Sighting in Saint-Michel-de-Villadeix, December 1, 1988

At about 8:20 a.m., a witness was out walking their dog on the road near their home. About 60 metres away, they saw an intense light, stronger than that of arc welding. The witness described it as a round shape, blue-violet with graduated shades, moving in a straight line from south to north, silently and at very high speed. During the three or four seconds of the sighting, the witness felt a sensation of pressure and received an electric shock. The dog ran off toward the house and stopped responding to commands.

The witness gave two statements to the gendarmerie, one on the day itself and another ten days later. The second mentioned several balls, located in the field, much farther from the road and from the crossing of the power lines.

GEIPAN reexamined the case, originally classified D, and relied on the first statement, since the second may have been influenced by contacts with neighbours and the media. The ball had appeared right next to the crossing of two power lines and a transformer, and moved in line with one of them. Residents had noticed a sudden, brief drop in voltage at that time, and the witness had felt pressure and a shock. The hypothesis adopted is a luminous ball caused by ionisation of the air in an intense electric field, probably resulting from a malfunction. Glows following power lines have been observed in other cases. The case is classified B: an electrical and plasma phenomenon.