The index page for the 1954 French flap section of this website is here.
Reference for this case: Summer-54-Saint-Raphaël.
Please cite this reference in any correspondence with me regarding this case.
[Ref. jgz1:] JULIEN GONZALEZ:
The author indicates that there was close encounter of the third kind in Saint-Raphaël, in the Var, in the Summer of 1954 on an unknown exact date, at night at an unknowne hour, whose witness was Mrs. Raux.
The son of Mrs. Raux made this report to the investigator:
In the Summer, with hot nights, Mrs Raux and her parents Marthe and Jacques lived in a very small country house at the Tripoul, not far from the Rébori brook, in the district of Les Plaines.
There were then very few buildings in the neighborhoods, and this joint maisonnette was the property of families of Italian workers: the Carras, Bertanis, and Perronas.
As often at the time, the toilets were outside at some distance from the dwellings. Marthe left in the middle of the night to go there while her mother and her father slept.
She then found herself within about fifteen meters approximately of a luminescent form, a saucer similar to two joined plates, bathed in a rather violet important light, since she had distinguished a bulge at the top, a kind of dome.
The details were vague in her testimony, because she was short-sighted.
At the base of the machine, which seemed immobilized above ground-level, she saw an opening by which went up and went down, along a scale or a kind of staircase, black silhouettes, in perfect silence.
These silhouettes made her think of large and well built men, carrying black diving suits. She did not feel any aggressiveness on their share, she was not afraid, but it seemed impossible to her to go further: hers exact words were: "I had to keep shutting up."
She was, on the other hand disturbed, by the fact that this scene occurred in total silence. At oOther times, she evoked a slight buzzing sound, and used the term "cigar" to describe the craft.
As soon as she came out of her stupor, she rushed back to bed, without awaking her husband, for she feared for her life. She ended up falling asleep again, much later.
Her husband always reproach her not having awaked him, and he remained dubitative, evoking a possible dream.
In that year, which saw a large wave of UFOS on France, she had heard about the flying saucers or cigars, which defrayed the chronicle.
The next day, in the presence of their friend Emile Carro, the husband was obliged to recognize that a rather important machine, perhaps ten meters in diameter, had stationed at this place because the grass was pressed, flattened in a round, and several high branches of an eucalyptus tree had been broken during the night, "in this axis."
The report of the mother to her son did not vary, she told him about it as soon as he was in his teens.
Julien Gonzalez points out that this testimony was collected 58 years after the facts near the witness' son, Mr. Alain Raux, who was only 1 year old at the time of the occurrence; and that it is thus a second hand testimony to be taken with all the usual carefulness.
The sources are indicated as "Lumières dans la Nuit, Nr.410, page 10 (investigation of Mr. Gerard Marquès)."
[Ref. jmd1:] JOEL MESNARD:
Recalling that the case was published in LDLN 410, the author publishes a sketch for this observation:
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This case shows many problems:
Admittedly, it is in any event a very late report, and a second hand report.
But also, it is said that the witness was short-sighted, to explain the lack of details. A short-sighted person, without her glasses thus, seeing something in the night; this makes it difficult not to consider a misinterpretation.
It should be noted that the craft was neither seen arriving from the sky, nor seen taking off.
We are told on the one hand that her report to her son had not varied, but at the same time, there is the mention of absence of fear, and the mention that she feared for her life; there is the mention of the "perfect silence" and the mention of a slight buzzing sound. The craft is sometimes a saucer, with a dome, and sometimes a cigar - a shape which is not supposed to have a dome. This amounts to three contradictions, this is a lot for a report that supposedly never varied.
The occupants, barely described, are described as men; they do not seem extraterrestrial at all.
Lastly, it is said to us that the witness was familiarized with the "saucers" and "cigars" of the 1954 French flap. But it is not clearly specified whether it were the case before her observation, or afterwards. It is a crucial point with many regards, for example if she became familiarized with the saucers and cigars of the autumn 1954 and that her observation was in the summer, it was not in 1954 but in 1955.
On another side, there seems to have been ground traces, sufficiently unusual to have convinced the husband who initially thought that her wife had been dreaming. It is thus difficult for me to decide about this case...
(These keywords are only to help queries and are not implying anything.)
Saint-Raphaël, Var, night, luminescent, saucer, cigar, dome, light, scale, staircase, occupants, silhouettes, black, silence, buzz, diving suits, stupor, trace, grass, flattened
[----] indicates sources that are not yet available to me.
| Version: | Created/Changed by: | Date: | Change Description: |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1.0 | Patrick Gross | October 29, 2016 | First published. |
| 1.1 | Patrick Gross | February 16, 2017 | Addition [jmd1]. |
