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1921, Marseilles, France, Mr. G.B.:

Brief summary of the event and follow-up:

In 1954 during the flying saucers reports flap in France, a man wrote a letter to the famous national magazine Paris-Match, saying that he is from Marseilles and that in 1921 when he was 8, he was playing in the hillocks near the canal du nord in the beginning of the afternoon, when two beings suddenly came out of the bushes and grabbed him.

They took him inside a craft that he thought to be some weird kind of tank [war tank, not liquid tank]. He could not resists and even said that he seemed to have been deprived of the will to resist. Inside the craft, after a few minutes, he started to cry, and he said that maybe the beings were moved by the cries, for an opening appeared in the ceiling of the cabin and in a short while he found himself back on the ground outside. He nevertheless had to walk the entire afternoon to get back to the path where he had been 5 minutes earlier.

He described the being as very tall and very thin, dressed in a flexible kind of metallic diving suit, specifying that he could not remember their features more, and that the cabin had square or rectangular portholes, and he had been sitting on some sort of soft couch inside. He indicates that When he arrived home at nightfall, his parents called him a liar and nobody believed in his story. One compiler of UFO reports of that time noted only something vague about a UFO abduction in Marseilles in 1921 and a single line was all that remained of the story in the ufology literature since.

Basic information table:

Narratives:

[Ref. pm1:] PARIS-MATCH:

The reader's letter underneath has been published in the magazine Paris Match, France, October 23, 1954.

/p>

[Ref. jv2:] JACQUES VALLEE:

Jacques Vallée says that the first report of a UFO kidnapping in modern times was in Marseilles in 1921, "though we do not know the exact reference of this information," according to Guy Quincy who listed it "without any indication of source." Vallée comments that "we will howewer, obviously not consider this report very seriously."

[Ref. jv1:] JACQUES VALLEE:

Jacques Vallée indicates in his UFO landings catalog that according to Quincy, in 1921, in Marseilles, France, there was "an undocumented report of an 'abduction' by two beings."

[Ref. gh1:] GILBERT CORNU AND HENRI CHALOUPEK:

The authors indicates that in 1921, a very hot year, and by a day of intense fog which was not necessarily September, but was highly likely to be at Fall, an 8 years old child walked on the banks of the channel of North in the area of Péronne.

He suddenly saw two beings clad in diving-suits which jumped out of the vegetation and the fog. They grabbed him and took him towards a machine which seemed to him to be a "tank", only reference of odd machine which he knew.

He is unable to resist and starts to cry, an opening opens then in the "cabin" where he was and, without really knowing how, he is on the ground again.

He needed however to to walk a part of the afternoon to reach again the way where he was captured a few minutes earlier.

He went back home only at the fallen night and when he told his adventure to his parents, they called him a "dirty little liar."

It was in 1954 at the time of the large UFO flap on France that he decided to speak again of his adventure as a child, of which he does not remember well but a few details: square or rectangular port-holes, diving-suits of metallic appearance though flexible and tall and slender beings.

The authors indicate as sources Paris Match, (reader's letters section) for October 23, 1954, the Vallée Catalogue case 43, and Michel Figuet, "Dossier complet des rencontres rapprochées en France", A. Lefeuvre publisher, p. 46-47.

[Ref. pr1:] PETER ROGERSON:

Peter Rogerson indicates the earliest known abduction survivor report was a letter to Paris Match by Mr GB of Marseille, who recounted how as a boy he had been walking along the bank of the North Canal when he was seized by two men from behind bushes. The men were tall, slender, and dressed in what looked like flexible metal diving suits, and carried him into a strange object which had square or rectangular portholes. Inside he sat on a flexible couch, began to weep, and some minutes later, an opening appeared in the ceiling of the cabin and he was on the ground again. He then found that he had to walk for most of the afternoon to get back to where he had been taken from, though he had been on the craft for only about five minutes.

Rogerson comments that in "this third-hand summary" we can detect elements "of such well known later themes as doorway amnesia and time lapse", but the narrative is a very bare one with no medical examination, "certainly no sex", and thinks about "children' adventure story of kidnapping by submariners" with hints at child abusers, a story were "we can see the emergence of the UFO abduction story out of a melange of secular abduction themes."

