Cette page en français
The article below was published in the daily newspaper Le Journal de Rue, Rue, Somme, France, page 2, on October 16, 1954.
See the case file.
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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!
