The index page for the 1954 French flap section of this website is here.
Reference for this case: Oct-54-Creil.
Please cite this reference in any correspondence with me regarding this case.
[Ref. lon1:] NEWSPAPER "L'OISE-MATIN":
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The saucers seem to be becoming increasingly rare in the skies of France, that they desert, if we are to believe the witnesses, for Italy. The reports also allude to two stories of "Martians", one occurring in the Creuse, the second, that of Creil, not being than a prank imagined by a railway worker.
This one had made, using an old oil can and a transparent raincoat, a diving suit, to which he had even added, to make it better, a lamp projecting a green glow.
In the evening, he rushed towards twenty of his comrades who not only were panicked, but also apparently found the source of information which quickly reached the North of France and announcing an invasion of Martians in Creil.
It all ended in a general burst of laughter, even as regards the administration, because the railway worker had carried out this mistification [sic] outside of his working hours.
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Continued from the 1st page
However, our region had the visit of one of these craft. This is at least what several residents of the rue Jean-Jaurès in Creil think, who declared to have noticed on Tuesday, an "abnormal glow" in the sky, in the middle of the afternoon.
It is also a "strange white glow" that declared to have seen a truck driver of Tarbes, Mr. Vincent Casamajou, while he was heading, in the morning around 6 a.m., with a load towards Angoulême, in the company of his wife.
Having parked my truck on the side of the road, I saw, as well as my wife, he said, a craft which had just taken off from a meadow, less than 50 meters away. The craft, which was of the shape of a huge cauldron, rose at a very high speed, at an angle of 45°. It left behind a white trail, it disappeared in the clouds.
Mr. Casamajou and his wife claimed that this "cauldron" was as big as a 5-ton truck and flew noiselessly.
For his part, a farmer from the village of La Vaureille, Mr. Aimé Bousard, 47, told the gendarmes of Aubusson "the strange encounter" he lived on his return from the village of Alleyrat (Creuse).
At the place called "La Madière", he declared, I saw a shape which was on the side of the road. I stopped to better observe the individual. The latter, who was lowered, rose abruptly, shining two powerful lamps on me, projecting a very dense light blue light. He also had, on each side of his head, a light green colored lamp which emitted much weaker rays than the others. He appeared to be 1.60 m high and at first I thought he was wearing a diving suit.
Suddenly, under the effect of a pressure comparable to a breath I was thrown to the other side of the road where I remained ten minutes without being able to scream or call for help. The light blue lamps remained pointed at me. They finally died out. The being crossed the road and suddenly disappeared. I felt and still feel pain in my legs and right hand.
At the place indicated by the farmer, the gendarmes noticed that the earth had been freshly stirred up. The grass had been pulled up over an area of 70 cm. of diameter. No footsteps were found.
Three employees of the Modena police headquarters have made statements concerning the appearance of a strange "craft" in the sky of this city.
In Florence, hundreds of people who attended a training session of the local football team, as well as the players of this team claimed that several "imprecise objects", of an absolute white color, crossed the sky in formation moving from north to south. These "objects" included "cigars" and "discs."
[Ref. lqh1:] NEWSPAPER "LE QUOTIDIEN DE LA HAUTE-LOIRE":
It was a railwayman disguised with a can, impermeable suit and a green lamp. The station of Creil saw the other evening its warehouses become the theatre of the most beautiful panic which proceeded there by memory of railwayman. One of them, indeed, a lampmaker, George Olivier, to make a good joke to his comrades, had disguised as a flying saucer pilot. Having cut a sort of houppelande in an old nylon raincoat, equipped with a helmet made in an old oil can bored of three holes, equipped with a flashlight whose bulb was painted in green, and two antennas, George Olivier penetrated in the hangars. The appearance in the night of this phantasmagoric being with the phosphorescent eyes produced an amazing effect. Railwaymen, frozen on the spot for a short while, found their courage and started to chase the gnomet. Catch it, shouted a conductor which had taken the direction of the operations, there is a newspaper which gives a premium of one million. When he was about to be circles, the Martian run around wildly, rushed at its prosecutors, utterring shouts and using the famous paralysing green ray. However, the score of prosecutors had enough forces to start a mad retreat to the station where they immediately held a war mission briefing. They were preparing a new tactic when George Olivier, without his disguize, joined them. "Did you not see the Martian?" he asked his colleagues. "Yes I saw it, I even touched it," answered Olivier. "And you did not take capture it?" "No, since the Martian, it was me." And the prankster, bursting into laughters, enjoyed a long moment the astonishment and the disappointment of his comrades. The heads of department of the merrylamp maker of the S.N.C.F. have, it appears, ambiguously appreciated the joke. But George Olivier had taken care to indulge in this prank before the normal hour of his duty.
