The construction site near Nouatre, France where George Gatay and his crew witnessed a vanishing entity, September 30, 1954.
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UFO|UAP & ENTITY ENCOUNTER REPORT
1954: The Nouatre, France Encounter — George Gatay
A strange, peculiar drowsiness pulled construction foreman George Gatay away from his eight-man crew and toward a slope thirty feet off — where a man in an opaque glass helmet stood holding a rod-like device, an electronic display glowing on his chest, in front of a dome-shaped craft with blade-like fittings above its cupola. Gatay stood frozen as the figure simply vanished “like an image one erases.” His seven co-workers, it turned out, had been in a daze of their own the entire time.
Date: September 30, 1954
Sighting Time: 16:30 (4:30 p.m.)
Day/Night: Day
Location: Nouatre, Indre-et-Loire, France (a construction site)
Urban or Rural: Rural/construction site
No. of Entity(‘s): 1
Entity Type: Humanoid
Entity Description: Wore an opaque glass helmet with a large visor, gray coveralls, and short boots; carried a rod-like object described as resembling a weapon; a kind of electronic instrument display was visible on his chest
Hynek Classification: CE-III (Close Encounter, Third Kind — entity present at close range, no communication)
Duration: Not precisely specified; brief, ending with the entity’s abrupt disappearance and the object’s subsequent departure
No. of Object(s): 1
Description of the Object(s): Dome-shaped, with a cupola fitted with blade-like devices above it
Shape/Size/Color of Object(s): Dome-shaped with a bladed cupola; precise dimensions and color not specified beyond the object appearing to “erase” itself in a blue haze on departure
Distance to Object(s): The entity stood roughly 30 ft from Gatay, in front of the hovering object
Height & Speed: The object hovered approximately 3 ft above the ground before rising in successive vertical jerks and vanishing in a blue haze
Number of Witnesses: 8 (foreman George Gatay directly witnessed the entity and object; his seven co-workers, including Mr. Beurrois and excavator driver Mr. Lubanovic, experienced a simultaneous daze and separately confirmed seeing the object and entity)
Special Features/Characteristics: Gatay was drawn away from his crew by an unexplained “peculiar drowsiness,” walking without conscious awareness of his destination; he was paralyzed for the duration of the sighting; his seven co-workers were simultaneously in a daze despite not being at the same vantage point; the entity vanished instantaneously, not by walking away, but as Gatay described it, “like an image one erases”; the object then departed with a strong whistling sound, rising in successive vertical jerks before disappearing in a blue haze; all eight men had been skeptics regarding UFOs prior to the incident; Gatay subsequently suffered about a week of insomnia, strong headaches, and loss of appetite
Case Status: Unresolved — an eight-witness account involving a respected, war-decorated foreman, treated by serious investigators as credible despite skepticism from some American ufology commentators
Source: Jacques Vallee, Lumiere Dans la Nuit #43; “Passport to Magonia”; “Chronique des Apparitions Extra-Terrestres” (1972); France-Soir, October 3, 1954
Summary/Description: At 4:30 p.m. on September 30, 1954, George Gatay, foreman of an eight-man construction crew at Nouatre, Indre-et-Loire, France, was drawn away from his crew by an unexplained drowsiness. Some distance off, he encountered a man in an opaque glass helmet and gray coveralls, carrying a rod-like object and displaying an electronic instrument panel on his chest, standing before a dome-shaped, blade-cupola’d object hovering about 3 ft off the ground. Gatay was paralyzed and could not approach. The entity vanished instantly, “like an image one erases,” and the object rose with a strong whistling sound in successive vertical jerks before disappearing in a blue haze. Gatay’s seven co-workers had simultaneously experienced a daze of their own, and separately confirmed seeing a “flying saucer” and a diver-suited man in front of it. All eight men had previously been UFO skeptics. Gatay, a respected local figure who had fought with the French Resistance and been wounded in Luxembourg, suffered roughly a week of insomnia, headaches, and appetite loss following the encounter.
