The index page for the 1954 French flap section of this site is here.
Reference number for this case: 9-oct-54-Lavoux. Thank you for including this reference number in any correspondence with me regarding this case.
[Ref. 1665:] "MIDI LIBRE" NEWSPAPER:
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STILL APPARITIONS OF MARTIANS "I was stopped by a ray of light emanating from a diver"claims an inhabitant of the Vienne Poitiers, October 11. -- In all the corners of France and the world, several people worthy of faith claim to have been the witnesses of these phenomena that one calls "flying saucers". But in Vienna, Mr. Roger Barrault, handworker in Lavoux, declared that, riding his bicycle, Saturday, around 7 p.m., he had been suddenly stopped by a double ray of light emanating from a kind of "diver", tall hardly of 1 m. 30 with boots without heels, very brilliant eyes and a strong moustache. The diver walked approximately a minute on the road, claims Mr. Barrault, then disappeared suddenly towards the very close forest. A cylindrical object with a dark coreNelson. -- An inhabitant of Nelson (New Zealand), Mr. K.M. Gibbons, succeeded in taking with the teleobjective a series of photographs of three flying saucers. When he had taken two shots of the three mysterious craft, those disappeared vertically, at high speed. He however continued to take photographs in the direction of the saucers. The developed film shows cylindrical objects, having a kind of dark core. A SAUCER LANDS ON THE ROAD CLOSE TO CARCASSONNEMr. Louis Vessières, an inhabitant of Cavanac, locality very close to Carcassonne, saw, Sunday morning, a flying saucer which was posed on the ground in the middle of the road. Mr. Louis Vessières, returning by motorbike, Sunday morning around 4:30, from the Talmier factories, close to Carcassonne, where he is employed, and moving towards Cavanac where he lives, found himself in the presence of a convex machine, oval, and very shining which, at its approach, released sparks and, without noise, flew away. Mr. Vessières took a shortcut to avoid approaching the machine. Arrived at the countryside of Lafarguette, Mr. Vessières stopped and saw then in the sky the gleam of this craft at approximately 500 meters in the direction of the "route neuve" which leads to Couffoulens. Mr. Vessières returned at his place, very moved, and quickly had his wife stand up. Both went up on the terrace of their house but it was too late. The saucer had disappeared. A flying cigar has landed close to MunsterMunster, October 11. -- An cinema operator of Munster [Germany], Mr. Hoge, claimed to have observed, Saturday evening, during ten minutes an "unidentified craft" having the shape of a motionless cigar at approximately 1 Mr. 50 above the ground and under which four "men" of crew of 1 m. 20 were busy. These beings had, according to him, a rather broad chest, a head proportionally too large for their slender body and legs. Mr. Hoge specified that they wore a kind of one-piece suit whose fabric resembled rubber. |
[Ref. 1082:] "SAMEDI-SOIR" NEWSPAPER:
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[...] Must we go on? Or also, the 96 centimeters man, carrying a broad leather belt, shoes and panties, which rose in the airs thanks to two boxes in the shape of pears, placed under each arm. This being was seen by Mr. Lacambre, forestry workman in Saint-Pardoux (the Lot), on Monday, October 4, at 8:10 a.m., and the witness has even determined from the footprints that the small being fitted shoesize 21 [Europe standard]... What to think of the assertion of Mr. Garreau, who swears "on his honor" to have seen a "flying soup tureen" landed in his property, and two perfectly normal men get down of it, who shook hands with him and cuddled his dog before leaving as quickly as they came... And this handworker of Lavoux (Vienna), Mr. Roger Barrault who, on Saturday October 9, at 7 p.m., was paralyzed by a luminous ray emanating from a "diver" high of 1 m. 50, fitted with boots, with shining eyes, and carrying a heavy moustache... And the cigar posed in a clearing, in Diges in Yonne, near which Mrs. widows Gaffroy [sic, Geoffroy] saw a man, from the back, in combination and capped of a khaki bonnet... And Mr. Jean Labonne, of Bergerac, who, on October 2, at 10 p.m., saw a metal mushroom in his garden. "Who's there?" he shouted when distinguishing a shade. "What do you want from me?" But the shade climbed in the mushroom which rose in the airs at an extraordinary speed. Even in England which started to worry and almost become indignant that not the least saucer, not the least "cigar" or cigarillo, had made the honor of an appearance to the people which had won the battle of Trafalgar. This gap has been just been largely filled by the sensational revelations of an ornithologist, Mr. Cedric Allingham, who claims to have met, on February 18, in the north of Scotland, not a Martian, but a Venusian with whom he had a lengthy and difficult conversation! This Venusian measured about 1 m 73, he short brown hair, and his skin seemed tanned. He was completely wrapped in a kind of combination which had the appearance of a armored coat. In his nose were two small tubes joined by a metallic wire... Mr. Allingham