Sighting in Barbâtre, May 1, 2008

Sometime between 11 p.m. and 1 a.m. on the night of 1 May, a fisherman standing on a beach noticed a white point of light moving slowly across the sky. It seemed to come from the Île d'Yeu and travelled eastward. The witness lost sight of it when it passed into the clouds.

GEIPAN's investigation found that the description matched a Thai lantern, a glowing ball carried along by the wind, which in this case blew from the east. The date and time fit this explanation too, and the lantern may have been released from a boat at sea. The drift toward the north that the witness saw was probably due to the coast altering the low-altitude wind flow. The case is classified B: a Thai lantern is the probable explanation.