The article below was published in the daily newspaper La Haute-Marne Libérée, France, on October 18, 1954.
He claims to have seen a flying saucer take off from an enclosed field in Neuilly-l'Évêque, with a gnome aboard, and now the young cowherds and townspeople fear the "Martian of César."
Mr. César is a 61-year-old Polish man who has lived in Neuilly-l'Évêque for 17 years, now residing in a small house at the very top of this district's main town.
Employed by Mr. Georges Suion, a masonry contractor in Chalindrey, he moves from site to site but goes every morning, at the same hour, to the Chermude district. His fellow citizens and coworkers consider him a serious man who is not afraid of hard work and hold him in high regard. Naturally, his story about the flying saucer was met with varying degrees of skepticism, which frustrated César. Because, by all that’s holy, he saw that saucer—so clearly, in fact, that it gave him one of the biggest frights of his life.
Last Saturday, at 6 a.m., as usual, César left his home to head for Chalindrey—a trip he makes twice daily by bicycle. A thick fog blanketed the valley and the road to Andilly, where he was pedaling steadily. Upon reaching a few hundred meters from the first railway crossing at the exit of Neuilly, he suddenly spotted, to his left, in a pasture about 150 meters from the roadside, a strange little figure, barely 1.5 meters tall. Surprised, César slowed down. He then saw the small individual moving toward a craft shaped like an upside-down bowl, about one meter high and 2.5 meters wide. César is adamant about the accuracy of these measurements.
The little figure, in fact, stood more than a head taller than the disc into which he climbed. As soon as he was inside, the craft glided smoothly across the pasture for 20 to 30 meters, then suddenly rose into the air without making a sound. Overcome by fear at that moment rather than curiosity, César felt like he had wings on his back and, in a state of panic, bolted over the fence, running as fast as he could away from the site of the apparition.
Hoax or truth?