managed to touch the saucer whose metal was slightly warm, and he finally took the leave of Venusian, not without having offered him his pen, which the man carefully put in a pocket of his combination and after having taken on the run a photograph of the strange character. This rather fuzzy image is, it should be acknowledged, rather unrevealing. One sees the silhouette of a man seen from the back, walking slightly curved, and that, without a little imagination, could easily be matched with the silhouette of any earthman. Lastly, with the latest news, it is a true avalanche of Martians that comes falling on our grounds. In Pournoy La Chétive, in the Moselle, three children were roller skating, when a round machine, of 2.50 meters of diameter, lands close to them. A man left from there, holding in the hand a lit lamp which dazzled the children. He was dressed of a black cassock "like that of our priest", and after having said some unintelligible words, he flew away in his saucer. In the island of Oléron, for the first time, it was two Martian girls who put foot on the ground. It is Mr. Martin, a colonial teacher on holiday, who brings their description to us. They carried small boots and leather gloves, as well as brilliant helmets. They were extremely pretty and nicely agreed to sign an autograph to the teacher. I would take a whole book to bring back all the cases in detail. But all these good people swear to god that they invent nothing. Their entourage echoes that. Him, to invent such a story? A family man known for his respectability... A boy who never drank any drop of alcohol in his life? Come on! So what? Should it be concluded from this that they really saw strange beings, hairy, helmeted, in boots, speaking an incomprehensible language? Do we need to have faith to this story of mysterious green ray which paralyze human beings? Are their accounts, on the contrary, totally invented? Do they rest on a serious basis exaggerated thereafter? Nothing, absolutely nothing in the current state of the collected information which was made available to the public allows to conclude in the sense of the authenticity. The investigations were led as if it were a question of "checking" the statements of the witnesses and not in the spirit to eliminate all the assumptions leading to plausible and relatively simple explanations. These assumptions are numerous, they go from the joke to the hallucination not to mention the optical illusion. To eliminate them, one would need extremely thorough police information, doubled, in all the cases, of a thorough psychological investigation. Then only the facts would remain, logically unexplainable, which would constitute the true file on the Martians. One would then notice that this file is extremely thin, if not non-existent, and that in this business, there is much, far too much, literature. |
[Ref. 1259:] "TIME" MAGAZINE:
The article underneath has been published in the Time magazine, USA, for October 25, 1954.
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SCIENCEMartians over FranceOne morning last October, Jean Narcy, a road mender of Haute-Marne, France, was riding to work on his bicycle. In a wheat field he saw a little whiskered man just under 4 ft tall, who wore a fur coat, an orange corset and a plush cap. "Bonjour, [Hello]" said Mr. Narcy. The little man muttered something like "I'll be seeing you." Then he jumped into a small (10 ft. in diameter) flying saucer, took off with a buzzing sound and disappeared into the clouds. With Narcy's "Hairy Martian" as a starting point, the French press run wild, and a deluge of Martians have been raining down ever since. They have come in flying cigars, crowns, comets, winged mushrooms, even a flying chamber pot. Unlike Americans who have seen flying saucers, the French "sighters" paid little attention to the vehicles. They were interested in the people from space. The Martians were anything but standardized. One who stopped Mr. Roger Barrault near the town of Lavoux had brilliant eyes, an enormous moustache, wore rubbers and spoke Latin. Another asked Mr. Pierre Lucas, a Breton baker, for a light. He was bearded and had a single eye in the middle of the forehead. Mr. Lucas could not remember what language he spoke. Paralysing Pygmies. As the Martian invasion of France proceeded, the invaders became more bizarre. A troup of pygmies in plastic helmet gamboled down a railroad track near Quarouble and transfixed Mr. Dewilde with "a paralyzing beam of light." Some Martians were blue, others were yellow or pink. A traveling salesman of the Côte du Nord saw a wonderful sight: a deep rose flying cigar from which stepped a zebra-stripped Martian. As he alighted, he changed color, chameleon-like, from yellow to green. The Martians marched en masse into French affairs. Cartoonists welcomed them delightedly (see cuts). As they multiplied, they even gained respectability. Le Figaro reported: "Counsellor General of Alpes Maritimes greets flying saucers' first appearance on the Côte d'Azur." France Soir announced that "a daily flying-saucer service seems to have been established between Marais-Poitevin and La Rochelle." A man from space even made the social columns of Paris-France: "Mustached Martian