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The 1954 French flap:

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September 1954 or 1956, 1954, Cerdon, Loiret:

Reference for this case: Sep-54-56-Cerdon.
Please cite this reference in any correspondence with me regarding this case.

Summary:

This case appeared as a... comic strip. in the weekly TV guide Télé-Poche in 1982. The magazine indicated that the comic strip, being part of a series devoted to UFO sightings, was directed by journalist and ufologist Jean-Claude Bourret.

The comic strip, visible below in this file, told in captions, dialogues and sketches, a case dated in one place "September 1954", in another place "September 1956", that the sighting location is in the Loiret department, between Cerdon and Argent-sur-Sauldre.

The witnesses are given as "Miss C.", a student, and one of her friends, "Mr. P.", who drove her home to her parents.

At midnight, they were driving in a Citroën car on the road that goes from Argent-sur-Sauldre to Cerdon, in the Loiret, under the new moon.

When the car was exactly at the level of the place called "La Ferme de Plaisance", the young woman asked her friend to turn left after the big chestnut tree. When this big tree came into view, the driver noticed that the engine misfired, but it wasn't for lack of gas because the tank was still half full.

The driver would then have looked at the engine, finding that everything was normal. But then he felt "like a presence, a kind of heaviness, all around us" and decided to leave quickly.

The young girl then gets out of the car, and joins her friend who is hiding in the nearest field, on the road side. At this precise moment, "at the vertical of the vehicle, appears a glow of a strange shape." We are then told that the couple saw, 200 meters above the immobilized car, an enormous silent mass, "as big as a four or five-storey house, from which descends a large ray of light..."

We are told that the ray was moving, as if "they are searching the ground, looking for us", that the young woman is afraid, her friend tells her to lower her head and stay still; and that for an hour and a half they did not move.

We are told that when they left, "all danger averted", the young woman felt a sharp tingling sensation in her hands, unpleasant but not painful.

Finally, we are told that the girl's parents did not believe a word of her story, until they heard "the spontaneous testimony of a milkman who, driving his truck, had been hassled and blocked on the road for 25 minutes..."

Reports:

[Ref. tvp1:] MAGAZINE TV "TELE POCHE":

Explanations:

Starting in issue #780 of January 1981, Télé-Poche, a weekly TV guide, published what they presented as "the real UFO file told in pictures by Jean-Claude Bourret."

Journalist and host of French television in the 1970s, presenter of television news on TF1, FR3 or La Cinq, and radio stations, Jean-Claude Bourret was also a prolific writer with no less than 27 books, mainly on UFOs, which interested him from 1974 on, but also the "Bermuda triangle", space, the "beast of Gévaudan", diet, etc.

In 1997, in his book "Ovnis: 1999, le contact?" he assured that extraterrestrials will openly contact humanity in 1999.

In 2020, he said in an interview:

"One day, I received an extraterrestrial being in the TF1 8 p.m. news show. You are the first to whom I tell it. It was extraordinary, because he had a completely human appearance. He was like you and me, and I felt physically that it took my brain intellectually! It had entered my brain, it was maddening. But at the time, I was already initiated into the great mysteries of extraterrestrial life , so I wasn't that surprised."

(https://www.kernews.com/jean-claude-bourret-un-jour-jai-recu-un-extraterrestre-dans-le-journal-de-20-heures-de-tf1/2033/ )

The case:

The date is a problem, since one page gives the year as 1954, and another gives it as 1956.

The place of observation is located in the Loiret, Argent-sur-Sauldre is in the Cher, Cerdon is indeed in the Loiret, 10 km in straight line from Argent-sur-Sauldre.

The road is necessarily the current Route Départementale 948, known as the "route d'Argent". The limit between the two departments is in the middle of the route between Argent-sur-Sauldre and Cerdon. The report does not give us the direction of the trip, but it would be in the Loiret part. The report tells us that one would "easily find" the place, which would be named "La Ferme de Plaisance". There would therefore be such a farm not far away, and a large chestnut tree after which a turn to the left was taken.

In a list of locations of Cerdon, there is a place called "Plaisance", and a map showing it:

The place is just before entering Cerdon. There is a possibility of turning left shortly after and what may have been a farm nearby.

Having tried to find inconsistencies in the localization, which would betray an invention, I did not find any - this does not prove the reality of the facts reported, but it had to be checked.

We are told that the young woman's parents did not want to believe her, until they heard "the spontaneous testimony of a milkman who, at the wheel of his truck, had been annoyed and blocked on the road for 25 minutes..." This could correspond, for example, to the case of Saint-Jean-d'Assé on October 7, 1954, widely reported in the press at the time. If this is correct, the case is indeed of 1954, not 1956.

As for an explanation of this case, the choice seems quite simple: either it was an extraterrestrial craft, or the whole story is made up.

Keywords:

(These keywords are only to help queries and are not implying anything.)

Cerdon, Argent-sur-Sauldre, Loiret, Argent-sur-Sauldre, Loiret, anonymous, friends, student, midnight, road, car, Citröen, moon, Ferme de Plaisance, engine, breakdown, misfires, presence, heaviness, hovering, fear, field, glow, mass, silent, big, ray, bright, duration, tingling, hands, unpleasant

Sources:

[----] indicates sources that are not yet available to me.

• [tvp1] Comic in the weekly TV guide Télé-Poche, France, 1982.

Document history:

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This page was last updated on May 17, 2022.