Eupen gendarmes' sighting
On the evening of 29 November 1989, two Belgian gendarmes near Eupen watched a large dark triangle with three bright lights for nearly an hour, the first major report of the Belgian wave.
1989 CE · 50.63, 6.04 · status: unexplained
The account
Heinrich Nicoll and Hubert von Montigny saw the object over the Gileppe dam area; scores of other witnesses in the German-speaking east of Belgium reported lights the same night. SOBEPS collected the reports and the Belgian Air Force later scrambled F-16s.
The sceptical view
Skeptics proposed aircraft, including military jets and helicopters, and bright lights; no explanation for the Eupen night was ever confirmed.
The researched reading
Two gendarmes and many others reported a slow triangle of lights on the first night of the Belgian wave. Venus and aircraft explain parts of it, but not everything.
| Explanation | Weight | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Something known, misidentified | 40% | Some sceptics attribute the gendarmes’ long watch over the Gileppe dam to Venus, brilliant in the evening sky in late 1989, and other reports that night to helicopters, airships or aircraft; witnesses typically join separate lights into a triangle. |
| Genuinely anomalous | 20% | Two gendarmes watched for nearly an hour and many independent witnesses described a silent, low, lit craft; no identification was confirmed. |
| Secret human technology | 18% | A low-flying military aircraft or helicopter on exercise, or a lit airship, fits a slow triangle of lights; no such flight was ever identified. |
| Perception, memory or mind | 12% | Once the gendarmes radioed, dozens of people looked up and reported what they expected; the later wave shows strong contagion. |
| A known natural phenomenon | 3% | No atmospheric effect explains a low, lit object seen by many. |
| A poorly understood natural phenomenon | 3% | Nothing points to an unusual natural light. |
| A hoax or fabrication | 2% | The famous Petit-Rechain triangle photo was a confessed hoax, but it is from 1990; the Eupen reports are genuine. |
| Undetermined | 2% | The share a generic explanation had beyond what has been shown for this case: it fits many cases like this one, but has not been demonstrated for this one. |
Official position: SOBEPS collected the reports and the Belgian Air Force cooperated; no explanation for the Eupen night was confirmed.