If we look at the entries in Ptrack Gross' URECAT project and entries for France for just the year 1954 -the so called "French UFO Wave" and then at the entries I have in my files for France at the same period then something becomes noticeable.
My own records came from any and every sopurce that I could find and so my files have far more files than Gross. However, despite se4arching for many years and even asking the sources involved, I have many accounts without more than a few lines.
Everyone has heard of the Marius Dewilde, 10th September, 1954 encounter at Quarouble, Nord. You should kmow about this incident if you hve any interest in the subject and I devoted chapter 14 in UFO Contact? (pp.187-198) to the case. It was officially investigated and is possibly the best known French encounter case. Ignore the sites that tell you the entities describe conform to "Greys" as that is pure fiction.
A great deal has been written about the Dewilde case and yet many reports do not get more than 4-8 lines that tend to tell us very little. The Flying Saucer Review is the main source and apart from, perhaps, the newspaper date, nothing else is known. It seems that it was not until the 1970s that some French Ufologists decided that it might be a good idea to, perhaps, not just rely on what might be an inaccurate newpaper item.
"Journalists and newspapers were trusted sources" has never been true. Each newspaper editor or publisher had/has an agenda of one kind or other -mainly political but usually financial since money proves top be more influential than factual reporting. If you have to make up a story about something poipular at the time to steal readers from a rival -fair game. In fact, the excuse that journalists accounts were to be trusted was nothing more than an excuse for sheer laziness.
I have read comments by Spanish, French and Italian Ufologists who were positively livid because they later discovered not all of the facts in a sighting had been recorded by journalists -some added a few "spicy touches" to stories. Flying saucer and UFO groups in all countries tended to be nothing more than clubs or social gatherings to hear what had been goping on in the saucer world over coffee and biscuits. Why else would frauds such as George Adamski have been able to continue and rake in money by simply showing a photograph so bad you cannot see anything until it is pointed out: "That is me looking out of the mothger-ship porthole and to the left is a Venusian and in the right hand porthole is a Saturnian".
And groups and publications ranging from Flying Saucer News and the British Flying Saucer Bureau to Flying Saucer Review et al were vcontinuously promoting the contactee myth. "All contact was telepathic" -very handy ince you never needed to fake any flying saucer photographs. Cynthia Appleton in the UK was given a lot of publicity over her claims for which you needed to rely on suspension of disbelief.
We find on checking that so many reports in the French wave have no actual sources given and some turn out to be so mundane in explanation yet are still quoted as genuine.
Gross, for his URECAT, attempts to find and quote as many references on reports as he can and where possible offers an explanation such as this case (still quoted by Ufologists):
SEPTEMBER 15th TO 16th , 1954, FEURS, LOIRE, FRANCE
A woman farmer of the vicinity who did not sleep heard a strange buzz in the sky, and her dog was excited.
The two authors note that it is not known if the breakdown of car was caused by the UFO or not, and that description of the being does not correspond to that given by Mr. Mazaud in the case of Mouriéras.
They indicate as sources the newspaper La Dépêche for September 18, and 19, 1954.
"The French newspaper "Le Charrollais dimanche" had published on September 19, 1954 a humorous invite to read "on page 12" no less than the "hallucinating story of four inhabitants of Saint-Etienne who met a Martian resembling Hitler emerge of a red boiled egg".
The illustration showed a "Hitler" character in full Martian diving-suit making a vulgar gesture at the readers.
"This nevertheless became a ufological case of the 1954 French flap of 1954, car engine failure comprized, claimed to have occurred near Feurs on September 15, 1954, still cited without any explanation decades later."
The description of the entity looking like Hitler is never included. Neither is the newspaper advert as seen below.
Flying saucer sightings are found to be a mixed bag of helicopters (including seen in landings), Venus and other stars, meteors, bicycle lights and so on. If there are genuine phenomena reported then there is far too little data to say so.
