Sighting in Paris, September 7, 2015

Shortly before midnight one evening in early September, at about 11:30 pm, the witness heard a distinctive engine noise from an aircraft that had been flying over their neighbourhood at night for a few months. The noise returned at midnight. This time the witness switched off the radio and the light and opened the window of their fourth-floor apartment. They saw three steady silver lights and a flashing red light. The object followed a straight path, passed over the building opposite, and then disappeared, hidden by the urban landscape. The same thing happened again at 12:11 am and at 12:35 am. No other witness account was collected.

The noise itself did not surprise the witness, who recognised it. That night, for the first time, they looked at the source of the sound and could not identify it as an airplane or a helicopter, although they specified that they could only make out lights, not the shape of the object.

GEIPAN found nothing particularly strange about the sighting. The object had passed several times over the same building, and there was every reason to think it was a helicopter, since helicopters use different night lighting depending on their type or mission. Moreover, a loud and truly strange object flying back and forth over a Paris neighbourhood around midnight in summer would have prompted other reports. The case was classified B: probable sighting of an aircraft.