Somewhere in the Skies - Bite-Sized UFOs | The Marcilly-sur-Vienne Occupant Case

Starting point is 00:00:00 Ambition comes in all shapes and sizes. At First Citizens Bank, we roll with your goals because we're built for what you're building. Fit for your ambition for Citizens Bank. This episode is brought to you by Netflix. Most valuable promotions in Netflix are hosting a blockbuster triple headliner Saturday, May 16th. Ronda Rousey returns to face fellow woman's MMA pioneer Gina Carrano in the main event. Plus co-main's Nate Diaz versus Mike Perry. And the best have you wait in the one.

Starting point is 00:00:33 World, Francis Ngano versus Felipe Lins. Watch Rhonda Rousey versus Gina Carrano, live only on Netflix. Saturday, May 16th at 9 p.m. Eastern Center time, 6 p.m. Pacific time. Welcome to bite-sized UFOs, a show where we break down lesser-known UFO cases in 20 minutes or less. And now here's your host, Graham Rendell. Welcome to Episode 2 of Bite-Sized UFOs. In this installment, we look at a French case from September 1954, Slaping bang in the middle of the autumn wave of UFO sightings that swept over the country. Back in

Starting point is 00:01:20 1954, Marcy Souvien, in the Department of Indre et Loire, was a relatively small village located between Tour and Poitiers in western France. A sand and gravel quarry was located near the village. On 30th September, 1954, quarry foreman Georges Gatte and five of his workers were extracting sand and gravel as part of their everyday duties. using a mechanical steam shovel and a crane. Moving close to the quarry entrance to observe the work from a higher vantage point, Gatti suddenly noticed a strange object across the road outside the quarry, something that was hovering motionless, about a meter from the ground.

Starting point is 00:02:01 It was circular, had some sort of dome-shaped construction above, and was fitted with what appeared to be numerous rotor blade-type structures that were whizzing around the dome itself. it did not look like any type of helicopter that the quarry foreman could recognize. According to a report of the incident which was published in La Republic de Sondre West on 4th October 1954, neither Gathe nor his workforce had seen or heard the object arrive. However, the quarry was located below the road outside. A description of what happened was published by the newspaper.

Starting point is 00:02:36 Monsieur Gatti and five of his workers were busy extracting sand and gravel from a quarry near the road at Marcy. Everyone was working, some with a mechanical shovel, others with a crane. Gatty was on the sidelines, closer to the quarry entrance. He was the first to see the machine, a device of circular shapes are mounted by a dome, apparently equipped with blades like those of a helicopter. The machine was standing motionless, one meter from the ground, the blades turning very rapidly. It did not land on the ground. A small-sized man, approximately 1 meter 50 to 1 meter 55, wearing a helmet of opaque material resembling stained glass, and dressed in an outfit of neutral tone complete with boots, stood next to it. He had in his hand a kind of large revolver, or perhaps

Starting point is 00:03:22 a tube, and on his chest there was a brilliant disc, emitting a beam of intense light. No one in the quarry, which lies below and several metres from the road and its surroundings, had seen the apparatus arrive and no one had heard it. Everyone was busy at work and their machines were very noisy. Gatti states the device remained there for half a minute. it more than enough time to be able to examine it. The site supervisor is an excellent drafts man. His first reflex, after his astonishment, was to run to his tent to grab paper, a pencil and then draw a sketch of the extraordinary machine and its occupant. But my legs were cut from under me, he said, and I could not take a step. I seemed to be nailed to the ground by the effects of

Starting point is 00:04:04 the luminous ray emitted from the man. At that moment, a truck came into view, driving along the road towards the quarry. The driver, Monsieur Amiral, said that he saw something grey that was not usually there. Gaté explained to reporters that the being then went inside the object. The man climbed back into the craft, without me being able to explain how, and then the craft rose vertically in jerks with a noise-like jet engines from fighter aircraft. At roughly 200 metres altitude, it emitted a fog that completely concealed it and the machine disappeared before our eyes. Once the strange object had vanished, Gatti realized that he could start moving again and immediately went to the point where the object had been seen, but found no trace of its presence.

Starting point is 00:04:51 The being appeared to be armed with something, a gun or a tube of some description, but instead some kind of beam of light was emitted from a disc-shaped object on its chest, one which immobilized the witness. The whole story seemed like science fiction. Gatti told the reporters at Le Courier de West that they were not crackpots, they knew what they saw. According to the newspaper's story on 19th October 1954, the foreman had lost his appetite since the incident. It did not sleep much any longer. It really was a flying saucer and a Martian, he told the newspaper.

Starting point is 00:05:26 In the autumn of 1954, France saw a wave of cases that involved temporary paralysis and small beings, was the Marci-sur-Vier-case just another one of many? The amount of attention that this and other cases were generating in the press soon came to the attention of local politicians. Jean Noucher, Deputy for the Loire, contacted the French Secretary of State for Air about the rising public emotions concerning flying sources. Nossier put the following question to the Secretary.

