The Palau-del-Vidre Black Triangle

At around six on a morning at the end of October 2008 two workers climbed into their van and set off on their round. First they noticed something very bright, like a star. Then, as they drove through Palau-del-Vidre, they saw above the houses "un énorme triangle noir avec une lumière rouge au milieu" (an enormous black triangle with a red light in the middle). Their statement sheet puts it less than 100 metres away. It moved slowly and made no sound.

What is on the record

GEIPAN is the unit of the French space agency CNES that investigates unidentified aerospace phenomena. It took the testimony in November 2009, more than a year after the event, and the witness could no longer give the exact date. Its file holds a description and one statement sheet, with no report or document attached.

GEIPAN treats the sighting as two things that need not be connected. The bright point was probably too bright to be Saturn, though Saturn stood in roughly that direction. The triangle is the harder part. An aircraft was the obvious candidate, but GEIPAN reasons that the witness would then have reported its position lights and, above all, its flashing anti-collision lights. It grants that the object's movement fits an ordinary aircraft. What makes it strange is the shape and the lighting. Because the report came so late, no check with the air authorities was possible.

GEIPAN says its inquiry considerably strengthened the consistency of the account and rates its strangeness medium to high. Its conclusion is that none of the usual hypotheses correctly explains the triangular object. It classes the case D1, which means it investigated and could not explain it.

Why it sits where it does

The page grades L0, a single account. GEIPAN withholds witness identities, so the record carries no identified witness, although two people were in the van. The tier measures sourcing, not the quality of the inquiry. The record holds two workers' account of a dark triangle over the village and GEIPAN's reasons for setting aside an aircraft. What passed over Palau-del-Vidre is not resolved here.