The 1954 French flap:

Burned stone, grass burned under the saucer of Doncourt-Village

NANCY, October 13 ("France-soir" news brief). - At about 1:30 a.m., yesterday morning, when everything was asleep in Doncourt-Village (the Meurthe-et-Moselle), an abnormal whistling sound awoke the inhabitants of a farm, out in the country. Worried, the farmers went at the window and saw a flat object, "three times as big as a setting sun", they said, posed at the edge of the woods nearby. Soon the object rose with great speed to the vertical and disappeared. At the place indicated by the farmers, the gendarmes found that the stones had been burned and had taken on a brick-red color on a circumference of 1 m. 50. The earth, everywhere else soaked by rain, was, within this circumference, reduced to ashes on a depth of three centimeters.

A luminous machine observed in Cameroon by credible witnesses

YAOUNDE (Cameroon), Oct. 12 ("France-soir" news brief). - An enormous illuminated disk was observed Sunday in Yaoundé by a group of trustworty people: Colonel Cauvin, director of the health and prophylaxis services of Cameroon; Dr. Menn, chief medical officer of the hospital; MM. Dumont, Director of the Security Services; Poileux, Councilor of the Territorial Assembly; Moreau, administrator and deputy mayor of Yaoundé. It was the dog of the house who, by barking, attracted the occupants. Under the disc hung a sort of oscillating cylinder. The machine, after a few seconds, disappeared quickly towards the east.

AN ORANGE DISC emitting bright lights was observed in Champagne-sur-Seine (the Seine-et-Marne) by M. T ..., a seasonal worker in Machault, who took pictures. A butcher at Seine-Port saw at Savigny-le-Temple a similar machine, as well as in Meaux, Mr. Lefranc, a bank clerk in Paris.

AN INCANDESCENT BARREL, two meters high, was seen in a pasture by two young girls from Heimersdorf (Haut-Rhin). The craft rose and disappeared quickly.

Pygmy and fearful Martians

in the Tarn and in Westphalia

THE Martians are familiar, talkative and daring when they are alone. If they are in a troop they become fearful. It's strange, but that's how it is.

Mr. Jean-Pierre Mitto, engineer in Briatexte (the Tarn) was driving home the other night by car with two of his cousins when he saw two small figures running away before him on the road. He braked backwards and saw in a meadow a "saucer" in the shape of a hemisphere towards which the two figures were running at full speed. The craft was, he says, about 6 meters in diameter; it flew away as soon as the "Martians" - who, he estimated, were the size of a child aged 10 to 12 - had resumed their place on board.

The four mysterious characters that Mr. Hoge, a film operator, saw in Westphalia the same evening were about this size: 1 m. 20 or so. On returning home, Mr. Hoge had seen a blue light in a field, 60 meters from the road. He thought it was a crashed plane. Then he noticed that the light came from an object having the shape of a cigar. Four men, in rubber coveralls, were working under the machine.

After ten minutes, they climbed back into their cigar which, taking off, took the shape of a saucer which "projected a dazzling light".

The cinema operator did not have his camera with him, but he has very good eyes since at 60 meters and at night he could distinguish that "his" Martians had "very developed torsos, a big head and small and lean lower limbs."

He admitted he was scared. More courageous, a colonial teacher, Mr. Martin, lent his pen to two Martian women whom he met, he said, on the island of Oléron. It is true that they were "lovely". And they measured 1 m. 70. Perhaps they came from Venus? They traced "incomprehensible" hieroglyphs on his notebook. But it's already a lot that they know how to use a pen...

Iridescent cigars and fireballs have been reported in the Pyrénées-Orientales, Aveyron and Puy-de-Dôme.

In Meaux, Fontainebleau and Nandy, discs of illuminated soccer balls shape were seen flying across the sky. A roadmender even saw - he was coming out of a cafe - a flying liter!

No Martien at the Dubois hospital

The rumor spread in Paris last night that a "Martian", escaped from a flying saucer, and wounded, had was admitted to the Dubois hospital, rue du faubourg Saint-Denis. The hospital management, assailed by phone calls, asks us to indicate that this is a stupid rumor and naturally without any foundation.

FLYING SAUCERS

A motorist said he saw two "little people" cross the road and then fly aboard their craft ...

ALBI, October 12. -- A car driver from Briatexte (Tarn), M. Jean-Pierre Mitto, technical agent in a company currently exposing at the "Household Arts" of Toulouse, said he met in the dark, on the national road No. 631, the passengers of a flying saucer.

"Returning to Toulouse, with two parents, he said, I suddenly distinguished in the beam of my headlights, two little people who crossed the road, a few meters away from my car. I stopped immediately and, to our amazement, we then saw from a nearby meadow a large red disk with a diameter of 6 meters, fly away, rising vertically. The craft disappeared into the sky in a few seconds".

OTHER DISCS, BALLS AND CIGARS

MULHOUSE. -- Having seen this evening a light in a pasture, two young girls of Heimersdorf, Anny and Roselyne Pracht aged 22 and 18, came closer thinking it was a fire lit by a shepherd. Then they saw, they claim, a craft of a height of about 2 meters. At their approach, the barrel-shaped craft turned to a glowing red, rose into the air and disappeared over the horizon. The same phenomenon was observed by two other people.

MELUN. -- Mr. Jules Lefranc, bank employee, Paris resident, saw in the sky, near the François - de - Tessart stadium in Meaux, for about three minutes, an object brightly lit from the inside that, he said, was shaped like a small soccer ball. This craft disappeared while leaving behind, the witness said, a luminous trail of the size of a stovepipe.

Residents of Trilport reportedly saw an identical craft motionless.

MELUN. -- A resident of Fontainebleau stated he saw

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October 11 [, 1954]

[... other cases...]

? [=unknown hour]: Meaux(Seine-et-Marne):lumin.sph.

[... other cases...]

11 October 1954: Meaux, Île-de-France, France

An unidentified object was sighted, but with appearance and behavior that most likely would have a conventional explanation. One object was observed by one witness for over three minutes.

Hynek rating: NL

Vallee rating: FB1