The article below was published in the daily newspaper Nord-Matin, Arras issue, Nord-Pas-de-Calais, France, page 6, on November 6, 1954.
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For some time now, the appearance of saucers, discs or luminous cigars had stopped in the Picardy sky. Their absence was not very long since again there are reports of recent incursions of these strange craft in different places of the Somme. Two series of testimonies worthy of attention have just been collected.
The first are from Mr. Pierre Duval, jeweler in Montdidier, his wife and his grandmother, Mrs. Delorme. All three returned from Amiens by car, on the night of Wednesday to Thursday. Around 11:45 p.m., about 500 meters from Moreuil, they noticed in the sky, at low height, a kind of orange "spinning top" absolutely motionless. The top lit up the sky more or less like the setting sun.
Mr. Duval stopped and put his headlights on hold. The "top" then quickly moved away towards Ailly-sur-Noye.
After becoming only a red dot on the horizon, the craft returned at high speed to roughly the same place it had left a moment earlier, and a little lower. Then it disappeared into the depths of the sky at breakneck speed.
It had all lasted about ten minutes. Also Mr. Duval and the people who accompanied him were able to observe the "top" at their ease. They cannot say that it is really a craft but certify that they were not victims of a hallucination. And all three state that the speed of the "spinning top" is certainly higher than that of jet planes.
Also on Wednesday evening, a strange phenomenon was observed for a long time in Camon, a commune in the suburbs of Amiens.
Around 9:45 p.m., the town council meeting had just ended. Leaving on the doorsteps of the town hall, the assistants could all see four red balls which seemed "settled" in the sky, a hundred meters high. They seemed to be at the four corners of a hanging rectangle, the short sides at the top and bottom.
Until then motionless, the "balls" began to descend slowly above the presbytery garden. It was then that the witnesses noticed a sort of pale dome which covered the red lights. Then the two lower lights seemed to come off and lower until they seemed to want to touch the ground.
It had been a good five minutes that the "show" lasted when one of the witnesses, Mr. Brunet, former mayor of Camon, invited his companions to rush towards the red lights. There was a knock at the grocery store opposite and the grocer's son rushed into his garden which borders the spot where the fires were located. The young man climbed on the wall of the fence but, on his arrival the "lights" went up a few meters then moved away towards Amiens horizontally and at a dizzying speed.
Around 9:40 p.m., another resident of Camon, Mr. Barrelino, plasterer, had also seen the four red balls pass over the houses, but at that time, the balls, which appeared to him to be one meter in diameter, were placed in a single line.
The population of Camon is still overwhelmed by these very strange apparitions.
