Sighting in Nîmes, October 13, 2015

Shortly before 1 a.m., a witness at home was disturbed by the noise of fighter jets crossing the sky. They opened their shutters to see what was happening and saw, above their building, a "craft" made up of several triangular shapes and white dots. They filmed it straight away, but the wind was strong and cold and they could not stay outside for long. On watching the footage afterwards, they found several craft in it, including one point that stayed more or less fixed. The witness had seen only one phenomenon with their own eyes; the other bright points appeared only on the video, which also shows an orange oval shape. They did not write to GEIPAN until May 2019, and no other testimony was collected.

The witness described a clear, cloudless, starry sky, but the Nîmes-Garons weather station recorded a heavily overcast, humid sky with a 20 km/h wind (gusts up to 35 km/h) and visibility of 13 km. The heavy cloud cover could explain the phenomena appearing and disappearing, which reduces the strangeness of the case. Such inconsistencies are common in late testimony, but they weaken the reliability of the account.

The lantern hypothesis found little support: the time of year, a weekday, the middle of the night and the wind all fit poorly, and a north/south wind is hard to reconcile with an observation toward the east/south-east. Military aircraft seemed the most likely explanation: the witness had heard planes before the sighting, and the lack of noise at the exact moment could be due to distance, flight path or altitude. It could not be confirmed, however, since the observation was too brief to check the trajectory and the late report ruled out radar verification. The points seen only on video might also be an optical effect or a reflection in the lens. GEIPAN classified the case C, for lack of reliable information.