The article below was published in the daily newspaper Le Nouveau Nord Maritime, France, page 3, on October 23, 1954.
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Few flying saucers have appeared in France in the past 24 hours, and those that have appeared, according to people who have seen them, were moving without much fantasy. One of them, near Luzy, even contented itself, affirm a pensioner of the Nevers railways, his wife and his son, to take the form of a metal airship flying at a very low altitude, but, it is true, at a "dizzying" speed...
Near Ham (Somme), the passage of a mysterious craft was marked by a curious phenomenon. Two inhabitants of the region were traveling side by side, one on a motorbike, the other on a moped, when they saw an orange mass moving in the sky. When this mass was above them, the two engines suddenly failed and did not resume until the mass had moved away.
On national road 393, near Turquestein, the engine of a truck was suddenly stopped again by a "luminous apparition." The driver, Mr. Schonbrenner, hands riveted at the wheel as if he was paralyzed, saw a kind of cone with a phosphorescent base, the tip of which was yellow-orange, which moved in the sky while lighting the ground.
Mr. Schonbrenner said he felt a warm feeling, as did other people in similar circumstances.
- Also in Lorient, a retired navy worker, Mr. Jean Roignant, saw a circular white craft which emitted white and purple gleams. It is a disc, orange in color this time, that was seen by Mr. Leonard Roumy, deputy mayor of Raveau. In Chevenon, near Imphy, Guy Chevrier only saw a kind of rocket.
Melun, 22. - Many witnesses, inhabitants of the regions of Bray-sur-Seine, Lagny, Moret, Thomery, said they saw a strange phenomenon after dark: an oval-shaped object, yellow orange in color, measuring more than 20 meters, at 300 or 400 meters of altitude. Note: the 20 meters would be the real measure of the object and not its size as it appeared to them.
The craft remained motionless for a while and disappeared at breakneck speed.
One of the witnesses, Mr. André L..., weather specialist, who lives in Thomery, believes that the speed of craft was in the order of 10,000 kilometers an hour, quite simply. M. L... clarified:
"I am absolutely certain, because I know this question well, that it is neither an airplane nor a weather balloon."
For their part, several riders from a horse center in La Rochelle claim to have seen a character flee from their park. "He was strange, they say. It could only be a Martian."
