Encounter record / 1954
September 10, 1954. Evening on the Millevaches plateau. Antoine Mazaud, a 58-year-old farmer from Mouriéras, was walking home from his fields when a man in a helmet came up the path. The stranger bowed, held out his hand, and pulled the farmer into an embrace. Then he was gone. Seconds later a cigar-shaped craft rose from the scrub and slipped away to the west, making "no more noise than a bee." Mazaud told only his wife. He was afraid people would laugh. Within days the gendarmes and the police of Tulle were at his door, and at least 40 French newspapers carried the story of the farmer who shook hands with a man from the sky.
September 1954. France stood at the start of an autumn wave of landing and occupant reports. Antoine Mazaud farmed at Mouriéras, a hamlet in the commune of Bugeat on the Millevaches plateau in Corrèze. He was 58. La Montagne called him "a robust mountain farmer of tall stature". Le Populaire du Centre described a sober, hard-working man who did not drink and knew nothing of science fiction.