FATE Magazine
Apr 18, 20226 min
From the Fate Archives
The center of France has some spots which are among the wildest and most backward in Europe. The peasants and sheepherders of these areas are known for their austerity and faithful clinging to customs and morals some of which date back to the time of the Celts, that is to say, over 20 centuries. One would not expect to find among these people minds obsessed with science fiction.
However, it is in one of these very sectors that, for the first time in Europe, a man claims to have seen and even touched with his hand a being from outer space. The affair took place September 10, 1954, at nightfall, three days after the sighting at Contay [see sidebar, page 66].
It was 8:30 p.m. when Antoine Mazaud returned to his farm. “Are you sick?” his wife asked him. “You seem pale; and your hands are trembling. What happened?”
Madame Mazaud had good reason to be concerned. Her husband, a solid man in his 50s, was a stable peasant, as sensible as he was robust.
“No,” he answered. “I’m fine. But I had a bizarre experience—really an inexplicable meeting.”
His wife asked, “Who did you meet?”
“Who? You would better ask What. I’ll tell you. But I forbid you to tell anyone. I don’t want any trouble.”
And Mr. Mazaud told this story:
He had worked all afternoon in his oat field. Around 8:30 night was falling and he decided to return home. Throwing his pitchfork onto his shoulder he took the path leading from the hamlet of Mourieras to his home, about 1,500 meters away. This path twists between two hedgerows in a wild, hilly countryside.
While walking through a small wood he put down his pitchfork in order to roll a cigarette. (I add this small detail so that the American reader will understand the character of this person and this place—far removed from the novels of H. G. Wells.) This task took him a minute or two, after which he put his pitchfork back on his shoulder and started out again.
“I had taken only a few steps,” he said, “when in the beginning darkness I found myself face to face with a strange being dressed in a peculiar way. He was of medium height and was wearing a sort of helmet, without earpieces, somewhat like a motorcycle helmet.
“My first thought was to defend myself with my pitchfork,” he said. “I was scared stiff. The other also was immobilized. Then, very slowly, he came towards me, making a gesture above his head with an arm. I think he wanted to calm me, perhaps to greet me or to express his friendship. His other arm was extended to me but not in a menacing manner.
“I didn’t know what to do. After a moment of panic, during which I was asking myself with whom and what I was dealing, I thought perhaps it was an insane person who had disguised himself. As he continued to come slowly towards me, making strange gestures like salaams, I decided that he didn’t intend to attack me.
“He was in front of me. Then, as I still was holding my pitchfork in my right hand, I offered him my left, hesitatingly. He took it, shook it very hard and then, brusquely, held me to him, pulling my head against his helmet. All this took place in complete silence.
“I was recovering from my stupor. I took courage and spoke to him. He did not answer, but passed in front of me and went a couple of yards away into the heavy shadows of the woods. It seemed to me then that he kneeled. A few seconds later I heard a kind of buzzing whistle and saw rising, almost vertically, towards the sky between the branches a sort of dark machine. It seemed to be shaped like a cigar puffed out on one side and about three or four yards long. It passed under the high tension wires and disappeared to the west, in the direction of Limoges.
“It was only at this moment that my reason returned,” continued Mr. Mazaud. “I ran in the direction he had disappeared but obviously it was too late.”
Truth requires me to add that while telling his tale, both to the police and later to the press, Mr. Mazaud always said he regretted not having held his strange visitor by force and even “that I did not kill him with my pitchfork in order to know what it was.” One must remember that this peasant did not feel that he had been in the presence of a real man.
After Mr. Mazaud told his wife this story that night of September 10, 1954, he again cautioned her to repeat it to no one. “They would laugh at us,” he said.
So naturally Madame Mazaud told her neighbor in strictest secrecy. And she, in turn, repeated it to the travelling salesman, who reported it to the police.
The investigation by the lieutenant of police of Ossel started on the 12th, two days later. Antoine Mazaud, in a very bad mood, had to be begged to talk.
The police went to the scene of the “meeting,” examined the underbrush but found nothing suspicious. Two days had passed since the supposed meeting, and it had rained heavily.
Since there was only one witness, the police at first took the most reasonable view of the thing—that of an hallucination or a joke. They could find nothing to prove the peasant’s story but at the same time Mr. Mazaud had an excellent reputation around the countryside. He was a hard-working man, taciturn, well-balanced and without imagination. The impression made on the police, the investigators, the journalists, by the man was the same. Here is how the correspondent from Combat, the intellectual paper of Paris, describes him:
“There is about his account an indisputable aura of sincerity. The investigators were not able to uncover the least fault or contradiction in his statements.”
The Commissioner of General Information at Tulle (a position similar to lieutenant or captain with the FBI) was surprised, as was everyone, by the serious nature of the man who had been the unwilling witness of this strange being.
Lastly, it is important to mention that, until the arrival of the journalists, Mr. Mazaud had not thought of connecting his experience with stories of flying saucers, words which meant nothing to him during the first days following his observation. Now, however, he refers to his mysterious visitor as “this Martian.”
The Bureau of General Information and the police would have placed his adventure in the category of day dreams—and I would never have mentioned it—except for one small detail.
The last words of his story were, “the object passed under the high tension wires and disappeared in the sky to the west, in the direction of Limoges.”
While conducting their investigation the police discovered that on the night of September 10, a few seconds after 8:30, the inhabitants of Limoges saw in the sky a reddish disc which discharged a bluish trail. It was flying from east to west. The reports of these witnesses were taken before the incident at Mourieras was known to anyone (the first newspaper articles are dated September 14). Among the witnesses is Mr. George Frugier, 30 years old, who reported his observation of the night of September 10. One cannot help noticing that the reports completely authenticate each other.
Mr. Mazaud said 8:30.
Mr. Frugier said a few minutes after 8:30.
The object disappeared to the west in the direction of Limoges, said Mr. Mazaud.
The disc arrived from the east and disappeared towards the west, say the witnesses at Limoges.
Finally, it is remarkable that in the case of Mr. Frugier, his own family started to take his story seriously only after reading in the papers of September 14th about the incident at Mourieras.
You may choose any one of the following conclusions:
1. Mr. Mazaud saw nothing at all—he invents Science Fiction novels in his Limoge colloquialisms while he rolls his own cigarettes.
2. Or he had an hallucination.
3. Or he saw a helicopter (we know about the agility of this plane and how it can slide between the leaves of the underbrush) and its pilot (whose passion is to kiss old peasants at night fall).
4. And that at the same time the inhabitants of Limoges saw nothing at all and by telepathy completed Mr. Mazaud’s novel or else saw a slow-falling star called up by the reverie of the old peasant—or vice-versa.
5. Or you may conclude Mr. Mazaud and the citizens of Limoge saw a flying saucer.
If you find any of the first four conclusions reassuring let me ask you, just how far can you legitimately carry its applications? This is what the amateur explainers must once and for all decide. No doubt one could prove that Generals Lee and Grant were really only badly interpreted phenomena. But how would the soldiers at Gettysburg have felt about this?
In this particular case we shall see in a future article [October 1957] that less than an hour and a half after the incident at Mourieras, a similar incident, yet still more troubling, took place in the North of France.
A flying saucer landed and this time left traces.
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