The article below was published in the daily newspaper L'Indépendant du Pas-de-Calais, Pas-de-Calais, France, page 3, on October 27, 1954.
A worker from Saint-Rémy (Vosges), Mr. L. Ujvari, 40 years old, has just told the gendarmes of Raon-l'Etape that he had been arrested on the road by a tall, medium-sized stranger, dressed in a gray jacket, adorned with shiny badges on the shoulders.
The man spoke an unknown language. Mr. Ujvari, a Czech national, tried to speak Russian. His interlocutor understood this perfectly. "Where am I, he asked, in Italy or Spain?" He then inquired about the distance between him and the German border, and the time. The worker having indicated to him that it was approximately 3:30 a.m., the man took out of his jacket a watch, which marked 4 o'clock in the morning.
The craft was 1.50 m high and 2.50 m. wide. It was shaped like two plates overturned against each other, from which a sort of periscope emerged.
Mr. Ujvari said the stranger was wearing a helmet similar to that of a motorcyclist. He was holding a revolver in his hand.
His last word to Mr. Ujvari was "farewell" in Russian.
A false alarm had worried many people who believed... in an invasion of "Martians".
It was around 10 p.m. when a few strollers on avenue Anatole-France saw bright spots in the sky.
A person, seized with fright, gave the alarm to the police station, while firefighters on duty in a cinema, rushed to the cries uttered in the street by the witnesses of the strange appearances.
The saucers went faster and faster and led a hellish round, to the great excitement of the patients who expected their landing. A firefighter prevented motorists from driving with their headlights on, so as not to serve as a landmark for the "Martians".
Ten minutes later, one realized that they were light reflections on glass insulators placed at the top of a pylon of a high-voltage power line.