Description

Original video, better quality, but it’s a phone recording of a TV screen:

https://vimeo.com/1116195272 -> 8.56 close-up

(I didn’t want to cause a swarm on his YouTube page, so I re-uploaded the video. Anyone interested can still find his channel if they really want to.)

https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x6yu52

https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x6zgj0

Landres (Mailleroncourt), May 1, 2006, at 12:10 a.m

The first online trace I can find is an upload from 2008. One of the video description points to the source, but the link is now dead. There was no coverage in the local press, nor any other references to it.

One of the different uploaders posted a 3D recreation and said: "A 3D recreation of the Mailleroncourt video, whose author eventually admitted to having created the hoax. Thanks to Sylvain Mahé for the modeling.", which for some, casted doubt on the authenticity.

In 2019, one of the witnesses created a YouTube account and uploaded a video of the event (https://vimeo.com/1116195272). (Four years later he uploaded other unrelated videos, but he has been inactive for two years now. Views 0-50, no comments)

He is an old man from the countryside. He is clearly not looking for any kind of fame. He also makes a few comments confirming that he was there at the time of the event ("Us", "We were about 10 meters away", "Everything was vibrating").

I added subtitles so you can better appreciate the authenticity of the footage. One comment summed it up well in the first post I made: "If you are French, they very obviously sound like regular people from the countryside, and they sound utterly baffled and in wonder at what they are seeing, and uncertain about what to do next. A bit nervous too, certainly. I don’t really see this kind of people putting up such an elaborate act in such a convincingly deadpan way. The only other option would be incredibly good actors completely faking it all."

I personally already had little to no doubt about its authenticity, but this only reinforces it. That leaves two options: either it’s a misidentification, or… something else.