Sighting in Châtel-Montagne, August 1998

The account was gathered in 2014 and concerns an event from the summer of 1998, in July or August; the witness can no longer say which day or month it was. At the time, the main witness, then 12 years old, was playing with another child on a property in open countryside. Their attention was drawn to an elongated grey object with portholes, of an unspecified number, through which a white light shone. It appeared to the right of the chalet in front of them and crossed the clear sky from right to left.

The witness described it as a cylinder about 50 m long, "hard" in appearance and dark "copper" in colour. It moved silently, seemed to skim the tops of nearby trees, and then vanished a little further on behind the trees on a hill. The sighting lasted between 30 seconds and one minute. The children ran to tell the adults, who were having dinner outside with their backs to the phenomenon and its path; none of them could confirm what the children had seen. Only one testimony was collected.

Even though the investigator met the witness, the scope of the inquiry remained very limited. A solar balloon, of the novelty-gadget type, is a possible explanation: its shape and silent movement fit, and it accounts for most of the strangeness. However, it was impossible to check whether the direction of travel matched the wind. With so little information, this explanation could be neither confirmed nor ruled out, and GEIPAN classified the case as C: insufficient data.