Sighting record / 1985
July 22, 1985. Late evening in Ploërmel, Brittany. From the terrace of his home, a gendarme noticed a glow in the sky to the north. He went out to find it. Nothing. But the night was not finished with him. Over the next hours, he and his colleagues watched a pale white shape in the sky. A 'cigar' thirty meters long, by one account. A light ran around its outline. Beams swept the sky like spotlights. Beside it burned a brighter cylinder. No sound at all. Then it was gone. More than thirty years later, France's official UFO office reopened the file and offered an answer rooted in a military celebration nearby.
Ploërmel is a market town in Morbihan, in the heart of Brittany. In the summer of 1985 the local press reported strange light phenomena in the skies over Ploërmel and La Trinité-Porhoët. East of town lies the Coëtquidan military camp, home of the Saint-Cyr military academy.