An account in Yvelines, France

GEIPAN continues to publish all of its archives on its public website: www.geipan.fr. Among its publications are old cases classified at the time (A, B, C or D) which are now being re-examined, for the sole purpose of being more relevant in the conclusions. Thanks to new technical means (software) and the investigative experience gained over all these recent years, this re-examination sometimes leads to new remarks or even a change of classification. This observation case, previously classified C for lack of information and named BONNIERES SUR SEINE (78) 1978, is part of a set of cases recently re-examined. On March 8, 1978 at 6:45 a.m., a female motorist noticed lights of various colors through woods coming from a field. Upon reaching the field, she saw a gray-blue metallic object, very shiny, shaped like a large overturned bowl. Motionless and silent, it emitted flashing lights on its base. Taking fright, the witness left the place after one minute but returned at noon with work colleagues: a circular imprint on the ground at that spot was noted. Informed by public rumor the next day, the gendarmerie contacted the witness and went to the site. No particular trace was found other than that of a tractor. According to the witness's statements, many curious people would have trampled the area. Preliminary note concerning a case where the testimonies and/or traces relate to a phenomenon explicitly described or perceived on the ground: - in the absence of evidence that the phenomenon on the ground could only have come and/or left by air, the search for an explanation goes beyond GEIPAN's sole competencies and a GEIPAN conclusion can only be formulated if proof or near-proof is established, otherwise GEIPAN must conclude C: Unexploitable because it goes beyond its sole competencies. - in the opposite case, the absence of testimonies or traces of phases where the phenomenon is off the ground may lead GEIPAN to be unable to conclude for lack of reliable information (classic GEIPAN classification C). Here we are in the first case, since nothing allows excluding that the phenomenon arrived or left by the ground. The examination of the traces in the field proves nothing one way or the other. Consequently GEIPAN classifies C: Unexploitable because it goes beyond GEIPAN's sole competencies. The analysis that GEIPAN can conduct within the limits of its competencies and experience is as follows: - what is visually described is of moderate strangeness. - the visual description is compatible with the presence of a vehicle with lights in a field near the road before dawn; the nighttime observation and the improbable nature of a vehicle at that time may have favored a misidentification. - the strangeness experienced in real time by the witness seems limited because he certainly stopped (for only one minute) but he did not wait for the evolution of the phenomenon. He certainly returned to the site, perhaps also driven by the reaction of colleagues to his flying saucer hypothesis. On the other hand, the presence of a vehicle at that time is surprising and constitutes the main part of the strangeness. It could be linked to illicit activity, of course unverifiable, such as poaching for example. The observation is characterized above all by low consistency both in terms of information and reliability: - the main testimony as well as the secondary ones from colleagues are not spontaneous but at the request of the gendarmerie; - the evolution or disappearance of the phenomenon is not observed; - the round or suspicious traces are not noted by the gendarmerie; - the strangeness for the witness may have increased due to the perception of unusual traces, the collective excitement (colleagues, journalists) and may have impacted certain aspects of his statement made afterwards; - the non-spontaneous testimony of the colleagues, concerning traces with minimal and almost identical description, opens a possibility (unverifiable) of prior coordination or influence.