As wth the alleged 1973 Global UFO Wave we see that there may well be genuine incidents but as a rule only one or two are turned into full blown events and those tend to be picked and chosen to suit the investigators tastes and what they want to push. My example I hate to quote again but it is the best based on what we know.
Two men out fishing see a UFO and report an abduction -though one refuses to open his eyes during most of this through fear.
Multiple witneses driving along an interstate road observe to large UFOs and one touches down on the road and an entity is seen to exit for a short time. A driver in a car coming from the opposite direction is seen to stop and turn his vehicle and drive off. All were wide awake (perhaps up to 7 observers).
A local celebrity performer reports seeing a UFO.
Well, Pascagoula was headline news and everyone was buying tickets to investyigate it including two investigators based in the area that covers the Interstate sighting. They al;so try to jump in on the celebrity investigation but at Pascagoula and with the celebrity they withdraw when they find out the "big boys" have moved in.
So, the Interstate case is on their doorstep and it has all the hallmarks of being classed as a major UFO event.
They do not bother despite being asked to several times. You see, Pascagoula and the celebrity case involved "white" percipients" while the Interstate reports featured (as far as we know) all "black" witnesses.
I have also seen the "personal agenda" at work in localo UFO investigations. At one point in the late 197os I had to team up with omeone who had no investigation skills and believed that all UFO sightings -including those from Amazonion jungle areas- were the result of nuclear power stations. This was the same investigator who refused to turn and opbserve lights I was watching through binoculars in the company of 150 other observers at night at Chepstow race course. So why was I with him? Well, he had been known by two of the British Flying Saucer Bureau big-wigs since he was a youngster. I know.
Anyway, one day we had to visit a womnan in the St Werburgh's area who had observed a LITS (Light-In-The-Sky). As soon as she pointed to the direction the light was seen and gave the time I knew that it was an aircraft -it was even on the flightpath for Bristol Airport. My 'colleague' found the case fascinating and slapped don my explanation. I was stumped. Then a few days later I had to phone him but was told by his wife he had gone to visit the woman again as a "follow up". He visited her a third time after 'losing' his spectacles. It turned out that he found the woman very attractive. I had to give him a warning because there were some 20 quality sightings that were piled up on my desk and he refused to take part in those investigations.
This same person alop refused to accompany me to an address in the St Paul's area as it was "a black neighbourhood" and not safe. Attractive white woman who had seen LITS -yes. Black witness who had seen a large object -no.
On one occasion I let my temper get the better of me. Another investigator was supposd to look into a reported landing in an area he was working in. I spoke to him a few days later and was told he had chatted with the man but never bothered going to see him. Why? "He's a UFO nutter. Said he watched and something got out of the object and moved about before going back in" The witness had been spoken to o rudely that he refused to talk to me.
I then discovered that the group nickname for me was "UFONut" because I was looking into CE3K reports. This was the 1970s so imagine the 1950s and 1960s where contactees had more credibility among believers than, say, Betty and Barney Hill who, as someone pointed out to me at a BFSB meeting could not be "of very good characters" after all, he was black and she was white.
Even today there is prejudic in covering CE3K/AE report.
So it is far easier to read a newspaper item or put clippings in scrap books than leaving your comfy chair and dealing with "all sorts". The 1954 and 1973 UFO waves are not periods of increased UFO activity just increased press coverage that we used to call "slow season news".
I was once told by a German Ufologist that "Unless it is a contactee story picked up by Veit it gets ignored!" Karl L. Veit was the publisher of UFO Nachrichten, a German UFO newspaper formatted publication. Veit I mention along with other prominent German Ufologists in Contact: Encounters With Extra Terrestril Entities? -which also takes the first overall look at CE3K/AE reports from Germany.
Percipients in early French cases may be elderly now but still contactable and those from American sightings in 1973 ditto buyt it takes Ufologists to ignore personal prejudices as well as get up off their backsides and carry out that work.
We really are at the point where we are about to lose very valuable reports and keep a collection of dubious news reports as 'evidence'. That is why "Science" with all of its own flaws and prejudices can sit back and laugh at Ufology.
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