spends weekend at Vienna." Angry deputies asked questions in Parliament. Air Force Authorities (even as in the US) were badgered for explanations. Before the many-colored Martians rained down on France, fames Swiss Psychiatrist C. G. Jung was asked what he thought about the saucer epidemic. "Something is being seen," said Jung. "What is seen may be, in the case of a single observer, a subjective vision (hallucination). In the case of many observers, it may be a collective vision. such a psychic phenomenon... could be a spontaneous reaction of the subconscious to the present conscious situation; the fear of an apparently insoluble political situation in the world... At such times eyes turn heavenwards ... and miraculous forebodings of a threatening or consoling nature appear from on high." No More Dreams. Dr. Jung blames the U.S. air Force for mishandling the saucer epidemic and for permitting irresponsible journalists to pump it for bits of sensational-sounding information. He does not believe that the saucers are space ships. Those that are not hallucinations, he thinks, are probably misinterpretations of physical objects or effects. But he was willing to speculate about the effect on the human race of an invasion by beings from another world. "Should the origin of the phenomenon turn out to be an extraterrestrial one," said Dr. Jung, "it would prove an intelligent interplanetary link. The impact of such a fact on humanity is unforeseable. But, without doubt, we would be placed in the very questionable position of today's primitive societies that clash with the superior culture of the white race. All initiative would be wrested from us. As an old witch doctor once said to me, with tears in his eyes: We would 'have no more dreams.' Our sciences and technology would go to the junk pile. What such a catastrophe would mean morally we can gauge by the pitiful decline of the primitive cultures that takes place before our eyes. The capacity to manufacture (interplanetary space ships) points to a technology towering sky sky high over ours." "Just as the Pax Britannica made an end to the tribal warfare in Africa, so our world could roll up its Iron Curtain and use it for scrap ... This might not be so bad. But we would have been 'discovered' and colonized." |
[Ref. 1703:] HAROLD T. WILKINS:
The author indicates that on October 3, 1954, Roger Barrault was halted near Lavaux [sic], in southern France, by a singular being with "brilliant eyes, and an enormous moustache, who spoke Latin." The author notes that it cannot be said whether Barrault knew Latin or not.
[Ref. 105:] JACQUES VALLEE:
The author indicates that on October 9, 1954, in Lavoux in Vienna, in France, a farmer was riding a bicycle and suddenly stopped while seeing a silhouette equipped with a "diving suit" which aimed at him with a double ray of light. "The individual" seemed to have "boots without heels", very brilliant eyes, and a hairy chest, and carried two "headlights", one below the other, fixed on the front on his clothing.
[Ref. 1133:] CORAL AND JIM LORENZEN:
The authors indicate that on October 9, 1954, in the village of Lavoux, about 12 miles east of Poitiers, Roger Barrault told of an encounter he had while riding his bicycle near the village. He claimed that about 07:00 p.m., he was confronted by a little man about 4.5 feet tall, wearing what appeared to be a "diver's suit" and looked like it was covered with shaggy hair, out of which shined two "dazzling" eyes. Barrault only saw home for about a minute, ahead of him, but discerned what appeared as bright headlights which were located about halfway up the front of his body, one above the other. The weird little man shortly disappeared among the trees of the woods by the road.
The authors indicate elsewhere in the same book that a figure in a diving suit was observed by a farmer in Lavoux, France, on October 9, 1954. The farmer, on a bicycle, said the creature seemed to have "boots without heels" and very bright eyes, and pointed a double-beamed light at him which seemed to paralyze him.
[Ref. 106:] JACQUES VALLEE:
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221 Oct. 09, 1954, 07:00 P.M. Lavoux (France). Mr. Barrault was riding his bicycle when he suddenly saw a figure in a diving suit aiming a double beam of light at him. The individual had boots without heels and very bright eyes, walked on the road for one minute and went into the forest. The witness was "paralyzed" throughout the incident. The entity had a hairy chest and two lights, one above the other, in front of him. (45, 48; M 153; Magonia) (Le Figaro, 11 oct. 1954, Paris-Presse, 12 oct. 1954). |
[Ref. 152:] JACQUES VALLEE:
The author indicates that on October 9, 1954, in Lavoux in the Vienne, a farmer who was riding his bicycle stopped suddenly when he saw a form, dressed in a diving suit, who directed a double ray of light at him. The individual seemed to have "boots without heels" and of very shining eyes. He went on the road one minute approximately, then moved towards the forest and did not reappear. No UFO was described in the account. The witness was "paralyzed" throughout the incident. The entity had a very hairy chest and carried two "head lights" one under the other on his chest.
