This article was published in the daily newspaper La Presse, Canada, August 7, 1968.
by Jacques Hébert
Around 9 o'clock, in the evening of Sunday, July 28, five children claim that they saw a flying saucer landing in an oats field located close to the house where they were playing. After half an hour, all was normal again in the sixth rank of Saint-Stanislas-of-Kostka, at some 45 miles in the south-west of Montreal. They also "saw" a "being" from space. Is all that the result of five skilful and well orchestrated imaginations? It does not seem so.
They are five, all accustomed to be together, at working in the fields with their parents or wander close to the small river running near to their respective houses. They are Denis Leger, 12 years old, a merry boy with a sharp glance and not nervous at all. His brother Regent, is 15 years old and speaks quickly and jumps at the least noise. The three others belong to the family of Mr. and Mrs. Gaetan Sauvé: Nicole, aged 14, always smiling, calm and intelligent; Paul, aged 20, a little bit of a man fearing not to be believed but very interested in convincing you.Finally, Joanne, aged 9 years, not very loquacious but sure of herself.
Denis Leger and his friend "Ti-Paul" ["lil' Paul"] (Sauvé) are having fun peacefully on the second floor of the Sauvé house. Denis throws a glance with the window where oats and corn fields are growing. It is 9 p.m., the weather is fine, it does not rain and darkness is almost complete. Denis then sees a kind of circle girdled of a shining red halation.
He quickly calls his friend and the three other children! A few seconds later, a second object, similar to the first, makes its appearance. They move slowly, continuously, without sudden starts. While one stops, the other goes down vertically. You would say a crown slipping quietly towards the ground, without noise. Ten amazed eyes observe, gasping, this "mysterious thing" which touches the ground of an oats field, within 1000 feet approximately of their point of observation. At once, Denis exclaims: "It is a flying saucer", which the others also think. "I know it, I am sure, he says. I saw one last year at about at the same date but during the afternoon. It had followed me during five minutes approximately at 20 feet from the ground. I was within 500 feet, on the bicycle. I saw the interior, it was easy because the top of the saucer was made of glass, approximately three or four inches the thick one. There were three people, one sat at an end and two others at the other end. They seemed small and black. It resembled a round and shiny saucer. There was nothing below and above and it made no noise. I must acknowledge that I was really afraid and that I have I was glad I did not see it anymore when I entered wood to return home." (Let us specify here that indeed, trees cover the road at a certain place). Once his account finished, Denis turns over to the window followed by the others. The luminous object is still there; approximately ten minutes had gone by.
Having recovered from their surprise, the five children decide to go to look by the window of the first stage, then in the court, for better seeing the famous object. Denis the, bravest of the group, finds the first on the gallery, flashlight in hand. His friends are now close to him. He first of all aims his bean of light right in front of him, on a wood fence, at 50 feet at most from the place where he is. General fright, then panic, and re-entry at full speed inside the house.
The flashlight had lit a head exceeding the fence, a bald head, black or brown, that you would believe to be embedded between the two shoulders, without neck. The eyes were round, of normal size but wrinkled. The ears did not show anything particular except that they are surrounded by crisp black hair. The mouth is not abnormally broad and the nose is flat. The chin is normal. On the whole, the head appears a little larger than a human head. The being might measure about 4 feet but his shoulders are broader than the normal. The legs and the feet are hidden by the darkness.
The children are afraid, mainly because of its skin " wrinkled, scabious, with bumps." As soon as that it felt observed and lit, the being puts his right hand at the level of its face. It is a hand with 5 fingers, "very broad, black, embossed, scabious like the skin of a toad". It opened and closed again as that of a baby who wants to greet. It remains in this position while the creature "would move back quietly towards the barn by taking very small steps." Then, it disappears.
Denis goes up again to the second floor from where he still observes the luminous saucer. Paul is at his sides. Nicole is on the telephone and calls her absent parents. Joanne locked herself up in the bathroom; she is shaking all over. Regent, the oldest, is at the window when he sees in his turn right in front of him, the "same ugly and black figure and the scabious hand which knocks at the pane " It hears even a growl similar to the mooing of a cow. Paralyzed with terror, he cannot move nor to speak. He is white as a sheet. The creature does not insist, moves back and disappears again.
The children go up on the second floor. A few minutes after "the knocks on the pane", the saucer, still of a red luminosity rises in the airs "vertically and slowly until it disappears in the clouds or the sky." The other object which accompanied the first when it arrived, must have left earlier because it is not seen anymore. No particular noise, no explosion of light. Mr. and Mrs. Sauvé accept "the story of the saucer" but remain skeptics as for the creature. The last summer, Mr. Sauvé, a very calm man, had himself seen a "saucer" within 500 feet of his house. That did not impress him much. The time to go inside to alert his wife and the object had already disappeared. When returning, Mrs. Sauvé found her children in "a state of extreme nervousness and terribly frightened." The parents of Denis and Régent thought the same. Let us hear Mr. Henri Leger: "I know my son Denis well. He is not a "shy" kid who is easily impressed. To walk in the wood and the fields at night does not stress him at all. But the evening after it happened (Sunday, July, 29) he reminded me of the time when he had said to have seen a flying saucer at 500 feet (last year). He was frightened, very nervous and he is not used to show such a behavior." The general opinion is that something really extraordinary must have occurred to terrorize their children so much.
Surely not a pure fabrication. Is it possible that five children from 9 to 15 years perfectly resist three interrogations separated by one day each, and each one of a duration of approximately 1 hour and 30 minutes without never varying in their version of the facts unless they simply tell the truth? It also must be noted that they do not brag about having seen a saucer; they do not regard that as some sort of fame and they are not more talkative than what is needed.
They answer the questions that are asked to them, calmly, without exaggerating. Questioned whether they often saw space adventures on the television or if they were amateurs of comic books telling fantastic stories, the young people answered in the negative. They are frank; when one of them was asked whether he was always the first in the classroom, he gave this answer to us: "No, I am always the last." The traps, the annoying questions, the details to be repeated, nothing makes them change their testimony.
At the place where the five children claim to have seen the saucer land gently (a huge oats field) it is easy to note that a circular surface of 15 feet in diameter was crushed and that the oats were flattened in a circular manner like from some whirlwind. From this place, a trace of 4 inches broad, long of 60 feet, which stops brutally, can also be noticed.
The author of the book "I saw flying saucers", Mr. Henri Bordeleau, from Montreal, who has been interested in the problem of the flying saucers for 20 years, went in person on the location and questioned the children after having lengthily studied the trace left by the apparatus. In his opinion, the case observed with Saint-Stanislas-de-Kostka, in the county of Beauharnois, is the "most beautiful, and the most explicit that has clearly been recorded for 20 years". "Never," he added, "was it possible to gather so many details. It is certain that these children do not lie. All that they said and described corresponds perfectly so that we know already, to what was already observed elsewhere."
It is at this distance that the children saw the strange being. It was placed behind the fence where the boy bearing a hat is located on the above photograph. The photograph below shows the place where the saucer is said to have landed.
In the usual order, Leger Regent, Denis Leger, Paul Sauvé, Nicole Sauvé. Joanne does not appear on the photograph.
See the case file here.
