The Silent Oval at Saint-Zacharie

At seven in the morning on Monday 12 January 2015, the witness noticed a diffuse light through a glass door at home. Out on the terrace, the witness found a silent object a few metres away and coming straight on. A white light that did not dazzle sat at its front. It moved slowly between the closely packed mobile homes. The witness went round the side of the home and came face to face with its right flank, where a yellow and red "logo" was visible. At that point, in GEIPAN's words, the witness "perd la notion du temps" (loses track of time). The object carried on towards the north-north-east. It tilted, gained speed and height and disappeared over the trees. Only then did the witness see that it was oval. GEIPAN's summary calls it a charcoal-grey oval mass with lights.

What is on the record

The file is GEIPAN's own, with an investigation report and a witness questionnaire. GEIPAN's testimony sheet gives the witness as a man of 60 and puts the object three to five metres away and about the size of a car. No one else came forward. GEIPAN finds the sighting strange for three reasons: how unusual the object looked, the very early hour and the isolation of the spot.

It tested one ordinary explanation. On speed, size and shape nothing stands out, and GEIPAN says that on those grounds it could have been an inflatable advertising balloon. The path is the problem. The object slipped past obstacles with what GEIPAN calls improbable luck. A balloon would have had to escape its owner, and there was nothing to advertise so far from anywhere. GEIPAN could not validate the idea.

It rates the testimony's consistency as good. It also notes that the account rests on one person with no photograph, which puts it at "le juste minimum" (the bare minimum) needed to call the sighting strange and unexplained. The case went before GEIPAN's panel of experts and is classed D1: an unexplained phenomenon of medium strangeness.

Why it sits where it does

L0 · SINGLE ACCOUNT. GEIPAN withholds the identities of its witnesses, so the released record carries no identified witness, and nobody else saw the object. The tier measures sourcing, not the quality of the investigation. What passed between the mobile homes is not resolved here.