[Ref. 50] CHARLES GARREAU AND RAYMOND LAVIER:
The to authors indicate that the case of October 9, 1954, in Lavoux, was a prank, exposed by the investigation of ufologists of the Lumières Dans La Nuit group.
[Ref. 1254:] LEONARD STRINGFIELD:
The American ufologist indicates that on October 9, 1954, in France, in Lavoux, Mr. Barrault rode his bicycle when he suddenly saw a silhouette in "diving suit" which directed a double luminous ray towards him.
The being had very brilliant eyes, walked on the road then entered the forest. During all this time, the witness remained paralysed, but he however noted two lights one above the other, in front of the entity.
The author indicates that this example of case of a close encounter of the third kind comes from the catalogue by Jacques Vallée who extracted it from the Aime Michel's book.
[Ref. 1004] FRANCOIS LAGARDE / LDLN GROUP:
In the chapter devoted to confusions in their book, the authors give the summary of the information published in the newspapers Le Figaro of October 11, 1954 and Paris-Presse of October 12, 1954:
Mr. Barrault was returning home ridin his bicycle when he suddenly saw a being equipped as with a diving suit who moved towards him two luminous rays. He carried boots without heels and his eyes were very shiny. He went on the road during one minute then penetrated in the forest. The witness was paralysed throughout the incident. The being had a hairy chest, and had two lights, one above the other, in front of him.
Mr. Baillon, investigating ufologist, announced that he managed to meet the witness who had moved from Lavoux to a small farm of Chauvigny, and he stated to him:
"I was going by the surroundings of Lavoux when I saw a 17 year old young man that I recognized perfectly. He had been disguised using a paratrooper dressing, a German helmet "cut on the side", and some sort box which shone. I chased him to the wood but I lost sight of the him. I told this story in the bar and the largely distorted story came into the ears of a journalist, hence the article of Le Figaro."
Mr. Baillon adds that Mr. Barrault went protest at the newspaper whereas he was in Paris a few days later, but that he had only gotten some vague excuses, the newspaper did not publis any corrigendum.
Mr. Baillon specifies that he found Mr. Barrault very sincere, and that it is important to note that the witness identified the prankster precisely, prankster who according to him "had fun in frightening the women" of the area.
[Ref. 144] FRANCAT, MICHEL FIGUET:
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09.10.1954 Lavoux The Witness was the victim of a prank. "OVNI" p. 666 |
[Ref. 113:] MICHEL FIGUET:
A field investigation whose result was published in the ufology magazine Lumières Dans La Nuit and also in the book by Figuet and Ruchon, showed that Mr. Barrault had been the victim of a 18 years old prankster. Mr. Barrault had actually recognized the prankster, but a newspaper journalist found it more interesting to promote his version deprived of the explanation.
[Ref. 134:] ALBERT ROSALES, HUMCAT:
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142. Location. Lavoux France Date: October 9 1954 Time: 1900 Roger Barrault, bicycling in the dusk, found himself confronting a humanoid about 4.5 ft tall, dressed in a "diver’s suit." Its feet "had no heels" & its helmeted head looked like a shaggy bunch of hair out of which shone dazzling eyes. Two lights, like very bright headlights, one above the other, were on its front. It moved along the road for a minute and disappeared in the woods. Humcat 1954-82 Source: Aime Michel Type: E |
[Ref. 1601] RICHARD HALL:
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TABLE 1. UFO OCCUPANT SIGHTINGS, 1954-1963 [...] October 9, 1954 Roger Barrault, Lavoux, France 7:00 P.M. One 4-1/2 ft tall being, diver's suit, bright eyes, two lights on chest; bicyclist at dusk encountered being, who disappeared into woods; no craft seen". [...] |
Quickly discovered joke, but promoted as non-joke by a journalist.
(These keywords are only to help queries and are not implying anything.)
Lavoux, Vienne, Barrault, humanoid, diving suit, beam, boots, eyes, joke, hoax
[-] indicates sources which I have not yet checked.
