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The article below was published in the daily newspaper Paris-Presse, Paris, France, pages 1,5, le 9 octobre 1954.
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"I saw the saucer, said Mrs. Fourneret. It looked like a bell! It was shining in the meadow "au Natole." I was so afraid that I ran away with the little one." All Poncey-sur-Lignon believes in the saucer which, the other evening, landed in the meadow of the mayor, Mr. Anatole Cazet. The "bell-saucer" - or the cigar - has left its mark. And in front of these traces, inexplicable so far, the investigators wonder. In the early hours, the police smiled skeptically. But after making a number of observations, they lost their good confidence. It is the first time, in France, that the "saucers" - if they are them - leave traces.
(Read on page 5 the article by our special envoy Charles DAUZATS.) (Photos Dorka.)
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Unless they admit the complicity of an entire village, the police must recognize the strangeness of the phenomenon
(From our special envoy Charles DAUZATS.)
DIJON, October 8.
WHEN the "Natole", the mayor of Poncey-sur-Lignon, had, on Tuesday, around 7 p.m., called the gendarmerie of St-Seine-l'Abbaye on the phone to tell him about "his" saucer, the chef, on the other end of the line . hadn't seemed to take the story very seriously. He said, however, "We will go ..."
Later, he had indeed come. And the 140 inhabitants of Poncey, with the exception of Ms. Deschamps, who holds the coffee and the public telephone, and must, therefore, ensure the permanence of her cabin, everyone, seeing him arriving, had sighed of relief.
He didn't seem to believe it, in Poncey's saucer! We had brought him to the meadow of "Natole", next to the plum tree, where Mrs. Fourneret, the first, had seen in the night a mysterious machine which had left traces ... When he arrived in front of the rectangle of living earth - a hollow of 1 m. 50 by 0 m. 60 regularly weeded, as if scalped - when he had finally seen, within a radius of four meters, patches of grass 30 centimeters in diameter, which seemed to have been caught by a giant vacuum cleaner, then rejected, he had dropped, scratching the edge of the cap:
"There is still something out of the ordinary there."
And the 140 people of Poncey looked at each other with a look of victory:
- Huh! We knew very well... Shortly after the chief called Captain Millet, from Semur-en-Auxois:
- Captain, strange things happened in Poncey... A saucer...
A jovial laugh had greeted his declaration... But when the captain had also arrived in the meadow "au Natole", he had in his turn, called commander Viala in Dijon. And the commander in turn had laughed...
Today, Commander Viala is awaiting the reports of his investigators. These reports trace the story in detail. They are complemented by photos taken by the gendarmerie.
The case begins on Saturday evening. Madame Gainait, in her stable, milks the cows. When she takes out, in the middle of the night, a bucket of milk at the end of her arm, she sees in the sky "something round and red above the woods, in a tender green halo:
- I thought of the moon first, Ms. Gainait told us yesterday. I thought it was funny, though, this straight stick wrapped in light, so I called my husband...
And the husband came, then the daughter, then the son, then a neighbor. The "thing" was still shining there...
- It was like a hundred-liter barrel, says Gainait. A fireball on a rectangular veil with green and sometimes rainbow reflections. It moved noiselessly at the speed of a large plane... There is no denying it: it was chic...
On Sunday, in Poncey, one only talked about "the saucer at Gainait's". It even gave ideas to some... At the other end of the country, the son-in-law of Bouiller, a somewhat joking soldier, told all the women around the asbestos factory, who leavec alone at dusk, in the great silence of the valley:
You will see the Martians! They may come one day!..
This story of Martians, in a village at the bottom of his bowl, ended up impressing everyone. Mrs. Fourneret, in particular, whose husband, after working at the factory, regularly leaves to help farmers until nightfall. But she didn't want to let anything of her apprehensions appear.
Monday, one thought everything would be forgotten. Only here... Around eight o'clock in the evening, when Fourneret and the potato harvesters were having dinner with the mayor, Mr. Anatole Cazet, Bouiller's son-in-law had arrived, gasping, on his bike: "Fourneret. Come quickly, Yvette, your wife, is afraid..."
- You told her nonsense again!
No! She saw "something luminous" under the plum tree... I wanted to come into your house with my little stepfather, saying: "We are the Martians!..." And, in your house, no one was there! The Yvette, terrorized by a machine - a real machine, you know - is at a the neighbor's house: she is crying... And I'm not quiet either!
- It's true, said Mrs. Fourneret: when I closed the shutters, I suddenly saw something shine in the meadow "au Natole": it was like my cooker; it was a bit like a bell... I took my boy and went away leaving everything open!
Ten minutes later, at the Bouillers' home, a hundred yards away, the son, a strong, red-haired 18-year-old boy, also returned, capsized:
- Up there: a cigar... like an airplane fuselage... green, with yellowish reflections... Come see!..
He was trembling... All of this, of course, might have been just hallucinations, nonsense from women and kids. During the night, the Poncey farmers nonetheless took their rifles, to find out...
- Where did you see it, Yvette, your saucer?
[Photo caption:] Here are the traces left by the saucer-bell: two square meters of meadow where the grass seems to have been uprooted by a suction pump. The clods of earth (below) have been cut with perfect regularity.
She was showing the plum tree over there. And, under the plum tree, we were going to find the famous traces which, today, intrigue the investigators: a regular rectangle, hollowed out in the meadow as by a kind of formidable aspiration, which would have been "scalped" of whole patches of grass, then rejected within a radius of four meters.
No tillage implement could have done this scraping job. Boars or other beasts would not have scalped the ground as regularly.
[Photo caption:] A BELL-SAUCER says Ms. Fourneret
[Photo caption:] "FLYING CIGAR" says Mr. Bouiller
[Photo caption:] A LUMINOUS BARREL assures Ms. Gainait
Is it a hoax? Several merry locals have been interrogated. They were far from the landing point, it is proven.
- Finally, specifies Mr. Fourneret, a detail struck me: we arrived on the ground after the departure of the craft. On the ground there were white worms twisting everywhere. The weather was cold: the white worms would not have withstood the temperature for long. The rectangle had therefore just been made, all at once, before our arrival, as by a giant suction cup...
Is it a natural phenomenon, a kind of wisp bursting in the first mists of autumn?
- The land does not lend itself to it, replies Mr. Fourneret. And besides a wisp leaves no trace...
It makes sense. So? In front of the rectangle, as in front of the basket of clods of grass torn off by the mysterious Poncey craft and collected as exhibits, everyone, today, loses his French, including a doctor from Dijon who came last night, to take, for analysis, some soil from the field "au Natole" and a young aeronautical engineer, from whom an examination has been ordered.
One saw, yesterday again, everywhere in France, squadrons of saucers, cigars, luminous globes and flying discs: in Corbigny (Nièvre), in Montlevicq and Saint-Plautavie [sic], near Châteauroux, in Orthez, in Saint-Bihy (Côtes-du-Nord), in Chalette and Dordives (Seine-et-Marne). In Puymoyen (Charente) one discovered, at the place where a saucer had landed, twelve small heaps of ash in the middle of a circle of 'a meter fifty in diameter and, among the ashes, sticks. The gendarmes of Angoulême believe that these sticks are strips of tubular powder used in artillery.