Related Cases: None known
Detailed Report
George Gatay was foreman of an eight-man construction crew working near Nouatre, in France’s Indre-et-Loire department, on the afternoon of September 30, 1954. At half past four, something pulled him away from his crew — not a decision he consciously made, but a sensation he could only describe as a “peculiar drowsiness,” carrying him on foot without his understanding why or where he was headed.
A short distance from the construction site, he found himself facing a man standing on a slope roughly thirty feet away. The figure wore an opaque glass helmet with a large visor, gray coveralls, and short boots, and held in one hand an object Gatay took to be some kind of weapon — a rod of some sort. Across his chest sat what looked like an electronic instrument display. Behind him, hovering about three feet above the ground, was a dome-shaped object, its cupola fitted with blade-like devices.
Gatay found himself unable to move, frozen in place, transfixed. And then, without warning or transition, the figure was simply gone. “Suddenly, the strange man vanished,” Gatay later said, “and I couldn’t explain how he did it, since he did not disappear from my field of vision by walking away, but vanished like an image one erases.” A strong whistling sound followed, loud enough to drown out the noise of the crew’s own excavators working nearby. The object itself then began to rise — not smoothly, but in successive vertical jerks — before it too disappeared, swallowed into what Gatay described as a kind of blue haze, “as if by a miracle.”
As soon as the paralysis released him, Gatay ran back to his crew, calling out to ask if any of them had seen anything. The answer came immediately and from multiple directions: Mr. Beurrois answered, “Yes — a flying saucer!” Excavator driver Mr. Lubanovic added his own detail: “There was a man dressed like a diver in front of it.” The rest of the crew confirmed the same broad account. All eight men, it emerged, had experienced some form of daze during the incident — not just Gatay, who had the closest vantage point.
Gatay’s own standing in the community lent the case weight from the start. He had fought with the French Resistance during the war and been wounded in Luxembourg — a respected, credible figure by any local standard, and by his crew’s own account, a skeptic about flying saucers before that afternoon. In the encounter’s aftermath, he suffered roughly a week of insomnia, severe headaches, and a loss of appetite. Even afterward, the crew’s first instinct was to assume they’d witnessed some kind of experimental French aircraft — an explanation that struggled to account for the object’s hovering, its vertical-jerk ascent, and its outright vanishing in front of eight witnesses.
RESEARCHER’S NOTES
Nouatre — 1954 and Eight Witnesses in Simultaneous Daze
- Eight witnesses, only one at close range: Gatay’s direct encounter with the entity was witnessed by him alone, but the shared, simultaneous “daze” experienced by his entire crew — none of whom had his vantage point — is itself a striking, unexplained detail distinct from a typical single-witness account.
- A specific, physiological aftermath: Gatay’s week of insomnia, headaches, and appetite loss following the encounter is a concrete physical consequence, independent of the sighting’s content, that a physician could in principle have documented at the time.
- A credible, decorated witness with no apparent motive to fabricate: Gatay’s Resistance service and combat wound, combined with his crew’s confirmation that all eight men were skeptics beforehand, work against a simple explanation of the case as attention-seeking invention.
- The entity’s manner of disappearance is a specific, unusual claim: Vanishing “like an image one erases,” rather than fleeing or boarding a craft, describes something closer to an optical or dimensional discontinuity than a physical departure — a detail this archive preserves exactly as Gatay described it, without further interpretation.
- Investigated and published close to the event, by a serious researcher: Jacques Vallee’s documentation, along with contemporary French press coverage in France-Soir just days after the sighting, gives this case a stronger, closer-to-the-event documentation trail than many entries in this archive.
This case combines a credible, decorated primary witness, a documented physical aftermath, and a corroborating crew of seven who experienced their own simultaneous daze — a genuinely unusual combination of evidentiary elements. It remains unresolved, and this archive notes plainly that American ufology commentary has treated it with more skepticism than the French researchers who investigated it directly.
“Suddenly, the strange man vanished, and I couldn’t explain how he did it, since he did not disappear from my field of vision by walking away, but vanished like an image one erases.”
— George Gatay, Nouatre, France, September 30, 1954
