Sighting in Nort-sur-Erdre, November 25, 1990

In the night from Saturday to Sunday, at about 12:45 a.m., four people were driving: an adult and three children. A fourth child was also in the car but did not want to watch the phenomenon. Only the adult and one of the children gave statements to the gendarmes. On the road from Nort-sur-Erdre toward Casson, they saw three fluorescent green phenomena appear one after another, differing in shape and size: one elongated, one rounded and one oval. They moved silently and stayed grouped, drifting sometimes to the right and sometimes to the left of the road. The witnesses lost sight of them several times on the way home. The last time they saw them, they were heading toward Suce-sur-Erdre. One witness said that one of them moved at the same speed as the car. The gendarmes questioned several people living along the route but gathered no other testimony.

GEIPAN re-examined this case, originally classified D, and reclassified it as A. The witnesses most probably saw the beam and cloud impact spots of a "skytracker" searchlight, likely operated from a nightclub in Nantes or its suburbs. Several points fit together: a weekend night, partial cloud cover (5/8) in two low layers, and localized showers that made the beam visible or invisible depending on the area. The searchlight's movements, combined with the motion of the car, explain the changing shapes, the appearances and the disappearances. The impression of being followed comes from a known illusion called the "following ball". Green existed for these devices in 1990, and the "fluorescent" look was probably exaggerated. The case has poor consistency, with no angular data and no duration, and the light source could not be traced almost thirty years later. That absence is not conclusive, since other cases from the period showed that such equipment was sold to nightclubs.