Case description
Father Auguste Stahl, parish priest of Renève from1936 to1947, later recalled an unusual sight while walking in the countryside in April1945. The imported account places it around18:00. He described an approximately17-centimetre human-like figure with gray hair and a beard, which moved toward the woods. A later illustration reproduced by the Côte-d’Or archives shows a tiny red-clothed person with a walking stick; it is an interpretation of the account, not a contemporary photograph.
The episode became a humanoid case after researchers investigated it in1975, about thirty years after the alleged observation. Patrice Vachon, discussing his own1983 follow-up, said Stahl firmly insisted that he had seen a little man rather than a monkey. Vachon nevertheless favoured an escaped, dressed military mascot as an explanation. A former soldier described a very small monkey in a red garment and hat, kept by a unit said to have passed through the area.
That alternative has evidential limits. Vachon’s later review explicitly acknowledges that he could not recover conclusive military documentation; another well-photographed mascot, Moko, belonged to a different regiment and was not the Renève animal. It would therefore be inaccurate to call the case a demonstrated alien encounter, a confessed hoax, or a conclusively identified monkey. No craft was reported. The plate illustrates the priest’s recollection and labels the competing explanation, keeping the long reporting delay and uncertain identification visible.
