UAP Case Archive

Shapes / Triangles

Triangles

The triangle is the shape police officers and soldiers report most often, and it has the largest file in the archive. It also has some of the best-known answers: a photo hoax in Belgium, a rocket stage burning up over France, and a formation of A-10s over Phoenix.

    Eupen, Belgium, 1989: three lights shining down and a red light at the center. Drawing for reference only.
    Each triangle is one case, colored by status. The years before 1940 are compressed. Select one to open it below.

    Start with Belgium.

    The Belgian wave of 1989 and 1990 is the most famous triangle story in the world. It is also the clearest lesson in sorting a case: some of its best-known evidence has fallen apart, and one of its best witnesses has never been explained.

    On the evening of November 29, 1989, two gendarmes on the road from Aachen to Eupen saw a field lit up "like a football field." Above it hung a large triangular platform with three lights shining down and a pulsing red light at its center. Their dispatcher said he saw it too.

    Twelve days later, Lt. Col. André Amond of the Belgian Army and his wife were driving to Gembloux station when three spotlights in a rough equilateral triangle, with a rotating red light at the center, came within about 100 meters of their car. It made no sound. Despite the moonlight, they could not make out any structure. Amond wrote a report for the Ministry of Defence. It was one of 21 sightings in five provinces that night.

    The wave peaked on March 30 and 31, 1990, when two F-16s were scrambled on radar contacts. They tried nine intercepts and got three brief radar locks, but neither pilot saw anything. In April came the photo that made the wave famous around the world.

    What held up, and what fell apart

    • ConfessedThe Petit-Rechain photo of a black triangle with corner lights was defended for 20 years. In 2011 Patrick Maréchal said he made it from painted styrofoam and flashlights, hung on a string.
    • ProposedThe F-16 radar locks were the jets locking onto each other, and the other returns were false echoes caused by the weather, according to Brian Dunning.
    • ProposedThe Eupen object, described with a "stick" and turbine noise, fits a UH-1 helicopter. Most of the 143 reports from that night came in more than a week later, after media appeals.
    • OpenThe Amond sighting. A senior army officer, a close approach, no sound, a written report, and no explanation published.

    What the record shows.

    Eighty cases across 166 years. A few patterns run through all of them.

    Police and soldiers anchor the strongest cases.

    More than thirty officers across seven counties at Lumberton in 1975. Gendarmes and an army lieutenant colonel in Belgium. Officers from four police departments in St. Clair County in 2000. Yorktown and Carmel police in the Hudson Valley.

    A few big waves make up much of the file.

    Hudson Valley, Belgium, Phoenix, St. Clair County and Tinley Park each appear as several cases, so the eighty entries cover fewer separate events than the number suggests. Use the wave filter below to read each one as a whole.

    The famous ones often have answers.

    Phoenix had A-10s and flares. France in 1990 and Cosford in 1993 were rocket stages burning up on re-entry. New York State Police believed the Hudson Valley lights were small planes flown by pranksters. The USS Russell "pyramids" were likely drones, blurred by the lens.

    A triangle of lights is not a triangular craft.

    Witnesses say triangle, delta, arrowhead, boomerang, V, carpenter's square, Toblerone, pyramid and Dorito. Three lights in a triangle can be three separate things. Every case below keeps the exact words used, so you can tell which claim is being made.

    One light pattern keeps coming back.

    A light at each corner and a red light in the middle: reported over Tyneside in 1960, across Belgium in 1989, and over Pretoria in 1991.

    Before 1947, the record is astronomy.

    The earliest reports are triangular shadows on clouds, notches on the Moon and bodies crossing the Sun. People at the time often blamed escaped balloons. They belong here as anomalies of their age, not as craft.

    Often told wrong.

    Several triangle stories have drifted away from their sources. Here is what the earliest records say.

    The story you may have heardWhat the record shows
    A trucker saw a giant triangle over St. Clair County.
    Melvern Noll, the trucker whose call started the case, described a rectangle with lit "windows." The police officers who followed described a triangle.
    Operation Mainbrace in 1952 was a wave of triangles.
    Only the Danish destroyer Willemoes reported a triangle. The Topcliffe object was a disc, and the USS Franklin D. Roosevelt object was a sphere.
    An RAF officer saw a vast triangle over Shawbury.
    Meteorological officer Wayne Elliott later noted that his sighting came an hour after Cosford's, and said he now believes it was a police helicopter.
    The Petit-Rechain photo proves the Belgian triangle.
    Patrick Maréchal confessed in 2011 that he made it from painted styrofoam and flashlights to fool his workmates.
    The Phoenix Lights were one mystery.
    There were two events. The 8 p.m. V is attributed to five A-10s flying in formation, and an amateur astronomer watching through a telescope saw separate airplanes. The 10 p.m. row of lights was flares dropped over a gunnery range.
    A Texas machinist saw a giant triangle over Stephenville.
    Ricky Sorrells's early statements describe a "flat, metallic object." The word "triangle" appears only in later retellings.
    Charles Fort recorded flying triangles in 1890 and 1894.
    Neither report can be traced to a page or a witness in his books, so both are left out of this archive.

    All triangle cases.

    Listed oldest first. Each card says what kind of evidence the case rests on, and you can narrow the list to a single wave.

      When lights become a craft.

      At night, a set of lights moving together reads as one object, and the eye fills the dark space between them with a body. That is how a formation of aircraft becomes a mile-wide triangle.

      Over Phoenix in 1997, a family saw five lights set into a shape like a carpenter's square pass silently overhead. At the same moment, an amateur astronomer in Scottsdale watched the same lights through a telescope and saw separate airplanes flying in formation.

      In the Hudson Valley, New York State Police believed many of the V-shaped lights were small planes flown by pranksters, and in April 1983 private pilots did fly a V to fool people on the ground. Neither explanation covers every case, but both are worth checking first.

      What the eye fills in What a telescope showed

      Left off this page.

      These reports are sometimes counted as triangles, but they belong elsewhere or can't be traced.

      • Calvine and TodmordenBoth were diamonds, and both are on the Diamonds page.
      • Topcliffe, 1952The Operation Mainbrace object seen over this RAF base was a disc.
      • Devon and Sussex, 1967A "flying cross," attributed to Venus.
      • Hudson Valley, July 1984Circular formations of lights, including the Danbury sighting, not a V or a triangle.
      • Lake Michigan, 1994Cylinders and circles, on the Cylinders page.
      • Fort's 1890 and 1894 reportsCredited to Charles Fort, but not traceable to any page or witness.