The 1954 French flap:

again and always
the saucers!

- In Pommier, head marshal Decrequy, commander of the gendarmerie brigade of Fonquevillers, and showmen whose identity he was checking, saw Saturday, around 9:25 p.m., a craft that moved quickly and silently from Monchy-au-Bois to Humbercamp. A cyclist returning from La Cauchie confirmed the fact.

- The same day, at 9:30 p.m., in St-Pol-sur-Ternoise, from different places of the town, a luminous shape moving at considerable speed was seen by several people.

- In Amiens, Mr. Anquetil, waiter; Ms. Fournier, mechanic, in Fosse-Bleuets; Mr. Delattre, farmer, and Mr. Dewindt, from Courcelles-sous-Moyencourt, in Thieulloy-la-Ville; a motorist, Mr. Covemacker, and several people reported the appearance of saucers.

- In Bouzincourt, Mr. Venderworat and his son, loading beet greens, noticed a milky white disc hanging from about thirty meters from the ground. The cultivator turned off the lights of his tractor, saw the glow descend and, finally, disappear. The two men resumed their work and returned to Bouzincourt; then they saw the white glow that seemed to follow them for some time and finally disappeared. Another farmer who was plowing his field in the same area said he saw nothing: he only made it clear that he occasionally turned on the tail light of his tractor to make sure his plowing was correct. Should we conclude from the comparison of the facts to an optical illusion?

Flying Saucers...

Like it or not, there is a problem with the flying saucers, the matter seems to be getting serious.

Whereas, at the beginning, many newspapers scoffed (and L'Abeille, like the others), it became obvious, even to the most skeptical "that there is something".

To take only examples close to here and officially noted by the gendarmeries and the security services of the territory, how to admit that in Hem-Hardinval, the mysterious craft which intrigued several farmers, known for their seriousness, and which frightened their horses, is a product of the imagination? At a distance of 100 meters, people still could not dream... As could not dream the inhabitants of Domart-en-Ponthieu who saw a saucer land near their car, and strange beings get out of it.

In the Ternois, people are more discreet, and if we know that some saw bizarre craft (a miner from Linzeux, a Buneville farmer woman, etc.) they were careful not to advertise too much what they saw.

Other residents of the Ternois also saw strange objects in the sky: an industrialist from Saint-Pol returning in the evening by car, farm workers returning from work. Monday evening a dozen Saint-Pol residents saw around 8:30 p.m. a luminous object, followed by a dazzling tail which took the direction of Ramecourt. The object was clearly seen by a city councilor, a doctor and various other personalities.

We also talked about strange objects seen in Frévent, in Auxi, in Wavrans, etc...

What should we conclude from this? It would obviously be very difficult to say.

Be that as it may, we find ourselves in the presence of two very distinct phenomena: luminous objects in the sky and objects of metallic appearance posed in the countryside, or landing there.

Some objections immediately come to mind. Why would the occupants of these objects come to land in hollow paths, in the deserted plains, etc. If they really come from other planets and are on an observation mission, it would make more sense for them to come near factories, big cities, ports. Given their power and the influence of their so-called paralyzing beam, what would they risk?

L'Abeille obviously does not claim to provide its readers with the solution to this problem which, to be honest, seems really frightening. However, we thought it would be interesting to publish extracts from a letter that a prominent Swiss personality, Mr. Alfred Nahon, professor of philosophy and psychology in Lausanne, just sent to the newspaper L'Express.

Here's what he writes:

"I was surprised the other day to find that you seem to deal with the so-called "flying saucer" issue lightly.

Studying the questions and information relating to "flying saucers", I have been perfectly aware for seven years, of everything that has been said or written on this matter. I am a member and general correspondent for Switzerland of the International Investigation Commission "Ouranos".

It follows from my information, intersected by the turn of certain important diplomatic facts, that these craft come from several planets and that their occupants have advised the main governments to have to stop their atomic and military policies in general.

It is a long time since the population should have been honestly informed of the truth: the extraterrestrial nature of these apparatuses, the peaceful mission of its other humanity, the possibility of several landings in the immediate future, details on the past landings in 1948 and 1952 in the United States, 1952 and 1954 in France, etc.

In recent days, identical phenomena multiplied, in France in particular, and the public, who once laughed, seems to be worried today.

This concern is not justified. It is due to the ignorance in which the population was kept on all the phases and particularity of these prodigious forewords to the interplanetary era.

Consequently, I think that it is necessary, without delay, to train the public in the idea of this reality, to inform them of all the historical aspect of the question, of our own preparations with a view to going to nearby planets and provide directions for contact or simple unsuccessful landing.