Starting point is 00:05:55 Were his predecessors in the Secretary of State for the Air persuaded, as in the U.S. and USSR, to open an investigation about the presence in our atmosphere, of unidentified flying objects. If so, could he publish the results of these investigations? If not, will he set up a committee, one which would cover all the scientific branches concerned, in order to study this phenomenon objectively? It's unclear as to whether any meaningful response was received. Meanwhile, according to the article published in La Republic de Sontra West, the quarry workers had been so shocked about the whole event that they refused to talk about it

Starting point is 00:06:29 until they retired to a bar restaurant in the nearby village of Passé-O-V-V-en. Had the entire tale simply been a hoax, one concocted over a few beers or glasses of wine? Bight-sized UFOs, we deal with facts, not conjecture or theories. A year after the event, Mark Therwin, founder of the Orinos UFO group, asked one of his local investigators to examine the case. Therwin had the following to say about the witnesses involved. Some investigators ridiculed them after having grilled them for a long time, claiming that these men had been drinking. Imagine eight men, all drunk at the same time, including the foreman, whose testimony confirms that of his men. A local correspondent, a Monsieur Grondeur, tried to locate the witnesses but drew a blank, as reported by Therwin.

Starting point is 00:07:24 When our local correspondent tried to clarify the matter, the damage had been done. The witnesses were absent, and the locals who had heard them. their initial statements were silent. But possibly the most damning comment came from a local shopkeeper. They had drunk one liter of cognac and one liter of beer. They no longer knew what they were saying. However, after that statement, the shopkeeper clammed up and refused to say anything more to the local investigator.

Starting point is 00:07:54 Bite-sized UFOs is all about the facts. Use the facts and you can't go far wrong. After being able to move again, Georges Gatier retired to the safety. of his foreman's office and started to sketch the object concerned. It was grey and measured some four metres across. The sketch turned out to be similar to something that architect Cyprian Bach had seen high over the city of Powell, in the Pyrenees, some 250 miles to the south, as reported in Franz de Montch's 10th October 1954 edition. Four hundred kilometres away, it was apparently the same saucer that Cyprian Bacquet and George Gatari saw.

Starting point is 00:08:34 The drawings which they made of the phenomenon they both observed resemble each other. Indeed, Backke, an engineering architect, saw the mysterious machine at around 10,000 meters altitude above POW, at the same time as thousands of residents in the city. Gatti, Sight-Falman, together with the six men who worked with him, saw the object about a meter above ground level and some 15 meters away from the edge of a quarry. For Backay, who saw it at 11 o'clock on the morning of September 30th, it was a red sphere, in the sky, from which four tubes protruded. The engineer watched it with his telescope over a 15-minute period, before it disappeared towards the west. The POW sightings, which apparently involved not just one

Starting point is 00:09:18 but several objects, were written off as nothing more than balloons and a jet aircraft. But what about the Marseille-sur-Vier object and its small occupant? Grandot, the local investigator, eventually managed to locate a son of one of the quarrymen. According to Mark Therwin's informant, the son pretended to know nothing about the incident, but when pressed, said that his father had told police he simply saw a cloud of smoke rising into the sky in order to get rid of them.

Starting point is 00:09:48 However, by this stage, the gendarmerie were investigating numerous reports of flying sources and strange beings right across France, and also reporting hoaxes for possible prosecution. It appears that one of the witnesses was later jailed for three months, although this was supposedly in relation to a different matter. The validity of the case remained open to question until 1975. Authors Charles Giro and Raymond Lavier in their book Fas or Exteterrest stated the following.

Starting point is 00:10:20 The landing at Marcy Servienne, Indriette Lois on the 30th of September 1954 was also a hoax with a Flash Gordon-style Martian. The witness, George Gatti, admitted afterwards the. that he had invented the whole story. Yet there was no mention of who the quarry foreman had admitted his fabrication too. In fact, the whole rebuttal appeared short on detail. So was the whole thing a hoax? Possibly, but maybe not. As with lots of other UFO cases throughout history, there are still questions to be answered regarding the Marseille-sur-Vien case. The witnesses themselves could not be located. Those who were apparently present when the quarrymen concocted

Starting point is 00:11:01 their tail at the bar restaurant, clammed up, refusing to tell investigators anything more about it, and what about the apparent similarities between Georges Gatte's object, and another one seen 250 miles away at Powell? Two witnesses separated by a huge distance. Surely there was no evidence of collusion or copying here. At the time this podcast was recorded, 70 years after the events described here. We are still no further forward in determining what George Gatte and his workers saw that day. To read about this and other events that took place during the huge wave of sightings across France 70 years ago, my book, the French UFO wave of 1954, is available via Amazon. And that's it for the second edition of bite-sized UFOs.

Starting point is 00:11:52 Please follow the channel and perhaps leave likes and reviews. where you can. Until next time, remember that bite-sized UFOs is all about the facts. This has been bite-sized UFOs with your host, Graham Rendell. Be sure to rate and review wherever you get your podcasts. For a full video version of this episode, subscribe to the bite-sized UFOs YouTube channel. Thank you for listening. Wireless can feel like a world of traps, but not with visible. It's one-line wireless with unlimited data and hotspot. powered by Verizon for $25 a month. Taxes and fees included.

Starting point is 00:12:45 Plus, for a limited time, new members pay just $20 a month for one year on the Visible plan. Using the code Fresh Start. Refresh your wireless with Visible. Tap the banner to switch today. Terms apply. Limited time offer subject to change. See Visible.com for plan features and network management details.

Somewhere in the Skies - Bite-Sized UFOs | The Marcilly-sur-Vienne Occupant Case

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.