The 1954 French flap:

Flying saucers and mysterious craft

Figeac. -- On Monday morning, a few kilometers from Figeac, children on their way to the Cint-d'Eau school around 8:30 a.m. reportedly saw a small man dressed in a brick-red jumpsuit, climbing up from a meadow located below the road from Figeac to Cahors.

The stranger approached the children and spoke to them in an incomprehensible language.

The young schoolchildren became frightened and ran away.

The man then descended into the meadow, climbed into a mysterious craft of small dimensions - "a box as big as three school desks," they said.

The craft immediately, quickly, and silently rose vertically and disappeared toward the south.

Was this a real event or just the imagination of children?

Sainte-Bazeille. -- On Saturday, around 8:30 p.m., Mr. R. Segrestan, a shoemaker in Sainte-Bazeille, was about to return home when his attention was drawn to a luminous disc crossing the sky above the Garonne, following its course from upstream to downstream, at an altitude of about 1,500 to 2,000 meters.

Highly phosphorescent, with a rather bluish neon-like hue, the disc moved with some speed. For about ten seconds, Mr. Segrestan was able to observe the phenomenon and call Messrs. Gourgues and Larroderie to witness it. Alas, the roof of the schoolhouse soon blocked their view of the craft.

"The sky was very clear at that moment, not a cloud in sight, and I can assure you that I was fully awake," said Mr. Segrestan regarding the Sainte-Bazeille saucer.

NEAR FIGEAC

Children encounter a "Martian" in a red jumpsuit

THE Martians follow each other and are not alike. In Corrèze, they are small and helmeted. In Portugal, they are gigantic and clad in aluminum.

Schoolchildren in the Lot in turn assure that they saw one yesterday, near Figeac.

The children were on their way to school when it appeared to them.

- He spoke to us, they said, but we didn't understand what he was saying...

Whereupon he went down to a meadow, below the road from Figeac to Cahors. The children saw him climb into a small craft which rose vertically.

- It was a machine that looked like a box, they said.

After the saucers, cigars and flying discs, here is the flying box!

Another is reported in the Vienne

In Vienne, a resident of Montgadé, Mr. Yves David, also encountered, he says, a Martian. It happened on Friday September 17, around 10:30 p.m., on the road from Vouneuil to Cenon when he saw in front of him, placed on the path a bizarre craft about 3 meters wide. A small being descended from it, approached Mr. David and tapped him on the shoulder. After that, he returned to his machine which rose and disappeared, leaving behind a green light.

Saucers are reported everywhere. In Saint-Bazeille (Lot-et-Garonne), two people saw a phosphorescent disc, of bluish tint, crossing the sky. Another, orange in color, was seen in Lanta, near Villefranche-de-Lauraguais. A third, "of an indefinite color", flew over the Perpignan region; seven workers saw it; according to one he went away towards the sea; others say it crossed the Pyrenees.

In the Dauphiné it's a real carousel. Near Feyzin (Isère), it is an object in the shape of a dome; in the Drôme, near Chabeuil, it is a whistling disc. Same thing in Savoy, not far from Bourget Lake, where one of the witnesses, a doctor from Chambéry, former artillery observer, noted his observations and draw a sketch.

In Saint-Nicolas-de-Redon, finally, a mechanic and a driver who drove a locomotive, MM. Gérard and Paroux, see a mysterious object rising from the neighboring marshes. Mr. Paroux fell ill and had to undergo a medical examination.