CHAMALIERES (63) 20.08.2011

A witness reported a sighting from his fourth-floor apartment terrace on 20 August 2011 at 20:15. Looking towards Montjuzet (63), he said he saw a flat, dark-grey oval object moving at cloud height, without any particular sound. He photographed it, and it disappeared very rapidly. The sighting lasted 10 seconds. No other accounts were collected. GEIPAN considered the photograph the central evidence and the source of all the case's strangeness (see the investigation report). Analysis revealed anomalies that, in its judgment, made deception very probable at least in the photograph and most probably in the entire sighting. It considered 3 possibilities: - An authentic photograph with camera defects. GEIPAN rejected this because the anomalies, notably a grid tilted 2° from vertical, were not plausible defects for that camera and were absent from later photographs. The shadow beneath the object did not match the reported time, and the image's ISO settings differed too greatly from other sky photographs taken with the same camera. - An authentic photograph affected by an unknown phenomenon. This would require electromagnetic interference to add a grid without seriously disrupting the rest of the image. GEIPAN could conceive of no radiation producing that effect. The incompatible shadow and markedly different ISO settings also counted against it, and this hypothesis was rejected. - A real aerial sighting followed by a fabricated photograph intended to strengthen the account. This would require the witness to find a similar image, devise a method of photographing it and supply it to the press quickly. GEIPAN regarded this as conceivable but as severely weakening the visual account's reliability, especially because the witness did not acknowledge deception when confronted with these arguments. GEIPAN ultimately favoured an entirely fabricated sighting scenario based on an image from a video documentary. It found the anomalies incompatible with an authentic photograph of a cloudy sky, whereas photographing a printed document bearing the grid, or a video screen, readily explained the pattern. It again cited the shadow incompatible with the reported time and the unusual ISO settings. The witness could not supply photographs taken immediately before and after the reference image. GEIPAN noted that fabrication usually involves several attempts to select the best result. Failure to provide the requested adjacent images therefore supported the hoax hypothesis, although less decisively than the other evidence. Taken together, GEIPAN judged these points to make a hoax highly probable and retained no other explanation. It classified the case A: very high probability of a hoax, with the image being a photograph of another picture or screen depicting a UAP. The source also explains the delayed publication. In 2011, GEIPAN's head telephoned the witness with the probable-deception conclusion. The witness maintained that the photograph was authentic. Out of consideration for him, they agreed that GEIPAN would withhold its conclusions from the website; the discussion did not change those conclusions. In return, he was to refrain from publicly describing the sighting as a case in which GEIPAN had reached no conclusion or a different one, which would misrepresent its work. According to the source, he nevertheless wrote on a forum in 2012 that GEIPAN could find no explanation but was withholding that result. GEIPAN stated that this prompted publication of its findings.