UFOs in the daily Press:

Three years later, a resident of the Gers claims:

"My car was stopped by an alien near Nogaro"

Now living in Toulouse, a mang aged approximately 25, saw three years ago the after-effects of what he would like to regard as a bad dream.

By fear of the ridicule, he kept silent during all this time, but now he agrees to speak, and here is what he told us:

"It was in March 1974. I was, at the time, the manager of a restaurant in Fleurance-du-Gers. After having closed the place, I had gone to Laujuzan, close to Nogaro, by car, to see my fiancee, who is now my wife.

"On the return trip, around three o'clock in the morning, whereas I drove at 90 km/h, my car stopped all alone, without I even used the brakes, at the exit of a curve.

"I was taken with tremors, and there, I saw a being, which was not a man, neither a known animal: it stood upright, measured 90 centimetres, was biped - its "feet" were very large - and it had the arms so long that I could not distinguish if it had hands.

"At the time when my car stopped, it was turning its back at me. But immediately after, it moved towards the ditch in which it descended, only the higher half of its body remaining visible.

"It was entirely green, had pointed ears on the top of the cranium, and very black eyes. When it finally looked at me, I felt like a wave, followed of two others, very close, inside my head. I then was really afraid, and I looked elsewhere.

"A little later, my engine restarted. I made a half-turn, and I drove back to Nogaro. But, at that hour, there was of course nobody in the streets. I thus took again the road to Fleurance, about 80 kilometers from there, where I arrived without having noticed anything strange.

"I did not see a U.f.o., nor any suspicious gleam. But I am convinced that what I saw was an extraterrestrial being.

Obviously, I wondered whether I had been the victim of an hallucination, and the next day I went to see a doctor in Tarbes. He made me undergo a neuro-ophthalmologic examination and an electroencephalogram. This reveals that I am normal."

As a matter of fact, we saw the photocopies of the results of these examinations and the conclusion of the doctor. "The expression of nervosity of the patient can be caused by the experience he went through, but his reasoning is perfectly lucid, and his behavior is normal."

What to conclude from this testimony? Obviously, the "little green men", since the time they are discussed, are a bit of a cliché.

But on the other hand, if such beings exist, who is to say that they should be tall and purple?

F.Q.