The article below was published in the daily newspaper L'Est Républicain, France, page 4, le 19 juillet 1967.
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As we report elsewhere, "unidentified objects" (this is the term used in all the armies of the world) were detected in the sky of France, in the early hours of the day yesterday. In Franche-Comté and Lorraine, the phenomenon has been observed by many witnesses, according to the many information that has reached us, either by our correspondents or directly by several of our readers.
Of all these testimonies, often concordant, it must be said, we will particularly retain those of two astronomers from Besançon. Busy following the progress of the artificial satellites "Echos 1", "Echo 2" and "Pageos", they had their attention drawn, around 1:15 a.m., by a "circular and incandescent object which appeared to the west and which, after having remained apparently motionless for thirty seconds above the horizon, sped at a very high speed in the direction of the south-east where it disappeared."
Mr. Arbey, director of the Besançon observatory, also declared: "It is a fireball of an unusual size whose entry into the atmosphere caused combustion." A satellite or a carrier rocket, no doubt...
BESANCON. -- It is in Arc-sous-Cicon, a small village about twenty kilometers away from Pontarlier, that the psychosis of flying saucers, born on a beautiful summer night, reaches its peak.
A fifteen-year-old girl, Joëlle Ravier, daughter of the village carpenter, claims to have met four mysterious little beings, endowed with a head as big as a potato, two arms and a prominent abdomen, approximately 1 m 10 in size, which would have fled at her approach.
Between 5 p.m. and 6 p.m., Monday evening, Joëlle had gone for a walk with three local young children.
"Suddenly, she says, one of the children who was a little ahead came back scared and in tears". Joëlle rushed over and saw at the edge of the wood, at a place called "Les Clavières", four little beings, all black (sic), the size of a three-year-old child...
"As soon as they saw me, they fled along the ground at incredible speed towards the woods where they disappeared... And as they fled, they communicated in a musical language", specifies Joëlle still very moved.
What is true is that the parents of the young girl and the other children saw them return on Monday evening (so before the appearance of fireballs in the skies of France and Franche-Comté), in a state of indescribable excitement and fright.
Finally, on Monday evening, Joëlle's father and brother searched the Clavières wood... The mysterious little creatures had disappeared. Needless to say that in Arc-sous-Cicon one lives at the hour of the Martians.
