We're not talking about "flying saucers," but about unusual, if not strange, sightings. That year, reports of sightings would multiply. Illustrations include local examples.
It is October 3, 1954. It is pitch black when the inhabitants of the village of Saint-Souplet are awakened by a strange "
dry snap ."
When they opened their eyes, they saw an intense red light through the slats of the shutters of their home. "
At first, I thought there was a fire in the building opposite. But it was actually a ball of light rising towards the sky ," one of the witnesses explained to journalists a few days later.
It was only at daybreak that these residents discovered some damage: "
A door pane was blown out and the glass reduced to hundreds of very small pieces scattered around the room ."
Several testimonies in the region
Outside, the vegetables in the garden had been laid to rest, some of them uprooted.
According to the regional daily newspaper that was interested in this observation, there was no reason to doubt the testimony of this family, "
notably well-known and esteemed ."
That night, they weren't the only ones to have observed the phenomenon. In Sequedin,
Saint-Amand-les-Eaux , and Boves, near Amiens, the same type of luminous mass was observed, but no one was able to explain what they had seen.
Une plongée dans les archives permet de vite se rendre compte que l'année 1954 a été particulièrement riche en observations de phénomènes inexpliqués. Avec un pic entre les mois de septembre et novembre.
First Close Encounter of the Third Kind
One of the most famous of these observations remains that made by Marius Dewilde, in Quarouble, near Valenciennes. Less than 40 kilometers from Saint-Souplet, on the night of September 10th to 11th, less than a month earlier, this factory worker and father reportedly came face-to-face with two beings who disappeared aboard a craft emitting a strong red-orange light…
The story went viral, and Marius Dewilde would go down as the first Earthling to encounter extraterrestrials!
In Saint-Souplet, there was no little green man from elsewhere, but the case was taken seriously, to the point that an investigation was opened by the gendarmerie. Without results.It was sometimes linked to another strange phenomenon, dubbed "parebrisite" or "glass cancer."
54, a fantastic year !
That same year, 1954, in France and also in the United States, numerous cases of exploding windshields, shop windows, and glass bottles were recorded, often attributed to... illusion or mass hysteria.
The Catésis would experience other observations that year. Another example is the one made by two greengrocers from Le Cateau, a 63-year-old father and his 29-year-old son, who, on November 9th around 6 a.m., "while they were in the suburb of Cambrai, at the intersection of Chaussée Brunehaut and the RN 89, from Cambrai to Le Cateau, suddenly spotted a 'globe of fire' which, according to them, had a diameter of approximately 25 to 30 meters. The globe, a very dark red, brightly lit up the entire surrounding area," reported the newspapers Nord-Matin and La Croix du Nord two days later.
As in the rest of the country, sightings would become increasingly rare from the end of 1954 and the following years. The decade would, in any case, remain one of the most prolific in this regard.
The Geipan (see below) has studied several cases of sightings in the Cambrésis region. One of them remains unexplained. On December 16, 1988, at sunset, a student driving her car observed, in Les-Rues-des-Vignes, a round, silent object, stabilized about 20 meters above a field with 4 or 6 "large lamps" on the lower part. The observation lasted about a minute, because the witness did not dare to stop. No data could be collected concerning the observed shape, which could not be identified. This case remains today considered "very strange" by the Geipan.
Explanations that are often very Cartesian
Since its creation in 1977, GEIPAN (Study and Information Group on Unidentified Aerospace Phenomena) has been trying to respond to the questions and expectations of the population regarding observations considered strange. Its work is based in particular on the collection and analysis of testimonies (oral, photos, videos, etc.) which it cross-references with tangible information from the National Gendarmerie, the Air Force, Civil Aviation, Météo France, etc.
The oldest of the cases studied dates back to 1937. The 1950s were very rich in observations, worldwide. "
It should be noted that during the year 1954 and particularly in October, the national and regional press published a large number of articles reporting observations of unidentified aerospace phenomena. The newspaper Radar having launched a reward for the person who would bring a photo of a UFO " can be read on the website of GEIPAN, which depends on the National Center for Space Studies (CNES). "
This marked the population and gave rise to a large number of reports of observations of phenomena which appear after investigation as banal (Moon, stars, planes, fireballs, etc.) .
