The Game Wardens' Three Lights

At a quarter past eleven on the night of 30 May 1989, three game wardens were watching for poachers at La Neuvelle-lès-Lure, in the Haute-Saône. Directly above them they saw three lights like projectors, set in a triangle and firing off violent flashes. They heard no engine. After some twenty seconds the lights shot straight up until the wardens nearly lost them, zigzagging as they went. Then the group dropped back just as fast and stopped over their heads again. One warden radioed two colleagues posted in a fir plantation some 500 metres away. A red light came on in the middle of the three. Within seconds it zigzagged away. The two colleagues saw only a flash or two vanish on the horizon.

What is on the record

The archive holds the case file of GEIPAN, the unit of the French space agency CNES that investigates UAP reports. It publishes the gendarmerie file with the three statements, the wardens' own report of 5 June and a letter from their hunting federation.

A fighter jet passed soon after. GEIPAN's summary calls it a Jaguar, while the wardens' statements call it a Mirage. Either way, GEIPAN says it could not be confused with the silent lights. The wardens heard its engine. The next day they rang the control tower at the nearby air base, and were told nothing unusual had been picked up. GEIPAN notes that inquiries there "n'ont pas permis de confirmer le témoignage des 3 témoins" (did not confirm the three witnesses' account). The wardens say the local gendarmerie at first did nothing, so in July their federation's president wrote over its head. Formal statements followed in August.

Class D is GEIPAN's category for a phenomenon it investigated and could not explain. It rates this case strange to very strange, with medium to strong consistency.

Why it sits where it does

The page grades L4 · OFFICIAL RECORD. A released government record names who saw it. GEIPAN blanks the wardens' names, but the file identifies two of them as wardens of the Office National de la Chasse and the third as a student on placement with their hunting federation. No independent testimony sits beside that record. The tier measures sourcing, not truth, and it is never a verdict. What flashed over the wardens that night is not resolved here.