The SOBEPS investigator stumbled on the case by chance since he was first informed about it by another witness of another sighting. First contacted by phone, the witness of this case requested that his anonymity was to be strictly preserved, informing that he did not want that people later start to say to his children that their father was not “not well in his head.” Ensured of the respect of anonymity, it agreed to meet the investigator on January 15, 1990 on the spot of the observation, and indicated to him directions, sizes and landmarks.
The day of the sighting, around 5 p.m., two of his five children, aged 14 and 15, had returned from school and were in the street in company of a comrade of similar age residing in a nearby house. The sky was already black at this hour. His two children came to their father and told: “Dad, there are weird planes in the sky.” One of the children said: “These are UFOs” - using the term UFO, used in Germany. Their father did not look at it and simply answered that they were probably just plane.
Hobbyist photographer, the father had planned to go with his wife to the opening of an exhibit organized by his photo club, and at 06:50 p.m., he was ready to leave and awaited her, sitting in his living room, close to a door and a window giving on the back of the house. It is at this time that one of the children came running while telling him: “Look, they are here again.”
Finding this insistence unusual and since he was just waiting for his wife anyway, the father then stood up and came out on his terrace, in a large free space in the shape of an “L” behind a group of houses. When he came out, he first saw the young comrade of his children, standing at the end of the garden at the end of the “L”, who told him “You see, there is of them coming”, and he was showing the sky just above them.
While the youngster had said that quietly as if he was speaking about something rather usual, the father almost fell down when he looked up to see what it was about: “If you did not see it, you could not believe it. It was enormous!”
What was in the sky had the form of rhombus, advancing very slowly, at a speed which seemed to be that of someone walking, coming from the South-West and going towards the North-East, this without producing the least noise.
The broadest transverse part of its mass in rhombus was perpendicular to the direction of its displacement.
It carried two lights in each corner. These eight lights were described as like headlights, which lighted the ground of a powerful white light.
Its lower surface of flat aspect was very dark, with discernible contours against the clearer background of the perfectly clear and starry sky.
In the center of this surface was a illuminated structure in the shape of a bell turned upside down. This part was entirely luminous, of a light of orange color, except its lowest part which had a “dark green luminosity.” On its top, it was surrounded by a line of lamps of red color having an intensity changing in sequence, giving a false impression of lights which “turned” around the bell-shape or “run one after the other” but not fast, and actually the impression was produced by the increase and dimming of each light in sequence. These lights did not illuminate the surface of the machine above them. The witness expressed that these lights did not produce the usual worrying feeling of those of ambulances or police cars, and were on the contrary pleasant to see.
For the whole of the lights of the “bell”, he specified that he could not decide whether these lights came from the inside or whether it was only the surface of the bell that was luminous.
The witness showed landmarks for the apparent dimensions of the craft by indicating to the investigator places where it had been according to these landmarks. As the machine was above his house, it had a side end at the vertical of his house and the other passed above a hangar at 43 meters of the house. The witness could not determine the altitude of the machine, which I think is a sign of good sense since there was no reason to be able to determine that against the sole background of the sky.
Being a photographer, the witness thought he should go get his camera, but thought it contained an unsuited 100 ASA film, and realized at the time that that it would be useless to take pictures for the machine was much to too large to be captured, the central bell and the lights were much too luminous so that contours could be captured. He thus decided to rather stay and recording mentally all the details as well as possible, but regretted all the same later that he did not try to take photographs. He also tried to call his wife who was to return, and his daughter. Both heard him call but when the girl, older than the boys, came outside the object was already far, after passing over the roof.
The father and the daughter then went to other side of the house and saw the craft continuing his way, still slowly, passing above the cemetery of Eupen.
An essential point concerning dimensions revealed when the investigator asked the witness if the lights at the corners of the machine were steady or flashing. The witness stated that they turned on and off regularly. The investigator naturally asked him to specify if they did it in sequence or all simultaneously, and the witness then stated that he did not know that because he could not see all at the same time: the craft was larger than his visual field, he could not see the four corners at the same time, he had to turn the head to see it entirely.
The father spontaneously made a sketch for the investigator. The young friend of his sons came at this time in the presence of the investigator, saw the drawing, and spontaneously said “yes, it was like that.”
The investigator notes that the thickness of the edge is an indirect indication, he had not been seen it at the time of this observation, and it resulted from a second observation by the same witness on January 10, 1990, where he had been able to observe the same craft at a greater distance while driving his car. That time, he had seen the “edge” and since the craft was identical, had used this indication on his sketch.
As well the size larger than the visual field, the complete silence and the slowness of displacement, without even mentioning the features of the craft, completely exclude that it could have been the least weather phenomenon, stars or planets, meteors, planes, helicopters. At the time when I write these lines, nearly two decades ran out since the sighting and the case is still ignored completely in the skeptical ufology literature and did not find any ordinary explanation.
Based on the investigator's sketch, I made a colored sketch of the craft:
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Note on the above sketch: the proportions are exactly those of the investigator's sketch. The color of the craft is given as totally black by the witness. The lights at the corners are given as white by the witness. The other colors indicated by the witness, red, orange, dark green, are interpreted literally. The perspective that would in theory for example give a smaller size to the lights at the back is not rendered. The color of the sky is arbitrary, according to the indication of the witness that it was dark (winter, 06:55 p.m., Eupen) but that contours of the mass of the machine were clearly distinct against the sky's background.
The indication that the apparent angular size of the machine was larger than the visual field of the machine, the witness having “to turn the head” to see two ends, allows some quantitative information about the lower limits of its size.
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The typical human visual field is of 180° horizontally. Since the craft required to turn the head to be seen in entirety, the machine had a minimum angular size of 180°.
| If the craft is at: | It is at least large of: |
|---|---|
| 1 m | 3 m |
| 5 m | 15 m |
| 10 m | 30 m |
| 15 m | 47 m |
| 20 m | 62 m |
| 30 m | 95 m |
| 40 m | 125 m |
| 50 m | 160 m |
| 75 m | 235 m |
| 100 m | 315 m |
To note: the wingspan of jet fighters is in the range from 9 to 15 meters. The wingspan of the airliners ranges between the 30 and 50 meters. To explain the machine by a plane is equivalent to stating that the witness saw an jet fighter fly at the speed of a pedestrian in silence at 4 or 5 meters above his head, or an airliner fly at the speed of a pedestrian and in silence at 10 or 15 meters above his head, or a helicopter flying in silence between 1 and 4 meters above his head.
The machine passes above the roof of his house and the witness goes to the other side of his house to see it again. This implies that even if that house had a single floor and a flat roof, the machine was to be at least three meters above the ground or at least approximately 1 meter above the head of the witness and thus was to be at least 3 meters wide. In such a case, he could have touched the orange luminous dome with the hand. It will be consequently possible to fantasize the existence in 1989 of a blimp of a few meters, therefore pilotless, flying in the residential areas by night, which could have been literally stopped with the hand, and having this appearance:
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Unfortunately for such a thesis, no such flat, rhombus, silent airship, equipped with such lights, existed, and none exist even 2 decades later. The same applies to any airship which would have been higher and larger: no model resembles closely or by far the described craft, if only with regard to the rhombus form and the distribution of lights at the corners.