Alfred Nahon
Professor of Philosophy
and Psychology
Lausanne

The October 18 "Saucer"

In our last issue, we reported the passage of a saucer on Monday, October 18, between 8 p.m. and 9 p.m. in the evening first east of Doullens, then on Frévent and St-Pol, from where the phenomenon (or craft?) took the direction of the sea. Its route from Hem-Hardinval to Frévent is now established. It went to Montigny-les-Jongleurs, then to Beauvoir-Rivière (Somme) at the limit of the Ternoise. It seems that it took a break of half an hour to three quarters of an hour in this last town, either on the ground or at very low altitude. It allowed, in any case very instructive observations, which seem to invalidate certain hypotheses and tend to confirm others, on the nature and the means of maneuvering of these mysterious machines.

A farmer from Beauvoir-Rivière, a man already of some age, and very serious, had lingered in the fields to cover a beets silo. He suddenly saw the saucer coming towards him, at a very low altitude four or five meters and flying very slowly. "Its speed was probably not exceeding, he told us, 10 kms per hour. I had the impression that it was trying to land. It was shaped like a bell with a red light below. It seemed to me to be remarkably piloted: a small grove being in its path, it rounded it slowly, although its height would have allowed it to pass over it.

"Then an extremely curious fact happened. The saucer kept coming at me. Between it and me was a pasture closed with burl wire and iron stakes. In the falling evening this fence was practically invisible. It was necessary to know its existence. Now, on arriving there, the saucer made a right [turn] at a right angle to go alongside it, and then, arriving at the corner stake, one to the left to follow its other face, thus resuming the general north-south direction it followed before.

"Note that it could have easily flown over these fences, without risk given its height.

A curtain or crest was then to its left, it moved along it for a moment. Then pressing on this side, it took a little more height to cross it. It then flew over it, in a northwesterly direction, upward sloping fields, increasing its height accordingly, so that it continued to stay at the same distance from the ground.

"It then crossed a second ridge, similar to the first. This then hid it from my sight. I assumed it then landed in the plain above.

"This supposition seemed to me to be confirmed when, returning home three quarters of an hour later, my wife said that on returning from milking, shortly before my return, she had seen a bright red glow in the direction where the saucer was gone for me.

The cultivator only made these statements to us under the express promise not to name him. He does not want to pass for a "saucer voyeur". And that had prompted him to be silent for eight days, without telling anyone about his adventure.

We asked him the following additional questions, which we found of interest.

- Were the contours of the saucer sharp?

- No, blurry.

- Yet a metallic object standing out against the twilight sky must give sharp edges.

- It was not.

- Did the lower edge stand out more clearly on the red light?

- Neither.

- What was the appearance of this fire? That of a light? Of a lantern? Of an exhaust fire? Was it sharp? Or blurred?

- Blurred; a kind of brightness rather.

- Did you observe the appearance of the walls?

Impossible in the twilight for the whole mass, which was dark. I could only see [sic] gray canvas from the top not at all fit the silhouette of a metallic aircraft, or other material, even in the twilight. On the other hand, this blur would fit very well with a gaseous nebula formation.

We are thinking here of the theory according to which saucers "could be" vortices of grouped electrons, and taking the shape of a saucer, around a "condensing nucleus" provided either by a cosmic particle or by a radioactive particle among the millions that are thrown into the upper atmosphere by nuclear explosions.

Note that this theory would fit in with the episode of the burl wires, the vortices of electrons being known to be repelled by the metal.

As for the diffuse red light, it is accepted that such electron eddies can create phosphorescent luminosities, on contact with the neon gas floating in the lower layers of the atmosphere in the same way as the electric current, does it in a neon light tube. The experiments show that this coloring varies according to the intensity of the radio electric agent which causes them: red for the low frequencies and voltage intensities for the electric current then orange, brown, purple, even tending to green, when they increase.

Regarding this question of luminosity, let us note again that at Beauvoir-Rivière, where it was going very slowly, the saucer only showed red luminosity in its lower part, while the ten Saint-Pol residents who saw the saucer a little later (indisputably the same) noticed a dazzling tail. The light emission therefore takes on an increasing intensity with speed, the tail being explained by the very movement of the object in the air. Peremptory reversal of Lieutenant Plantier's theory, according to which the saucers would be surrounded by a belt of air moving with it: in this case there could indeed be no luminous trail, forming a tail.

Let us add that the craft was seen the same day and almost at the same time in Hesdin, Montreuil and Etaples.