Meral, FR being encounter — October 14, 1954

The earliest located newspaper account places this event on Monday, October 11, 1954, at about 6 a.m., rather than October 14 in the evening as later catalogues often state. Baptiste Potin, 40, was cycling from Méral toward work at the Barres farm when he noticed an orange ball. Near a transformer on the Saint-Poix road, it appeared to descend ahead of him, an estimated 600 metres away. Potin described a flattened dome four or five metres across, intensely luminous and vaguely translucent. An indistinct dark shape inside remained motionless; it was not described as an identifiable person. After eight to ten minutes, the object reportedly reddened and departed toward Le Pertre. Continuing his journey, Potin encountered shining, snow-like fluff. At work, he found sticky white material on his clothes that brushing did not readily remove. Patrick Gross reproduces the contemporary press and compares later variants, including changed names, dates, object color and material behavior. A municipal retelling adds watch and bicycle-dynamo failures absent from the early report. Gross also proposes misidentification of the nearly full Moon, low in the same general road direction; that is an interpretive explanation rather than a contemporary determination. The plate follows the early account and leaves the interior shape indistinct.