Half of French UFOs remain unexplained

For three decades, an arms length branch of France's national space agency quietly gathered reports of strange apparitions in the skies over the republic, from bright lights zig-zagging in the dark night to calls about flying saucers. A small team of investigators dutifully probed each sighting, and either reached a logical conclusion, or consigned it to enigma.Now, after decades under lock and key in dusty filing cabinets, France went public with its "X-Files" late last month. The Centre national d'etudes spatiales decided not only to declassify more than 1,600 cases, but to scan each official page and post it online for all to see."When the site went live, it was hit by so much traffic it went down almost immediately," said Chris Rutkowski, a co-ordinator for the Winnipeg-based Ufology Research Centre, noting the popularity of the project. With more than 100,000 documents the archives of GEIPAN, the Groupement pour l'etude et l'information sur les phenomenes aerospatiaux non indentifier, contains official police reports, statements by witnesses to bizarre scenes -- even colourful hand-drawn diagrams resembling children's artwork.

Each incident has been slotted into one of four categories: definitely solved, likely solved, unsolved for lack of sufficient information or unsolved mystery. More than half -- 58% -- of the phenomena investigated by the experts remain unexplained while just 9% have been definitely figured out.