Real sightings

Documented cases, each replayed in the sky of its own reported date, time and place. 12 reconstructions, none of them a video: each is computed while you watch it.

Real sightings#

Twelve documented cases, each replayed in the sky of its own reported date, time and place.

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Chiles & Whitted, 1948

Night over Alabama, 02:45. Two airline pilots described the same phenomenon differently — open it full size to switch observer.

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Early morning on the plateau, 05:45, the Sun forty minutes up and 7° high in the north-east — and the real relief of that field under the observer's feet. Two statements of the same witness, the gendarmerie's report of 2 July and his deposition of 18 August — open it full size to switch.

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Cussac, 1967

Mid-morning on a Cantal plateau, 10:30. A sphere 82 m off behind a hedge, four small black beings diving into it, a widening helix — every angle from the GEPAN's 1978 theodolite survey. Two accounts, François's and his sister Anne-Marie's — open it full size to switch.

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Socorro, 1964

Low sun, 17:50, New Mexico. The case people argue about the phenomenon's size in — and where the reconstruction refuses to state one.

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Maffliers, 2012

Dawn under a low grey sky, 06:06, Val-d'Oise. A silvery shape 8.5° wide before a wood's edge, then a shower, a tilt and a departure, each angle from the GEIPAN's calibrated photographs — and the rising Sun, hidden, 60° to the right.

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McMinnville, 1950

Evening on an Oregon farm, 19:45: Paul Trent's two photographs, through the Roamer 1 he took them with. Switch to the 2013 study by Cousyn, Louange and Quick to see what they found: a model 12 cm across on a 70 cm thread under the electric line, swinging 9° between the two exposures — or to the same object as a hubcap, a car mirror, a disc 25 m wide, all of the same angular width and look.

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Silly-le-Long, 2015

A gendarmerie van on the RN2 at 00:50, a Moon almost full behind it, and a light aircraft on final that stays pinned to one spot as both close in. Switch to the GEIPAN's reading to see it — and how far it stays from what the driver described.

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Braine-le-Comte, 2015

A July night in Hainaut, 00:45, no Moon. Three observers on a lawn, each watching a different part of the sky, see a dark boomerang cross it in ten seconds — with orange lights for one, red lights for another, and none for the third. Open it full size to switch observer.

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Trans-en-Provence, 1981

Dusk in the Var, 17:00, 8 January. A man building a pump shelter hears a faint whistle: a grey machine of two upturned saucers, 2.5 m across, drops onto his terrace, stays some twenty seconds against the retaining wall, then tilts and leaves to the north-east. The GEPAN measured its mark and the plants around it — the metres here are its reconstruction's. Switch to its reading to see what the witness could not have seen from where he stood.

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Wilcox, 1964

Broad daylight, 10:00, New York State, with a cloud deck lifting from 800 m to 913 m across the two hours the record covers.

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Mission Viejo, 2026

Dusk in Orange County, 19:45. A yellow orb with an orange rim crosses the southern sky in two seconds and drops behind a tree line. Built from a single post on X and the witness's own sketch, with every guess marked as one.

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Saint-Lô, 2026

A moonless night in Normandy, about 2:30. A translucent white half-moon trailing filaments crosses the whole sky from north to south in four seconds and ends in a 720-degree spiral behind the trees. Built from the witness's written replies to an investigator's questions; his drawing is still to come.