Mr. Lucien Lejeune, mayor of Chateauneuf-du-Pape, has just taken the following decree which was approved by the prefect of Vaucluse and was made executory yesterday.
[Ref. tbg1:] NEWSPAPER "THE BOSTON GLOBE":
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Craze Matches Witch-Hunting
PARIS (Reuters) -- Frenchmen have taken to the flying saucer craze with all the enthusiasm that their medieval forebears devoted to witch-hunting.
Not a day passes without reports from all over France of "flying saucers," "flying cigars," "flying mushrooms," and "flying bells" piloted by 20th century sorcerers.
Villagers seize shot guns and pitchforks and sally forth valiantly to meet any saucer reported landing nearby. Police spend hours following up reports.
Flying saucer stories and speculation about their origin fill the national press. They have even driven sex from the front pages of some popular weekly newspapers. One has offered a reward of 1.000,000 francs (about $2800) to the reader who sends in the first authentic photograph of a flying saucer.
The Mayor of Chateauneuf-du-Pape, a wine village of 1600 people has decreed that any flying saucer which lands in his village will be impounded.
Flying saucer stories come from all levels and ages of the population.
A select few claim that they have actually seen the creatures who pilot the saucers over France. They generally agree that the creatures, usually referred to as Martians, are shorter than human beings in size and appear to be very hairy. Most of these creatures, if they speak, utter unintelligible sounds, but some have made themselves understood in French and even Russian.
Thirteen year-old Gilbert Lafay [sic], of Chateaubriant, said that he saw in a field a flying saucer piloted by a man who spoke to him in French.
Baker's assistant Pierre Lucas of Loctudy claimed that he met a four-foot flying saucer pilot with a hairy oval face and eyes as big as crow's eggs.
A workman, Louis Ujvari, met a flying saucer pilot near Epinal who spoke Russian and asked how far it was from the German frontier.
The saucers seem generally to be piloted by males. One exception was reported by a schoolmaster, Mr. Martin, who said he met two beautiful Martian girls on the island of Oloron [sic] off the French Atlantic Coast. They were about four feet, four inches, and wore leather helmets, gloves and boots.
The strange visitors from outer space are said to be equipped with "ray guns" which stop witnesses in their track with an electric shock effect and temporarily immobilize automobile engines, but no really unfriendly act by them has so far been reported.
Frenchmen are less well disposed towards their uninvited guests and some accidents have occurred in the hunt for Martians. At Sinceny, Jean Faisan fired two shots at his farmer neighbor, Maurice Ruan, who was repairing his car one night, narrowly missing his head but damaging the radiator.
Faisan explained that when he saw a figure illuminated by two lamps he thought he was in the presence of a "Martian repairing his flying saucer." He ran for his shotgun and fired.
In the village of Troussey, sugar beet gatherer Alexandre Ronneji, who had not had a haircut for several months, was manhandled by a crowd who mistook him for a hairy Martian.
At Tain-l'Hermitage, in central France, a wineyard worker decided that his neighbor, M. Neyret, looked "extraordinary" in the dusk and attacked him savagely, beating him so severely that one ear was torn off. Only then did he find that Neyret was not a Martian.
Press cartoonists and practical jokers are having a field day over the whole affair. Newspapers and popular weekly magazines fill their cartoon pages with saucer jokes.
A worker at a Paris railway depot started his mates on a Martian hunt by capering about in a welder's helmet with a green light inside.
But the king of the saucer jesters was a retired miner of the village of Beuvry-Les-Bethunes, near Lille, who built some flying saucers in his backyard. He made his "saucers" out of gray paper on the fire-balloon principles and lit a paraffin-soaked rag at the base. The warm air lifted the "saucers", some of them over nine feet in diameter, and off they went with the wind showing orange and yellow lights from the flames.
Police found him out after one of his "saucers" had landed near a haystack and almost set it on fire.
Attempts to explain the saucer phenomena have varied from "mass hallucination" to a suggestion that they are new experimental aircraft built in cigar form which can take off vertically.
Another theory is that, under certain atmospheric conditions, exhaust fuel from jet aircraft solidifies and may form "saucer" shapes. It has been said to reach the ground in the form of a rubbery material which dissolved on being touched. Such a material has often be reported to have been found on saucer landing sites.
