The Port-la-Nouvelle helmet

At 21.15 on 26 January 1988 a witness at Port-la-Nouvelle, a port town on the Aude coast, saw a large object flying at low altitude. He saw it several times. Its shape made him think of "un casque avec deux ailes" (a helmet with two wings). It made no sound as it moved. A white light came from inside it and turned orange. In the end the object moved off quickly and was gone.

What is on the record

The source is GEIPAN, the unit of the French space agency CNES that investigates reports of unidentified aerospace phenomena. Its file 1988-01-01123 holds a short summary and a single witness questionnaire.

The questionnaire adds a few particulars. The witness was a man of 50. The sky was partly cloudy, and the land cover around the sighting is logged as open water. His line of sight is recorded at 270 degrees, which is due west. He estimated the object at 10 metres long and 5 metres high, a single object moving at varying speed in total silence. The summary calls it imposing, and its one-line résumé says it changed direction.

GEIPAN classes the case D. That is its category for a phenomenon it investigated and could not identify. The file states that "aucune autre information n'a pu être recueillie" (no other information could be gathered) and that the phenomenon remains unexplained. It lists no hypotheses tested or rejected, and it gives no sign that anyone else reported the object that night.

Why it sits where it does

This case grades L0, a single account. GEIPAN withholds the identities of witnesses, so its record carries no identified witness, and this one has only one witness to begin with. The tier measures sourcing and is not a verdict on GEIPAN's investigation. What the record holds is one man's account of a silent, glowing, helmet-shaped object, logged by a state body that could not explain it. What he saw is not resolved here.