ALSACAT-1954-09-28-RIXHEIM-1
Former journalist Christian Valentin published in 2012 a very interesting book telling the story of UFO sightings, flying saucers sightings, in Alsace, from the beginning to 1980.
In this book, he reports that that there was a sighting on Tuesday, September 28, 1954 at 11:30 p.m. in Rixheim in the Haut-Rhin reported by the newspaper Nouvel Alsacien for Tuesday, October 5, 1954, as follows:
"Rixheim: in the night from Tuesday to Wednesday, at 11:30 p.m., an employee at the time of climbing the stairs of his house, saw a flying object at a very high speed "like a comet" in the direction from Basel to Mulhouse. The object was oblong, orange and looking like a neon tube shape."
| Date: | September 28, 1954 |
|---|---|
| Time: | ~11:30 p.m. |
| Duration: | ? |
| First known report date: | October 5, 1954 |
| Reporting delay: | 1 week. |
| Department: | Haut-Rhin |
|---|---|
| City: | Rixheim |
| Place: | Staircase to his house, UFO in the sky. |
| Latitude: | 47.748 |
| Longitude: | 7.398 |
| Uncertainty radius: | 2 km |
| Number of alleged witnesses: | 1 |
|---|---|
| Number of known witnesses: | 1 |
| Number of named witnesses: | 0 |
| Witness(es) ages: | Adult. |
| Witness(es) types: | A male employee. |
| Reporting channel: | Local Press? |
|---|---|
| Type of location: | Staircase to his house in village, UFO in the sky. |
| Visibility conditions: | Night |
| UFO observed: | Yes |
| UFO arrival observed: | ? |
| UFO departure observed: | ? |
| Entities: | No |
| Photographs: | No. |
| Sketch(s) by witness(es): | No. |
| Sketch(es) approved by witness(es): | No. |
| Witness(es) feelings: | ? |
| Witnesses interpretation: | ? |
| Hynek: | NL |
|---|---|
| ALSACAT: | Possible meteor. |
[Ref. spa1:] "SPICA" UFOLOGY ASSOCIATION:
[... Other cases...]
In September several observations, [...] an object similar to a neon tube aboce Rixeim [sic], [...]
[... Other cases...]
[Ref. cvn2:] CHRISTIAN VALENTIN:
Former journalist Christian Valentin published in 2012 a very interesting book telling the story of UFO sightings, flying saucers sightings, in Alsace, from the beginning to 1980.
In this book, he reports that that there was a sighting on Tuesday, September 28, 1954 at 11:30 p.m. in Rixheim in the Haut-Rhin reported by the newspaper Nouvel Alsacien for Tuesday, October 5, 1954, as follows:
Rixheim: in the night from Tuesday to Wednesday, at 11:30 p.m., an employee at the time of climbing the stairs of his house, saw a flying object at a very high speed "like a comet" in the direction from Basel to Mulhouse. The object was oblong, orange and looking like a neon tube shape.
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It is not at all my habit to "advertise" a book or anything, and I have no interested relationship with the author, but I wanted to say a word on the book by Christian Valentin, "Mythes et Réalités des Phénomènes Aériens Non Identifiés" (i.e. "Myths and Realities of Unidentified Aerial Phenomena" (cover on the left) , ref. [cv2]; which, as its subtitle indicates, is about Alsatian UFO sighting reports and the saucer lore in Alsace.
I think Alsatian ufologists and, generally, people interested in the UFO question, or in the history of Alsace, my region, would probably like this book.
The 144 pages book is sober but well presented, unbiased, richly documented and illustrated. It is the first work in print specifically about UFO sightings in Alsace. (There was another one a few years ago, but it was partly made by copying - pasting without mention of the sources, portions of my website, especially the Alsatians cases I almost exhaustively documented in my catalog of UFO sightings in France in 1954, and copies from another websites; the trivial explanations I proposed or gave there being almost always stripped off!)
The author does not want to prove or disprove the possibility of extraterrestrial visitors or some other so-called "extraordinary" explanation, he rather offers a chronologically ordered review of Alsatian UFO reports, starting from the origin and stopping in 1980, based on known sources ufology, on the articles of the regional Press, and cases less known or even unreleased so far that he collected directly with the witnesses. His own comments are printed in a different color, references to the sources are always given. A very nice work in my opinion!
The author currently has a blog where he shows what libraries in Alsace have the book available, see: christian.valentin.overblog.com
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This observation, to my knowledge, had never been mentioned in the UFO literature before its discovery by Christian Valentin [cvn2].
Unless there is an error in the date or a mixup with another observation in Rixheim too, but the night before. This is not very sure as the sighting on the previous nights had several witnesses, not just one, the thing was observed with binoculars, and while it was also a flying "cigar", it reportedly had "several small satellites".
As to what was seen there... The best I can say is that it might have been a meteor. The data is totally insufficient to make a certainty of this and to exclude some other explanations.
Possible meteor.
* = Source is available to me.
? = Source I am told about but could not get so far. Help needed.
| Main author: | Patrick Gross |
|---|---|
| Contributors: | None |
| Reviewers: | None |
| Editeur: | Patrick Gross |
| Version: | Create/changed by: | Date: | Description: |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0.1 | Patrick Gross | April 1, 2014 | Creation, [cvn2]. |
| 1.0 | Patrick Gross | April 1, 2014 | First published. |
| 1.1 | Patrick Gross | October 13, 2016 | Addition [spa1]. |
