The 1954 French flap:

A front page story.

October 3rd. London's Sunday Dispatch.

So much was happening in France the English press was forced to take note. Actually the story was too big. The London Sunday Dispatch could only print a summary on its front page. With the situation unclear, errors and the lack of detail was inevitable in the reporting. The Dispatch informed its readers:

"Near Grenoble farmer Joseph Habrat saw a luminous engine moving at great speed.

"His daughter, Yvette, said it came to within 600 yards with a gentle snoring sound.

"A little later two thousand people saw a dozen of them 'dancing a ballet' in the sky.

"Two people at Rixheim, near Mulhouse, watched a cigar-shaped luminous engine surrounded by twelve smaller satellite cigars.

"Three holiday-makers on Carry-le-Rouet beach saw a half-cigar over the port. Three women who saw it described it as leaving a trail of smoke.

"A flying mushroom was reported by a lorry-driver and his friend at Faremontiers. It was in a field and had three tripod-like legs.

"'I tried to approach it,' he said, 'but about four hundred feet away I was stopped by a ray. I felt little tickling. My head swam. I had a cold sweat. I could not move.'

"The mushroom then rose slowly and flew off.

"Dr. Martinet, skin disease specialist at Chambery, watched a flying saucer manoeuvring in the sky for four minutes.

"In the gulf of Gascony the mate and two seamen of a cargo boat saw a moving disc with a greenish glow.

"Actress Michele Morgan saw a luminous disc over the Invalides air terminal in Paris.

"There have been three reports of men from another planet landing in France.

"At Vienne a farmer said the visitor, who wore a kind of diving suit, caressed his arm.

"A woman at Drome saw a being about the size of a child and with a human face. He seemed to be wrapped in a transparent sack.'

"Both visitors to France returned to their saucers and took off vertically.

"A little helmeted and booted man with a revolver firing 'luminous and paralysing rays' was seen by the foreman of a quarry at Marcilly-sur-Vienne and six of his workmen.

"A whistling sound drew the attention of two men at Blanzy to a cigar-shaped machine in a freshly ploughed field.

"The men said the machine was about six feet in length. The pointed tip was yellow, the rest of the cigar brown.

"As they approached the machine it rose vertically.

"A policeman, a grocer, and eight other people saw an incandescent 'cigar' at Agen.

"A brilliant ball appeared to a stallkeeper at Belesta. He said it left a trail of grey smoke as it shot through the sky."

The author of the aforementioned account noted that at the same time that day (October 3, 1954) 40 miles away an amazing "sky display" was taking place above a wooded area near the village of Marcoing, France, before 20 witnesses. That so many people at the same moment at different locations should have a similar hallucination boggled the writer's mind, so much so he consulted a psychiatrist assigned to the Law Courts of the Seine, a Dr. Gouriou.

"Is mass "delusion upon this scale possible?"

The above question was put to the mental health expert who replied he had never known a flying saucer to play a role in any of his patient's hallucinations, and that hallucinations were usually sounds rather than visual images. Moreover, when on rare occasions visual disorders did occur, such problems were nearly always due to toxemia or cerebral lesions which would certainly help to rule out the possibility of a "mass visual delusion." 24.

Dr. Gouriou then wisely ended the interview with: "...I for one think that those who maintain that they have seen saucers do so in good faith, unless of course they are trying to hoax us. But we must never forget that whatever a normal human being sees, he, to a considerable extent interprets, and this fact alone renders all human evidence fallible." 25.