METZ (57) 18.09.2019

The witness going to work on 18 September 2019 at the very beginning of the morning, observes in the sky an object of the shape of a white equilateral triangle with a yellow area at its base. The UAP is still and will be observed for 10 seconds. Then, the witness continues his path. When he looks back at the sky, the UAP has disappeared. Only one testimony will be collected. While the two most plausible explanatory assumptions considered on the basis of the evidence collected are consistent with the behaviour of the UAP (apparent immobility), they are not sufficient in terms of the description provided (see the investigation report), since these two assumptions, respectively a crane spreader or lifting beam and an aircraft contrail account for only too small a part of the description provided by the witness. Indeed, the strangeness remains quite high. Remote and on-site investigations gathered a fairly satisfactory amount of information. However, the absence of other witnesses and other objective evidence, such as photographs or video of the UAP, prevents the case’s evidential quality from being strengthened. The witness is rather imprecise (doubts related to his own research?) in his estimates to describe the phenomenon: some details changed unintentionally during the investigation (apparent size, azimut, height, shape, ...). Finally, even though the witness cooperated actively with the investigation, the reliability of the testimony seems to be impaired by the fact that he may have been influenced by a UFO-focused environment linked to his personal research to understand the observation, before and after it. GEIPAN considers him sincere in reporting an unusual observation, but sees signs that he was trying to convince others and himself of its unusual nature. Due to its unexplained residual strangeness, this case is of real interest, but its reliability has probably been affected, which reduces its evidential quality. GEIPAN classifies this case C for lack of reliable information.