(CAN) CHASSENEUIL-DU-POITOU (86) 24.09.2009

The source dates a telephone call to GEIPAN to 24 August 2009, concerning several balls of light seen “the day before yesterday,” given as the night of 22–23 September 2009. These dates are inconsistent in the source. Recontacted a month later to obtain the ground-observation questionnaire on this observation, the witness withdrew, having in the meantime discovered that they were sky lanterns. He takes the opportunity to report on a strange phenomenon observed by his 7-year-old son on Thursday, September 24, 2009, around 7pm. A questionnaire and a fax drawing are sent to the GEIPAN in October 2009. That evening, the child playing in the garden has his attention drawn to the noise of an airplane coming from the southwest. The child is then intrigued by an opaque white box-shaped object behind the plane. The object tilted to pass under the plane and then falls abruptly to stabilize below a high-voltage line. It then moved towards the TV antenna of the neighbour's house (at 10m), rises at very high speed to stop abruptly and go back vertically to disappear in the sky. The observation lasted 20–30 seconds in a clear, cloudless sky. No other account was reported to GEIPAN. A steady wind averaging 17 km/h was blowing from the north-northeast, the opaque white box-shaped object appeared high in the sky southwest of the observation site, i.e. against the wind. It falls abruptly to stabilize itself at the height of the roofs, silently progresses under the high-voltage line, always against the wind, before rising vertically again and disappearing into the sky. GEIPAN found no ordinary hypothesis matching these features. This case is the result of the testimony of a 7-year-old child, an indirect testimony as reported by his father. GEIPAN did not then consider it desirable to question a child of this age further. There was no particular reason to doubt the child’s sincerity, but a child of this age can be more easily influenced, including unconsciously, by discussions or situations in his immediate environment, an influence that may lead to exaggeration or over-interpretation of observed elements that may have been ordinary to begin with. Note that the father had already given a first testimony to GEIPAN a month earlier, this other observation had found an explanation quickly (sky lanterns) but could create in the child this factor of influence or anxiety in relation to the possible strangeness of the sky. As a result, GEIPAN classifies case C: lack of reliable information.