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The article below was published in the daily newspaper Libre Artois, France, on October 10, 1954.
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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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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, M. 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.
