St. Claude, FR being encounter — October 8, 1954

Around 11 p.m. on the night of October 8–9, 1954, twenty-four-year-old driver M. Puygelier was returning to Saint-Claud, Charente, in his truck. La Charente Libre’s October 11 report places the sighting at Bel-Air, about 500 metres from the village. He described a luminous, elongated, egg-like object descending, oscillating briefly, then settling behind a hedge near the road. Frightened, Puygelier continued into town. He returned with another person after recovering his composure. The object was then gone, but they made out a motionless human silhouette on the bank. Darkness prevented them from estimating its size. The following morning, residents reportedly found a three-metre strip of burned grass and surrounding trampled vegetation. The two stages should remain distinct: the second witness was not reported to see the luminous object, and neither described an occupant leaving it. The illustration combines them only under an explicit composite label. In 1979, Gérard Barthel and Jacques Brucker proposed an ignited hydrogen balloon and firefighters as the explanation, claiming later witness enquiries. The accessible reproduction does not provide their underlying interview records. This proposed identification belongs in the source history, alongside the newspaper account, without turning the uncertain silhouette into an established alien.