is a systematic occurrence.
[8] Unfortunately, even then, Jimmy Guieu sometimes mistook "bladders for lanterns." His book was not a collection of reports compiled and classified by Ouranos, but rather a more general book on the subject. Guieu was one of those "hardcore" ufologists - like many others - who had great difficulty, to say the least, in acknowledging that hoaxes and misinterpretations exist within the vast body of ufological cases.
[9] One might accept that the reader wasn't convinced that the witnesses had actually seen a saucer, but it's hard to understand how she couldn't even admit that some witnesses might have believed they saw one. Had the reader truly "analyzed" anything, she would at least have realized that sincere witnesses do experience misidentifications.
[10] Michèle Deixonne selects the vaguest sightings and makes them even vaguer. Guieu's book has many flaws, but a serious reader will see that the cases Deixonne highlights are certainly not the most impressive. It's true that Guieu, like many others at the time, seemed incapable of distinguishing a meteor from a "flying saucer," so easily explainable observations abound in his book.
[11] Ah! If only things were that simple... Witnesses claim to have material evidence, which always "disappears" - therefore, these "witnesses" were liars. See this case from the 1954 wave, in which the witnesses claimed to have the same kind of evidence that also vanished, and yet they had not lied.
[12] This of course refers to the 1948 Mantell case. No, this pilot - not a gentle eccentric - did not chase a saucer in a jet, but in a P-51 Mustang propeller-driven fighter. Indeed, Jimmy Guieu and others believed he was killed by evil Martians - which is false. But Michèle Deixonne couldn't tell us why it was false. At the time, the Air Force told the public Mantell was chasing Venus. A poor explanation. In fact, he had tried to approach a Skyhook high-altitude balloon launched by the U.S. Navy, unknown to the Air Force at the time.
[13] Again, Michèle Deixonne clearly doesn't care about the facts. The case is that of Sonny Desvergers, reported notably by the U.S. Air Force investigator. It wasn't a "cigar" but a "saucer." The witness never stated he saw occupants nor interpreted his experience as a meeting with extraterrestrials. He was wondering what he had seen. No occupant was clearly seen. He wasn't only burned on his arm, and certainly not "by a liquid thrown by occupants." The U.S. Air Force investigator wrote: "To be very honest, we were trying to show it was a hoax, but we had absolutely no success. Every lead we followed strongly pointed to the same conclusion - a true story."
[14] The Mazaud case in 1954. Once again, the witness - nothing indicates he was a gentle eccentric - never believed he had encountered an extraterrestrial, and his story only became known because his wife spoke of it. No other "Martian" ever "jumped on" a farmer, "strollers," or "young girls" during the 1954 French wave. And apart from the Mazaud case, nothing of the sort is mentioned in Guieu's book.
[15] To respond to the "camp" that claimed saucers appeared with science fiction, the "opposing camp" pointed to old accounts that the authors argued were, or could have been, extraterrestrial craft sightings predating sci-fi. A legitimate exercise in my view, though a difficult one. Many meteors were interpreted as "prodigies," and many allegories are impossible to prove real in any way.
But describing the "vision" attributed to Ezekiel as that of a "large cloud" once again shows that Michèle Deixonne is in no position to lecture Jimmy Guieu:
"I saw: four wheels beside the Cherubim, one wheel beside each Cherub. The wheels gleamed like a chrysolite stone. All four looked alike; they seemed to be interlocked. When they moved, they went in all four directions. They moved without turning, for they moved in the direction the head faced. They did not turn as they moved. Their entire bodies - backs, hands, wings - and the wheels were full of eyes all around. These wheels were called Galgal [wheel]; I heard it. Each had four faces: the first was the face of a Cherub; the second, the face of a man; the third, the face of a lion; and the fourth, the face of an eagle. The Cherubim rose - it was the Living Creature I had seen by the Kebar River. When the Cherubim moved, the wheels beside them moved; when they spread their wings to rise from the ground, the wheels did not depart from them. When they stopped, the wheels stopped; when they rose, the wheels rose with them: for the spirit of the Living Creature was in the wheels!" (Ezekiel 10:9–17)
What Guieu suggested about this "vision" was clearly caricatured by Michèle Deixonne. See his book, page 238:
Apparently, and logically, what precedes is a jumble of nonsense. But in fact, this "vision" is certainly something else entirely, as a "comparative" analysis tends to prove. (Naturally, I assert nothing and merely present a hypothesis that I believe is well-founded).
Ezekiel and his contemporaries knew nothing of our technical terms, which is understandable. If a pygmy witnessed a plane landing and its crew disembarking, he could only describe it using simple words he understood. Sometimes, lacking adequate terms to describe a being or object, he would replace it with an inaccurate word that best represented what he had seen. Thus, to him, the plane would be a "big bird" (for medieval "civilized" people, a spaceship would have been a "flying dragon," just as today they are "meteors" to skeptics). A motor or engine roar would be... the sound of great waters (cataracts)... etc.
I may laugh at Guieu's argument "today they are 'meteors' to skeptics," but he nevertheless raises a very serious and important point - at least in my opinion - the issue of incommensurability: the extremely low probability that an intelligence X could truly understand or describe with any relevance the actions or intentions of an intelligence Y, especially when the temporal, cultural, or even biological distance is vast. (See anthropological literature on first-contact situations between different human civilizations, or this).
