The article below was published in the daily newspaper Paris-Presse, Paris, France, pages 1 and 7, on October 8, 1954.
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[Photo caption:] These three saucers earned Garret Cashman (above) slight problems with the American justice system. He was launching sounding balloons which he tied together to a basket. They were mistaken for "real" saucers. Garret will have to answer for his antics. And about the way he got the balloons.
We laughed a lot about the flying pots and barrels, more or less "smoky" cigars that crisscrossed the sky, more or less hairy Martians who showed themselves to peasants of the Corrèze and showed to Brittany baker assistants a moving affection which is difficult to explain.
However, a simple "pocket cigar" of one meter in diameter which landed in Bour-
[Photo caption:] "What a pity," he said, "my saucers were so beautiful!" By his own admission, Mr. D'Oliveira, "Martian" of Portuguese origin, launched more than a thousand into the northern sky. They were paper hot air balloons with a flaming tow inside. The illusion was perfect. But one of the landing saucers almost set fire to a haystack. Which means that the manufacturer will be sued.
gogne and which did not leave the least Martian, shakes a little the skepticism of the official investigators. While they are not convinced, they are confused. Nothing more. Photographs were taken. It remains to examine them. Also disturbing the testimony of this engineer who claims to have seen a flying disc. He was an aviator and declared himself sure not to confuse a sounding balloon with the "flying wing" he observed...
The "saucers" file remains open.
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(Read our information, on p. 7.)
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IF the inhabitants of Poncey-sur-l'Ignon, in Burgundy, did not fool themselves, their testimony, supported by disturbing observations of the air police and the gendarmerie of Semur-en-Auxois , today brings to the supporters of the flying saucers an argument less questionable than conversations with more or less hairy Martians.
This time it is not a saucer, but a "pocket cigar". It was about a meter in diameter.
It was a young woman, Mrs. Fourneret, who first saw it on Monday at 8:30 p.m., when closing her shutters. The craft was posed in a meadow less than twenty-five meters from her house. Distraught, she took her baby and went to take refuge at a neighbor's.
The news spread. Ten minutes later, all the villagers, armed with rifles, went on a "cigar hunt". The craft was still there. When the hunters arrived in the meadow, the cigar had disappeared without any noise. An eighteen-year-old young man, François Bouillet, saw it take off.
- It went from orange to green, he said...
The police found traces in the meadow. Over two square meters, the clods of lawn had been torn off and thrown several meters apart. These traces were photographed.
Investigators make no secret of the fact that they are surprised. There can be no question of a helicopter: the craft was posed at two meters of a plum tree; while flying, it would have animated the branches with the blades of the rotor. On the other hand, an airplane would not have enough space to land.
The testimony reproduced by our colleague from Coulommiers, "Le Pays Briard", is also disturbing. This is a letter from one of its readers, Mr. Farnier, former commissioner of the Aéro Club de France, aviator, member of the Society of Civil Engineers.
Mr. Farnier declares that he saw above his estate "Les Cailles", in Jouy-sur-Morin, a large disc of eight to ten meters in diameter, which was spinning on the spot, letting out red purple gleams.
"It was, says Mr. Farnier, about 400 meters high and it hovered over twenty minutes above me. It then disappeared in the direction of Coulommiers."
Mr. Farnier adds: "I was not the victim of a hallucination and this craft was not a sounding balloon, but exactly a thick, circular wing, hovering on the spot and then moving at very high speed by taking gradually height."
"My son-in-law, a polytechnician," concludes Mr. Farnier, "saw, he said, in the Grenoble region, an identical machine."
What finally to think of the "flying tureen" that arose - probably at dinner time - on the property of Mr. Garreau. farmer in Chaleix (Dordogne)?
Two men got out of it and shook hands with Mr. Garreau, spoke to him in an unknown language and caressed his dog before climbing back into their craft which flew silently away at a dizzying pace. At the place indicated by Mr. Garreau, the grass had been trampled.
We are starting to be a bit jaded about the apparitions of more or less quirky Martians, giant or lost, helmeted or wrapped in cellophane. But these were, according to the witness, perfectly normal men, dressed in khaki overalls...
Hallucinations, illusions, optical phenomena or reality, flying saucers, luminous cigars and other pots continue to "patrol" everywhere: in the Loire, the Eure-et-Loir, the Isère, the Côtes-du-Nord, the Calvados.
The Spanish border was yesterday particularly watched by mysterious craft. A Béhobie customs officer distinguished one from which a long green trail escaped. An officer from the Biarritz police force had observed one two hours earlier (4 a.m.); it was a round craft with two nozzles from which a yellow glow and a pink glow escaped; finally, at 9:30 a.m., a painter from Biarritz, Mr. Dimitri Ziko and two of his friends saw an oval-shaped object that left a trail of brown smoke...
In Hong-Kong thousands of Chinese, massed on the roofs, spied on a flying saucer which flew over the city. It was just a weather balloon.
