Sighting in Nort-sur-Erdre (44) 07.09.1987 « Joe le Taxi », September 7, 1987

On the evening before the sighting, the elder of two children, aged 10, went to bed and listened to a cassette on a radio-cassette player. Feeling tired, they switched it off and fell asleep. Around 5 a.m. a noise woke the child, who noticed a light through the shutters. The witness got up, picked up the radio-cassette player and started it to record the noise, while watching an orange luminous disc with a flashing light. The recording lasted about twenty seconds, and the light disappeared shortly afterwards.

GEPAN carried out several reconstructions, none of which was truly conclusive. Leaf samples were taken from the birch trees where the light had appeared, and the original cassette was handed over to GEPAN for expert analysis. Tested with an identical player, it showed unambiguously that the noise had been recorded internally by the device and not through its microphone. It was internal reception noise, possibly shortwave, unrelated to the light. The biochemical analysis of the leaves gave mixed results: one sample differed from the others on some characteristics, which might possibly point to thermal or light stress, even though the foliage showed no damage. These results were not convincing.

The witness later admitted having made the event up to draw their parents' attention during a difficult period of childhood, and then being unable to back out. The case, first classified D, was reclassified A: fully explained observation.