The article below was published in the daily newspaper Le Figaro, Paris, France, page 4, on October 9, 1954.
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Saucers and flying cigars continue to make the news.
Thus, several residents of Corbigny (Nièvre) reported having seen the other night in the sky a luminous cigar-shaped object, with two discs at its lower part. The craft was moving at high speed...
An office worker claimed to have observed a large luminous disk, yellow-orange in color, emitting a dazzling glow from the rear.
Luminous globes were also seen in the sky by merchants of Saint-Bihy, near Quintin (Côtes-du-Nord). Customers at a local tavern went outside to observe the same phenomenon.
Near Montargis, an employee of a company in Chalette reported seeing a luminous oval-shaped craft moving at high altitude.
In Dordives (Loiret), two residents declared they saw in the sky a craft of “strange” shape moving at high altitude. Rising rapidly, it disappeared in the direction of the West.
In the Indre, two residents of Montlevicq saw a flying saucer moving slowly in the sky above the Boulaise woods. About thirty kilometers away, at Saint-Plantaire, other people reported seeing a luminous craft the size of a soccer ball.
In Orthez, in the Lapoustelle neighborhood near the Moncade Tower, a very bright disk was seen yesterday in the sky by about twenty people. The disk turned red, stopped briefly, and then disappeared.
On the night from Wednesday to Thursday, young Claude Bourneix, 17 years old, living in Pierre-Dur, commune of Puymoyen (Charente), saw a large orange glow in the sky heading toward a field.
His father, Mr. Bourneix, went to the spot where the glow had landed and found small piles of ashes spaced 25 to 40 centimeters apart, forming a circle 1.5 meters in diameter.
There were twelve on the circumference and a thirteenth in the middle. Having the idea to scrape the soil, Mr. Bourneix discovered a small black stick in each pile of ash.
The gendarmerie of Angoulême, alerted, went to the scene. It appears that the sticks are pieces of tubular powder commonly used in artillery.
One of our Parisian readers, Dr. Pigounidès, witnessed the aerial maneuvers of a strange craft:
"I was driving on Tuesday, between Saint-Germain and Poissy," he told us in the letter he sent, "when around 9 p.m. I saw a luminous craft flying along the road at an altitude I estimate to be around 400 meters. It was an oval-shaped object surrounded by a very bright, clear halo. From each side of the craft, purple plumes extended like sprays of feathers.
"It seemed to move very slowly, and I was able to follow it with my eyes for a good fifteen minutes. Then the halo almost went out, and the craft suddenly moved upward, almost vertically and very rapidly."
