Sighting in Hayange, January 17, 1988

At around 7:30 pm, a witness and their family noticed an object above the hill facing their home. It was elliptical and carried a great many intense, flashing lights underneath, whose reflection could be seen in the trees. The gendarmerie report mentions about twenty lights. The object moved very slowly toward a factory in the town, then vanished abruptly, shrinking to a tiny point of light. The sighting lasted between 20 and 60 seconds. No other testimony was obtained.

GEIPAN classed the case as C, for lack of reliable information. All it has is a gendarme's report transcribing what the witness said, with the risk of distortion that implies, rather than a direct signed statement, which its current standards require. Of the four people present, only one account is reported, so the confirmation from the others cannot be used. Angular data are also missing, such as the object's apparent size or its height above the horizon, and the object itself is described neither by appearance nor by colour. What is described seems of limited strangeness and could fit an aircraft, or a ground searchlight reflecting off the clouds that were present that evening. The sudden disappearance may stem from two layers of interpretation, the witness's and the gendarme's: a drop in brightness or apparent size is often read as the object moving away, when it may instead come from the lights going out, changing orientation, or being hidden by haze, cloud or foliage. It is therefore impossible to reach a conclusion.