Peter Rogerson indicates as source: "INTCAT files, Supplied by Alain Garnard from research by D. Guarden."

He adds that he later received "another translation" of the 23 October 1954 piece in Paris-Match from an article by Jerome Clark entitled 'Close Encounters of the Third Kind, 1901-1959' in Strange magazine (no. 10, 1992), where it is a matter of the the 8 years old kid "playing among some hills" rather than walking by the bank of a canal, when he was accosted by two tall, slender men wearing pliable helmets, who dragged him into an oddly shaped tank. After a while an opening appeared in the ceiling of the cabin, and a few seconds later he found himself on the ground.

[Ref. jm1:] JOEL MESNARD:

[Ref. jb1:] JEROME BEAU:

Jérome Beau notes that in Marseilles in France there was an "'abduction' by 2 beings." according to Quincy.

[Ref. pr2:] PETER ROGERSON:

Points to consider:

Jacques Vallée and others indicate as source "Quincy." Guy Quincy was an early compiler of UFO reports who wrote a collection of summaries of such on his typewriter; which is not available in the literature and exists in the form of a small number of copies in personal archives of few ufologists. It is however noted that Guy Quicny's catalog does not offer much information, hence the single line in later sources, and does not necessary provide sources.

For this case, the one and only original sources does seem to me to be the letter in Paris-Match, which makes this case nothing more than a reader's letter with no investigation whatsoever, written 33 years after the alleged events it tells about, in the full middle of the great flying saucer flap of 1954 in France; which filled the newspaper and prompted a number of invented stories. The credibility of the story thus amount to zero.

List of issues:

Evaluation:

Insufficient data, no investigation, old memories. Extraterrestrial visitors or kidnapping by the humans having left deformed memories, or pure and simple invention.

Sources references:

* = Source I checked.
? = Source I am told about but could not check yet. Help appreciated.

• [pm1] * Reader's letter in the Paris-Match magazine, Paris, France, October 23, 1954.
• [gq1] ? "Special Annotated Catalogue of Landings", compiled by Guy Quincy, typewritten document, unpublished, France, 1961.
• [dg1] ? Research by D. Guarden [Dominique Caudron?], Alain Gamard file.
• [jv2] * "Anatomy of a Phenomenon: UFO's in Space, A Scientific Appraisal", book by Jacques Vallee, Henry Regnery publisher, page 22, 1965.
• [jv2] * "Anatomy of a Phenomenon: UFO's in Space, A Scientific Appraisal", book by Jacques Vallee, Ballantine Books, page 25, 1974.
• [jv1] * Case 43 in "A Century of Landing 1868-1968", compiled by Jacques Vallée in his book "Passport to Magonia", Henri Regnery, 1969.
• [gh1] * "Ephémérides des Années d'Espoir de l'Ufologie", article by Gilbert Cornu and Henri Chaloupek, in the ufology magazine Lumières Dans la Nuit (LDLN), #255-256, page 20, September/October 1965.
• [jc1] ? "Close Encounters of the Third Kind, 1901-1959", article by Jerome Clark, in Strange, #10, 1992.
• [pr1] * "Fairyland's Hunters", article by Peter Rogerson in Magonia, #46, June 1993, at magonia.demon.co.uk/arc/90/revis01.html
• [jm1] * "The French Abduction File", article by Joël Mesnard, in the ufology magazine MUFON UFO Journal, Mutual UFO Network (MUFON), USA, #309, pp 4-5, January 1994.
• [jb1] * "1921, web page by Jérôme Beau, circa 2000, at www.rr0.org/1921.html
• [jc2] ? "From Mermaids to Little Gray Men" Jerome Clark", article by Jerome Clark, in the fortean magazine The Anomalist, #8, page 20, spring 2000.
• [pr2] * "Incat 1920 - 1939 - International Catalogue of Entity Reports", compiled by Peter Rogerson, U-K., circa 2012, at intcat.blogspot.fr/2012/08/intcat-1920-1939.html

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This page was last updated on August 12, 2013.