The 1954 French flap:

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 Martian 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 truth.