Sighting in Boulogne-Billancourt, September 7, 1997

At 1:43 a.m., from their balcony, the witness saw a large triangular shape with two blue lights and one green light. It moved slowly in a straight line, and the sighting lasted 12 seconds. The witness heard no sound but felt vibrations in their body. When they tried to photograph the object, their camera jammed. There was only one witness.

The case was first classed D, unexplained, by the service that preceded the GEIPAN at the time. A re-examination reached a different conclusion. The witness was questioned by the gendarmerie the next day. Three months later they gave the gendarmerie a text published in a magazine on strange phenomena and mysteries, of which they were editor-in-chief. The two versions differ markedly. In the gendarmerie report, the witness saw the triangle first, and the vibrations came afterwards, felt in the body and on the glass doors. In the published account, the vibrations came first, notably in many of the balcony plants, and the triangle appeared afterwards. The duration went from 12 seconds to more than 17, said to be timed with a stopwatch. The apparent size went from three fingers to four. The camera, at first simply unusable, later refused to fire even in manual focus.

The GEIPAN concluded that these inconsistencies removed the reliability that a single testimony, with no photograph or other trace, needs when it describes this degree of strangeness. The witness's interest in mysteries was noted as a further factor. The case is classed C: insufficient data, testimony unusable.