[Ref. gbr1:] GRAY BARKER:
A French railway worker, George [sic] Ollivier [sic], of Criel [sic], made himself a home-made Martian suit (See illustration), using an oil can for a helmet on top of which he had mounted a green light. The weird outfit frightened people so greatly that it was reported Criel was in the hands of the Martians.
[Ref. mcs1:] MICHEL CARROUGES:
Michel Carrouges explains that in Creil, in Oise, a railwayman manufactured a mask with old cans, various additions amon which an electric bulb painted in green. He then showed himself onr evening popping out of the corner of the station and frightened his colleagues railwaymen by lighting his false green ray. He rushed towards them while uttering shrieking vocals.
While people fled, he took advantage to quit his disguise in discretion so that he managed to get his laughs from the effects of his practical joke.
Michel Carrouges offerred this case in his chapter devoted to the hoaxes inspired by the 1954 UFO flap, indicating that it is in the newspaper France-Soir of October 29, 1954 that the story of this hoax was published for the benefit of the public.
[Ref. hia1:] "HISTORIA" MAGAZINE:
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One of the most significant hoaxes had as authors two journalists who narrated their joke in Samedi-Soir.
One night in October 1954, dressed in diving suits and armed with fireworks and other devices, they "landed" five times near the road along a Brive-Cahors-Montauban-Toulouse-Graulhet route.
Several people testified seeing "beings" armed with ray guns. "I perfectly saw a saucer like a big red ball, a witness said. Out came two 90 centimeters tall beings. The Martians ran to the saucer that flew under our noses like a big rocket."
In the same month of the same year (we were in a period of a great wave of saucers), a railwayman of Creil made a mask with a fake can and painted the bulb of a flashlight in green.
One night after his duty, he appeared at the station and lit his "green ray." His comrades were petrified. The next day, they told him the terrible apparition.
However, no doubt that if one had investigated the observers of the journalists-divers or the railroad green ray, we would have concluded in the sincerity and perfect balance of the witnesses.
[Ref. mft3:] MICHEL FIGUET - "FRANCAT":
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| DATE | PLACE | CREDIBILITY SOURCES |
|---|---|---|
| 10.1954 | Creil | It was a prank by a railroad worker. E. Zurcher p. 176 |
[Ref. lgs1:] LOREN GROSS:
M. George Ollivier, a French railroad worker who lived in the town of Criel, made a "spaceman costume" out of odds and ends. Although crude, the result managed to scare the socks off many of his neighbors.
[Photo caption:] Hoaxter Georges Ollivier
[Ref. emt1:] ERIC MAILLOT:
Eric Maillot, while searching cases of witnesses paralyzed by green rays of martian zapguns, which he thinks are hoaxes inspired by the movie "the war of the world," indicates that "lucky me, I found again the tracks of three UFO cases emitting green rays." Among them, he cites:
"Creil in october 1954 (date not specified) "green ray", which is supposed to be in a book by Carrouges (Les apparitions de Martiens p163) according to an old letter by M. Figuet."
[Ref. uda1:] "UFODNA" WEBSITE:
The website indicates that on 29 October 1954 in Creil, France, there was a "Close encounter with an unidentified craft and its occupants. An unidentifiable object and its occupants were observed at close range."
The source is indicated as Carrouges, Michel, Les Apparitions de Martiens, Fayard, Paris, 1963.
[Ref. ubk1:] "UFO-DATENBANK":
| Case Nr. | New case Nr. | Investigator | Date of observation | Zip | Place of observation | Country of observation | Hour of observation | Classification | Comments | Identification |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 19541029 | 29.10.1954 | Creil | France | CE III |
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Hoax, known as hoax in the first place.
(These keywords are only to help queries and are not implying anything.)
Creil, Oise, hoax, railwayman, green ray, disguize, green, lamp, oil can, Georges Olivier, occupant, negative case
[----] indicates sources that are not yet available to me.
| Version: | Created/Changed by: | Date: | Change Description: |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0.1 | Patrick Gross | January 29, 2006 | First published. |
| 1.0 | Patrick Gross | March 1, 2010 | Conversion from HTML to XHTML Strict. First formal version. Addition [uda1]. |
| 1.1 | Patrick Gross | September 25, 2014 | Addition [hia1]. |
| 1.2 | Patrick Gross | December 8, 2016 | Additions [gbr1], [ubk1]. |
| 1.3 | Patrick Gross | December 12, 2016 | Addition [lgs1]. |
| 1.4 | Patrick Gross | December 18, 2019 | Addition [tbg1]. |
| 1.5 | Patrick Gross | May 15, 2021 | Addition [lon1]. |
| 1.6 | Patrick Gross | June 22, 2022 | Addition [mft3]. |
