Pilot witness in Marne, France

GEIPAN is re-examining old cases in order to be more relevant in its conclusions. Thanks to new technical means (software) and the investigation experience acquired over all these recent years, this re-examination sometimes results in a change of classification. The present re-examination concerns two observation cases previously classified D and named BROYES (51) 10.01.2000 and SOMMESOUS (51) on 31.12.1999. On 10 January 2000 between 9:00 PM and 9:05 PM, a motorist on the D39 at the water tower of Broyes (51) is suddenly completely blinded by a very high intensity light that seeps into the car through the sunroof. The engine and the car radio stop abruptly but the ignition remains on. According to the witness, after a minute, the phenomenon dissipates, the car radio starts working again and he can restart his car to go home, terrified. Following a telephone call from the Operational Center of the Gendarmerie, the gendarmes go immediately to the witness's home, who is severely shocked, then to the scene of the observation. They note that the sky is clear and heavily starry (shooting stars) and that air traffic is heavy and visible (strobe lights). The temperature is wintry but without frost. No disturbance of the power line along the road has been noted. Moreover, at this location, there is no public lighting. According to military sources, no flight is reported that evening. The on-site investigation by SEPRA and the reconstruction in the car will establish that the observation lasted between 15 and 30 seconds maximum instead of one minute in the witness's initial version. During the investigation, the gendarmerie will find another witness who observed a similar phenomenon but a few days earlier. On 31 December 1999 between 7:30 PM and 8:00 PM, a female motorist driving on the N4 at Sommesous (51) is blinded by a whitish flash-type glow. No noise is heard. All the dashboard indicator lights come on and the car engine stops abruptly, putting the car in neutral. The engine restarts by itself quickly. A check by a mechanic done on the witness's initiative on the battery terminals revealed nothing abnormal. We have two observation cases with strong spatial proximity (a few km) and temporal proximity (10 days) presenting an apparent strong similarity (see the single investigation report for both cases): - light (or flash) not localized, perceived by the driver of a car; - engine stoppage, dashboard disturbances. The BROYES (51) 10.01.2000 case is stranger in that the light is blinding and enters the vehicle. No physical hypothesis can be considered, the description is so strange. One can only formulate the hypothesis of strangeness induced or accentuated by the witness himself, but we have no elements to weigh this: - the witness watched the X-Files series on television shortly before the events, at the time when M6 was broadcasting season 4, which contains a scene where a UAP flies over a vehicle and illuminates it with a blinding white light. The witness may have encountered a real strangeness that evening and been influenced, consciously or unconsciously, by science fiction during the memorization or the telling of the events; - the young witness, living with his parents, may have been traumatized by an event unrelated to the UAP and may not have been able, for a reason related to his occasional drug use (declared by himself) or for some other reason, to justify his state to his parents upon returning home other than by inventing an experience directly inspired by X-Files. For the SOMMESOUS (51) 31.12.1999 case, the physical hypotheses (meteor, photographic flash, or firework burst a few hours before the turn of the year 2000) have no elements allowing them to be weighed. The consistency of these observation cases is POOR. BROYES (51) 10.01.2000 case: - in terms of information, although an investigation was conducted on site by the gendarmerie and SEPRA (GEIPAN at the time) shortly after the events, we only have a brief report of this investigation. No audio, video, or written recordings of the various interviews and reconstructions that took place during this investigation are in the file; - in terms of reliability, one may question the possible influence of science fiction given the similarity of the account to a scene from the X-Files series (see above). One may also question the influence of occasional drug use (see above). In the SOMMESOUS (51) 31.12.1999 case: - in terms of information: the gendarmerie conducted no investigation beyond hearing the witness because SEPRA requested or investigated nothing, and the gendarmerie did not perceive sufficient interest from SEPRA to investigate on its own initiative; - in terms of reliability: the statement is not spontaneous. The witness, who before being heard had heard the account of the BROYES (51) case, may naturally have been impressed by this account and made a connection with his experience, to the point of increasing its strangeness and influencing (without his knowledge) certain aspects of his statement. Only a real on-site investigation would have allowed: - to explore and perhaps validate one of the physical hypotheses (see above) specific to this case; - or on the contrary to confirm a sufficiently broad field of similarity between the two cases to consider them as coming from the same phenomenon and from there, by cross-referencing the information: o possibly formulate hypotheses to explain this phenomenon; o at minimum increase the consistency of this observation to two testimonies. The strangeness of the two cases, although unequal, is significant. The consistency is too weak to support an unexplained character for either one of the cases or for the two together. Consequently, GEIPAN classifies both cases as C: lack of reliable information.