The article below was published in the daily newspaper L'Union, Reims, France, page 8, on August 12, 1998.
David and Olivier, two young men from Floing, were chatting on Monday 10 August on the town hall square. Around midnight, they were surprised by lights in the sky.
"I saw something coming. It looked like a plane, but there were two very bright yellow spots of light, at the front and at the back," explains David, "there were also some in the centre, it was flashing red."
The two young men describe the thing as a "triangle with oval edges". They have difficulty establishing what it is. "Me, notes Olivier, I also thought of an airplane, an F117 (American stealth plane). But an airplane has wings and no fixed lights like headlights. We don't say it was a UFO, like the Martians are landing, we're not crazy."
According to them, the craft didn't make any noise at first. However, it was flying low and as if in slow motion. David adds: "It was so low that it looked like it was looking for something, or doing tests..." "But it was too low to be a weather balloon (a Météo France device), it was at what, 400-600 m altitude at the most", Olivier concludes.
The object, unidentified until then, circled Floing-Sedan eight times. "The little maneuver lasted a good hour." And Olivier, the oldest, added: "If it was something top secret, it wouldn't have had such huge headlights."
The two young men absolutely wanted to know what it was. So they went back to Olivier's house "to grab the camcorder". They followed the thing for a while in the car. And then, the thing, because they don't know what to call it, left again. "We heard a deep, dull engine noise, but it was really nothing compared to the mass that was being moved..."
Now, the 20 seconds of film they shot are in the hands of Jean-Luc Lemaire, the president of the "Centre d'Etudes OVNI France", Ardennes section, who has received about fifteen concordant testimonies. It would seem that this UFO moved since it was reportedly seen near Vivier-Aucourt, Donchery, Glaire and Sury.
The Centre d'Etudes OVNI France already attests that it is not a hoax, and is waiting for further testimony to identify the thing. It is confirmed that it is neither an airplane, nor a helicopter, nor a planet or a star, and it is not a weather balloon.
Delphine Adam
