BEAUMONT-SUR-SARTHE (72) 22.03.2025

On the night of March 21-22, 2025, the witness was driving his car when he saw, at about 2 a.m., a glimmer in the sky which he described as "a small moving fog bank." He quickly interrupted his observation in order to remain focused on his driving. A few minutes later, arriving at his home in Beaumont-sur-Sarthe (72), he again distinguished the phenomenon and tried to film it. On the video, an object appeared in the visual field towards the eleventh second of the recording. The evidential quality of this case is assessed as medium: the investigation is based on the testimony of a single person and on a usable video, but no data could be collected regarding the first luminous phenomenon observed with the naked eye. According to the GEIPAN criteria, evidential quality corresponds to the amount of information considered reliable and verifiable collected in the context of testimony. The evidence provided by the witness in the GEIPAN questionnaire is only about the phenomenon recorded in the video, without a precise description of the phenomenon observed initially with the naked eye. This lack of additional information makes its identification impossible. The analysis was therefore limited to the phenomenon visible on the video sequence. With regard to the visible luminous phenomenon on the video, which appears around the 11-second mark, the analysis carried out using the IPACO image authentication and processing software concludes that it is an unwanted internal reflection generated by the brightness of the streetlight in the field of the lens. The apparent displacement of the phenomenon is caused by the movement of the witness's mobile phone during the recording. (See Annex 1 - Photographic Analysis.) The witness, intrigued by a first visual observation made from his vehicle, naturally associates this experience with the subsequent observation, recorded moments later on video, despite the marked differences between the two phenomena (“fog bank” for the first observation and "a drone-like appearance" for the second). The GEIPAN classifies this case in A for the video part: an unwanted internal reflection in the camera lens.