The article below was published in the daily newspaper Paris-Presse, Paris, France, page 7, on October 14, 1954.
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People down to earth enough to doubt the phenomena duly observed every day by thousands of French people are beginning to wonder whether these stories of flying cigars are not a re-edition of the Garap affair and if it were not an ingenious advertisement mounted by the National Tobacco Board...
A Martian seen smoking!
A fairground merchant from Clamecy who went to the Corbigny fair with a friend said that on the road, at 5 a.m., his car engine stopped suddenly, while the headlights went out.
- I felt, he said, like an electric shock and I saw then about fifty meters away, in a meadow, a machine of cylindrical shape, of a fairly large diameter, of a greyish color, around which three small beings moved. It seemed to me that one of them was smoking, because I could clearly make out a small red glow in the emerging day. My comrade and I were immobilized, unable to make a movement. Then we saw the machine rise and take height. Only then could we restart the car and continue our journey.
A wheelwright from La Carie, near Clamecy, said that he had seen the mysterious machine. But he did not see the Martians smoke. The three witnesses were heard by the gendarmerie.
A resident of Montbazès (Aveyron) also received an electric shock when approaching a "four to five meters in diameter round craft which radiated intense brightness" in the middle of a meadow. Five workers who worked in the workshop of a mechanic saw like him the craft then rise silently and at full speed.
Finally, in Tehran, Etlaat, the evening newspaper, publishes without comment the story of a resident of the city who complains of having been the victim of an attempted abduction aboard a saucer.
The craft was stopped in the middle of the street in a populous district of Tehran. Approaching it, the Iranian felt attracted by a magnetic force and uttered cries of terror which stirred the neighbors. Whereupon the saucer took off.
- The pilot, the witness said, was small, dressed in black and had the head of an elephant!...
Professor Oberth, a German rocket scientist who gave a new lecture on saucers yesterday in Oldenburg, believes that the Martians - or, to speak like him, the Uranians - "are able to read the minds of men through astro-psychology."
A maths teacher from Lisieux, a doctor and a Beaujolais coffee-maker, a Lyon rugby player, a Limousin transporter yesterday saw saucers, fireballs and luminous mushrooms. Near Louviers, a craftsman and his apprentice saw yesterday around 3 a.m., on the railroad tracks, a bell 3 meters high which launched green sparks and jumped at their approach 10 meters high. The two men also jumped in surprise, but much lower.
Finally near Langres, one not only saw but touched a flying cigar, which was also taken to the gendarmerie. It was made of silver cardboard, pierced with portholes, lit inside by an electric flashlight and suspended from eighteen children's balloons.
