Sighting in Hem, December 16, 2022

At about 9 p.m., a witness walking their dog saw three reddish rings arranged in a triangle in the night sky. The group moved slowly along a straight path, from the west-northwest toward the east. The witness could barely make out a dark structure between the rings, and heard no noise. After about ten seconds, the object went out on the spot, in the east-southeast, as if its lights had been switched off. The witness was deeply struck by the triangular shape, the dark mass, the size and the torus-shaped lights.

This is the only account available. It was collected a year after the event, and there is no photo or video, so the case's consistency is rated as medium. Two GEIPAN investigators carried out a field investigation, including an interview and a reconstruction, about a year and a half after the sighting.

The lantern hypothesis was ruled out because the movement did not follow the wind direction. An aircraft was not retained, since no radar trace confirmed one; neither explanation accounts for the torus-shaped lights anyway. One or more drones fitted with customized lights matched the straight trajectory and the speed estimated for a distance of 100 m or less, but no drone with three torus-shaped lights was found. The sizes of recreational drones, the ban on drone flights in the area (including at night) and the absence of noise in a very quiet setting fit this idea poorly. A military drone of unusual size was considered, but no concrete evidence supported it. As no hypothesis was conclusive, the case was classified D1: phenomenon unidentified after investigation.