VERNY (57) 18.08.2024

On 18 August 2024 at about 21:30 in Verny (57), a witness saw 3 large orange lights forming a triangle. They moved slowly from north to south, rose and disappeared into clouds. Two similar lights followed and disappeared at the same place. People with the witness also saw them. The lights appeared round, orange and large, and were completely silent. The main witness remained calm and focused, choosing not to film despite requests from relatives. Another household member recorded a short video, in which the lights appeared smaller. A neighbor also saw the phenomenon, bringing the total to 5 witnesses. GEIPAN assesses the strangeness as moderate and the evidential support as good: several observers, but only one account, with a video suitable for analysis. It considers sky lanterns the probable explanation. Under GEIPAN's criteria, evidential support is the amount of information considered reliable and objectively established that has been collected for an account. Orange points moving together and giving an impression of mass are typical of this kind of sighting. The apparent trajectory was also close to the wind direction (see the investigation report). Analysis with IPACO® found no objective feature that ruled out lanterns. The video was not the original file: transfer through WhatsApp had caused heavy compression and loss of technical information, limiting further investigation. The source describes IPACO® as GEIPAN's image-analysis and processing software and gives IPACO.fr as its website. The video is compatible with 3 light sources of the sky-lantern type. The release location could not be established. GEIPAN classifies the case B: probable observation of sky lanterns.