The Evidence for Extraterrestrial Colonization of Earth: Alien Base
It was not just ‘foo-fighters’ that were observed during the Second World War. In the summer of 1944 a French witness claims to have observed an unknown flying machine together with its unusual occupants. Although only 13 years old at the time, Madeleine Arnoux retained a vivid recollection of the incident, which occurred while she was picking berries at a farm near the village of Le Verger, in the department of Saóne et Loire. ‘I was walking, slowly, looking for berries as I went,’ she recalled. ‘Up there ahead, something was standing beside the trees, and there were some beings quite near it. Looking back on it now, I think the machine must have been of about the size of one of our small cars today [and] it was of a dull metallic grey colour.’
The beings that were beside it must have been less than one metre in height, and were dressed in a sort of brown-coloured overalls. They made no gesture in my direction, and I, for my part, was rooted to the spot . . . I remember the oppressive atmosphere and the thundery state of the weather, and I remember how I had the feeling that I was unable to move. Then suddenly I was able to do so. I wanted to get my bike, which was lying a few metres from me. It took just the time needed for me to bend down as I got it, and then, when I looked up again towards the strange apparition, there was nothing there . . .
All there was to be seen, at the spot where it had been, was a violent wind blowing the trees about. I didn’t think of looking up in the air, where, if I had done, I should no doubt have still been able to see the machine as it was flying away Terrified, the witness made off at full speed to the farm-house, where she mentioned nothing about her experience. Nor did she tell anyone when she arrived home, fearing to be branded a hoaxer. For a very long time, Madeleine Arnoux thought about her weird encounter, then forgot about it. It was only when people began to talk about soucoupes volantes (flying saucers) in the 1950s that she began to put two and two together.
After all these years, the picture is still very clear in my memory and I know perfectly well that I wasn’t dreaming and that what I saw that day in the woods wasn’t anything that is ‘known’ . . . It was 1944, and the Maquis people of the [French] Resistance were quite plentiful in the area, but it couldn’t have been any of them. Nor could it have been German soldiers, and had it been either Maquis or Germans, unquestionably they would have challenged me. So one can only think that I must have been a witness of one of the earliest UFO visits.
This fascinating report was sent to the editor of the magazine Lumieres Dans La Nuit in 1972. It comes across as an account by a sincere, puzzled witness. Of particular significance is Madeleine Arnoux’s reference to feeling paralysed, a feature increasingly evident in close encounters in the years following the Second World War. The ‘violent wind blowing the trees about’ during take-off is also reported in many other such cases