Sighting in Saint-André, August 4, 2013

On a very hot night, the witness photographed distant thunderstorms before going to bed, at around 3 or 4 a.m. by their own estimate. Later, while asleep, a violent flash of light woke them and their spouse. Both thought it was the storm. The witness went out onto the balcony and took a second photograph. On that image they noticed a string of white-yellow streaks of light, which left them intrigued.

What the two of them had seen directly was not particularly strange: the spouse had said the lightning was getting closer, and they had interpreted the streaks of light as lightning. The puzzling element of the report therefore came from what appeared on the second photograph.

Analysis of that photo showed photographic artefacts, probably caused by the exposure time (8 seconds) and by the camera moving among nearby lights, even moderately bright ones, before the exposure ended. GEIPAN classified the case as A: the witness had mistaken a photographic artefact for a real phenomenon, under a stormy sky.