The article below was published in the daily newspaper Nord-Eclair, Roubaix, Nord, France, page 10, on September 12, 1954.
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WILL THE WAR OF THE WORLDS, a film projected on many screens of the region, generate an epidemic of flying saucers likely to disturb the sleep of the inhabitants of our peaceful countryside? We may fear it.
A few days ago, it was near Amiens, that two peaceful strollers perceived, while walking, a mysterious machine which flew away with the backfires and the usual illuminations, without leaving any valid traces for the attentive eyes of the gendarmes.
On the night of Friday to Saturday, the affair happened, this time, in Quarouble, a small locality in the Valenciennes area, close to the Belgian border.
The Onnaing police station and the nearby gendarmerie brigade were alerted in the middle of the night by Mr. Marius Dewilde, 34, living in a small house hidden in the countryside, near the railway crossing 79. Mr. Dewilde, still under the influence of emotion, began to tell the most extraordinary adventure that he lived.
"It was around 10:30 p.m., he said. I was reading by my fire while my wife had gone to the bedroom. Suddenly I hear my dog ??howling to death. I was thinking of some prowler trying to enter my backyard. I opened the door and went out, a flashlight in my hand.
I immediately saw a dark mass five or six meters from the house. I thought a farmer had uncoupled his cart on the edge of the neighboring field.
It was then that from a path appeared two low and stocky shapes grazed me. The beam of my lamp lit one of them: I was able to discern an enormous head protected by a kind of glass or plastic helmet. The size of the strange being did not exceed one meter. But hardly had I recovered from my surprise when an opening was made in the craft, the mysterious travelers rushed inside and the "Saucer" rose vertically, gaining an altitude of ten meters, then swung west, it disappeared at a prodigious speed, like a ball of fire.
From the claims of Mr. Dewilde, who passes for a serious man, little inclined to hallucinations, it appears that the flying machine could measure six meters in diameter by three meters in height approximately. It was round or conical in shape.
The scene which lasted only a few moments did not allow the author of the story to report other details.
Anyway, the Air Police went to Quarouble on Saturday afternoon. Despite the careful research that was carried out in the area around the landing, there was no evidence to support Mr. Dewilde's claims.
Let us add that the mysterious travelers had chosen for their place of visit, a particularly quiet site, very suitable for resting them from their extraterrestrial journeys.
And we calmly wait for the next ball, the next spindle, where the next cigar, even if we don't keep a level crossing...
