UFOs in the daily Press:

"From a bright and motionless cigar, five flying saucers detached themselves..."

...tells us a young man from Vernon still under the shock of this astonishing vision

(From our special correspondent)

Vernon, August 26. -- The sky over Vernon is full of wonders, and the appearance, during the night from Sunday to last Monday, above the charming town in the Eure, of cigars and flying saucers would, only a year later, amount to a reappearance! This at least emerges from the statements we collected on the spot.

As for what happened at the very beginning of this week, it must be said that there is now only a single witness: a 25-year-old young man, Mr. Bernard M..., who asked us not to reveal his identity. A chemical engineer who was said to have observed the mysterious craft was peacefully asleep at the time of their visit. On the other hand, the following day, two Vernon police officers also claimed to have seen an elongated luminous shape in the sky.

However, this cannot compare with the very complete spectacle that Mr. B. M... is said to have witnessed.

- Last Monday, he explained to us, I had just parked my car in the garage (which is located near the Seine embankment) when, looking up, I was dazzled by a sort of large, bright, motionless cigar... After a few seconds, a saucer detached itself from the cigar, took up a vertical position, and rushed in my direction. It was surrounded by an incandescent halo. After stopping and shifting to a horizontal position, it suddenly sped away at a prodigious speed and disappeared into the night. Hardly had it vanished when another appeared under the same conditions, followed by a third, a fourth, and a fifth. It was this last one that made the strongest impression on me. It descended noticeably lower than the others and paused for a moment above the new bridge, as if searching for a target. At the moment when it was at its lowest altitude, I could clearly make out that it was red in the center and black at the edges, which contrasted with the very intense halo. There was not the slightest sound.

In turn, it disappeared at a fantastic speed toward the north, from where it had come. The cigar, for its part, had long since vanished. I have no idea of the dimensions these objects might have had or the altitude at which they were moving. The whole event lasted about three-quarters of an hour.

- Why, we asked Mr. B.M., did you not call anyone? Despite the late hour, many people would have been grateful for the chance to witness such a spectacle!

Our interlocutor replied that he had been too stunned by what he had witnessed to think of it.

Mr. Buc is the police officer with whom we also spoke, and who confirmed to us that he had seen about ten flying saucers on April 31, 1953, at 5 p.m., in broad daylight, while he was in his garden (above Vizy, a suburb of Vernon). His young wife and their son Marcel, now six years old, observed them as well. The incident was reported at the time by Le Démocrate, a local weekly, and was the subject of a report included in a work devoted to this mysterious phenomenon.

For our part, we will refrain from drawing any conclusions. But so much is said about meteors, saucers, and flying cigars that those who have never had the chance to see one end up developing quite a remarkable inferiority complex...

André Larcher.