Southwest / Figeac, FR being encounter — September 27, 1954

The Ceint-d'Eau case near Figeac is more contradictory in the original gendarmerie report than its familiar catalogue summary suggests. On 27 September 1954, a teacher told police that three pupils had reported a strange man and a flying box. Newspaper versions described a small figure in brick-red overalls speaking unintelligibly before entering a box-like machine that rose and departed south. Police interviewed the children separately the following morning. The ten-year-old girl described a bareheaded man about 1.2–1.3 metres tall, carrying a gun, and a roughly one-metre cubic box in a meadow. She said a shot frightened them on the morning journey to school, but placed the alleged departure at noon on their return. The eight-and-a-half-year-old instead described a figure only half a metre tall carrying a small box, and placed its departure in the morning. She had not seen anything at noon, and her certainty about red clothing depended on what the other girl had told her. The third child said he had seen nothing. The gendarmerie found no trace or independent local corroboration and explicitly noted that press accounts differed from the statements. Later claims that investigators established a schoolgirl prank also have disputed sourcing; they should not replace the documented contradictions with an unquestioned hoax verdict. The plate offers a nonviolent contextual view of a red-clothed man and box, without inventing alien anatomy, a technological hull or a witnessed takeoff agreed upon by the children.