Sighting in Seuillet, May 3, 2009

At about 10:15 p.m., a witness noticed an object passing silently over their home. Flashing white lights at each corner outlined what looked to them like a dark triangular shape, and a steady red light was also visible. The witness called their spouse, who saw only two white lights that did not flash, plus a red one, moving away across the sky. The first witness followed the object with their eyes for roughly four to five minutes. No other testimony was gathered, and no civil aircraft flight was recorded in the airspace over the communes the witness named.

The investigation drew on the gendarmerie report, the evidence collected, field visits, an interview with the witness and further research. It found the case both complex, since it contains three phases of observation that are not necessarily connected, and thin, since the only witness gave an account that was not always consistent, partly because of the long delay before the inquiry. The spouse's testimony covered only the end of the sighting, the least strange part. The moon lay exactly within the witness's field of view yet was never mentioned; it almost certainly played a part in some of what was seen, though how remains unclear. It cannot, however, account for the steady red light that both people saw. A complex scenario was considered, involving fireworks followed by a mistaken view of the moon through clouds as an aircraft happened to pass, but several features did not fit. Given these uncertainties, and without being able to establish that the phenomenon was truly strange, GEIPAN classified the case as C because of a lack of reliable information.