Omont, FR being encounter — September 17, 1954

This Omont story was publicly corrected almost immediately. L’Ardennais initially reported on 22 September 1954 that a farmer and municipal councillor had seen an extraordinary landing on the morning of Friday 17 September, around 8:30. The imported evening time therefore conflicts with the newspaper. The alleged object descended from clouds near an orchard and woodland. The first article described a matt aluminium spinning-top shape, four metres across and 2.5 metres high. A shaggy figure, its face hidden by long hair and its back covered with yellow-brown material, supposedly moved on all fours toward the wood, returned and departed aboard the object. Later catalogues retained this vivid sequence, sometimes changing the date or spelling the locality “Olmont.” On 23 September, however, L’Ardennais interviewed Pierre Delvenne directly. He said he had joked with two local enthusiasts, agreeing with their leading questions about a machine and its occupant. He denied seeing a flying saucer. He had noticed something much farther away in rainy weather, perhaps campers playing with a balloon, but could not identify it. Patrick Gross reproduces both articles. The elaborate encounter belongs to the corrected newspaper tale, not a surviving confirmed observation of a craft or hairy visitor.