Sighting in Flavin, September 12, 1996

Two witnesses, a mother and her daughter, were driving out of the village at around 8 p.m. when they noticed an object they could not identify. It had an egg-shaped lower part, like a skirt, and a cylinder topped with a bright red dome bearing three lights. On the cylinder, a fluorescent green light rotated like a beacon. The object was silent and hovered about 4 metres above the ground, roughly ten metres from the road. Its size was about that of two cars. After a few minutes it moved away toward the north or north-west. The sighting was estimated to have lasted about two minutes.

That same evening, each of the two witnesses made a drawing and took notes. The next day they were interviewed by the gendarmerie, and a gendarme produced a computer-assisted drawing based on their descriptions. The sky was clear and starry, with no wind.

An investigation at the site found no traces or clues. Air traffic and radar showed nothing abnormal, surveillance patrols in the following days revealed nothing, and the search for other witnesses nearby turned up nothing. No similar case was reported in the print or television press. Neither the gendarmerie's investigation nor the witnesses' description made it possible to offer a coherent explanation, so GEIPAN classed the case D, an unexplained phenomenon.