The article below was published in the daily newspaper Le Courrier de Saône-et-Loire, France, pages 1 and 8, on October 13, 1954.
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PARIS. -- he passage of mysterious craft continues to puzzle the French.
Reports are coming in from all over, some fanciful, but others undeniably serious.
Mr. J.-P. Mitto, a technical agent, claimed to have seen, on Saturday evening around 8:30 p.m., at a place called La Caïffe, on National Route 631, a flying saucer and its occupants.
Mr. Mitto made the following statement:
"Coming from Toulouse, I was returning to my parents' home in Briatexte (Tarn), with my two cousins. I was driving at a fairly high speed. After the curve at La Caïffe, we saw two small figures - about the size of an 11- or 12-year-old child - crossing the road, four or five meters in front of the car, and they jumped into the field.
"I braked and stopped about twenty meters farther on. By the time we got out, we saw a large domed disk, about six meters in diameter, take off vertically. The craft, red-orange in color, seemed to be drawn upward and vanished into the sky like a Bengal fire..."
NANCY. -- Around 1:30 a.m. yesterday, while all was asleep in Doncourt-Village (Meurthe-et-Moselle), an unusual whistling sound woke the residents of a farm on the outskirts of the town. Alarmed, the farmers looked out the window and saw a flat object, "three times larger than a setting sun," as they described it, resting on the edge of a nearby forest. Soon, the object rose vertically at high speed and disappeared. At the site indicated by the farmers, the gendarmes found that the stones had been scorched and turned brick red in a circle about 1.5 meters wide. The soil, soaked by rain everywhere else, had turned to ash inside this circle to a depth of three centimeters.
- A glowing barrel, about two meters tall, was seen in a pasture by two young girls in Heimersdorf (Haut-Rhin). The craft lifted off and disappeared quickly.
Continued on page 8.
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(Continued from the front page)
An orange disk emitting bright lights was observed in Champagne-sur-Seine (Seine-et-Marne) by Mr. T..., a seasonal worker in Machault, who took photographs.
A butcher from Seine-Port saw a similar object in Savigny-le-Temple, as did Mr. Lefranc, a bank employee in Paris, in Meaux.
YAOUNDE. (Cameroon) - A large illuminated disk was observed on Sunday in Yaoundé by a group of credible individuals: Colonel Canuvin, director of hygiene and prophylaxis services in Cameroon; Dr. Menn, chief physician at the hospital; Mr. Dumont, head of security services; Mr. Poileux, advisor to the Territorial Assembly; and Mr. Moreau, administrator and deputy mayor of Yaoundé. It was the house dog, barking, that drew the occupants outside. Hanging beneath the disk was a kind of oscillating cylinder. After a few seconds, the craft disappeared rapidly toward the East.
The scientific community is following this news with interest.
The automotive engineer, Mr. Grégoire, shared his opinion with one of our Parisian colleagues:
"The only explanation that seems logical to me to account for certain phenomena observed by reliable witnesses, radar, and photographs, is that they are of planetary origin.
"The general mistake made by nearly everyone studying flying saucers is trying to equate planetary life with earthly life.
"In the current state of our knowledge, nothing can be affirmed. Although I am a believer, I consider it rather arrogant for a prophet to say that God made man in His image. And it is childish imagination to insist that beings living on other worlds must in some way resemble us. On the contrary, it is far more likely that more advanced thinking beings have completely different appearances.
"Everything suggests that many physical laws on other planets may differ from ours.
"You see, we mustn't be too proud. We know very little, and scientific progress will teach us more every day - and show us that anything is possible."
