The index page for the 1954 French flap section of this website is here.
Reference for this case: 3-Oct-54-Lens.
Please cite this reference in any correspondence with me regarding this case.
Around 2017, "skeptical" ufologist Dominique Caudron, based in the Nord, cataloged sightings in the Nord region for October 3, 1954, neglected by ufologists, including many that were previously unpublished, and mostly explainable by a red moon whose appearance was altered by clouds.
One of these observations was reported in the regional newspaper La Croix du Nird, Arras issue, on page 2 for October 6, 1954:
At about 9 p.m., in Lens in the Pas-de-Calais department, a man and his wife had seen near the headframe of the grave XV, towards the Lorette plate, a kind of glowing bowl surmounted by a dome. A sausage-shaped object had come loose.
Dominique Caudron said that both the direction and the description point to the moon, whose image was reddened and distorted because of clouds, as the cause of this observation, as in other cases that evening in the region.
[Ref. dcn3:] DOMINIQUE CAUDRON:
Dominique Caudron drew up an inventory of observations in the Nord on October 3, 1954, containing 51 reports, including this one:
[...]
Chronology of the observations of October 3.
We give here only a summary of what was published in the press of the time, for the nord region, regardless of what the ufologists could later say. We have numbered all these observations, the first of which have nothing to do with the setting of the moon, in order to be able to study them globally in a table. Some are already the subject of a special file.
[... other cases...]
51) about 9 p.m., Lens (62)
- A man and his wife saw near the headframe of grave XV, towards the plateau of Lorette, a sort of glowing basin with a dome on top. A sausage-shaped object came off.
(La Croix du Nord-ed. Arras 6/10 page 2)
All this is only a compilation of the information given by all newspapers of the time, including local editions, and of which ufologists only used a part.
We will see that the analysis of this information makes it possible to eliminate the hypothesis of a flying saucer, in favor of those of multiple observations of the moon, whose image was reddened and deformed by clouds, which also gave it a illusory apparent movement.
[Ref. dcn4:] DOMINIQUE CAUDRON:
[... other cases...]
51) about 9 p.m., Lens (62)
Same direction as the moon, same apparent behavior as the moon that night.
[... other cases...]
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We do not know exactly where the witness and his wife were, since "near the headframe of the XVth pit" seems rather to relate to the position of the phenomenon.
But we are still told "Lens". The plateau of Lorette is indeed south-west of Lens, direction in which the Moon was setting at that time.
Even if it were the witnesses who were near the headframe of the pit 15, so towards Loos-en-Gohelle, the direction is also in conformity with that of the Moon.
And their description is also consistent with those of many other witnesses in this region who reported as a mysterious phenomenon what really was the crescent Red Moon seeming to split in two due to the passage of clouds in the line of vision.
(These keywords are only to help queries and are not implying anything.)
Lens, Pas-de-Calais, night, two, man, wife, plateau de Lorette, basin, reddish, cuppola, object, sausage
[----] indicates sources that are not yet available to me.
| Version: | Created/Changed by: | Date: | Change Description: |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1.0 | Patrick Gross | May 24, 2019 | First published. |
