GEIPAN Case 2013-05-08459 — MENIL-HUBERT-SUR-ORNE (61) 29.05.2013
A 2013 GEIPAN case from Normandy in which a motorist observed a dark, pebble-shaped object with red lights and a high-pitched buzz at low altitude before it moved northwest and vanished behind a hedge — classified D1 (unexplained).
Brief
On the night of 29 May 2013 at 23:45, a motorist near Menil-Hubert-sur-Orne (Orne, France) observed a black, pebble-shaped phenomenon hovering several tens of meters above the ground, bearing two red lights — one fore, one aft — and emitting an acute buzzing sound. The object moved toward the northwest and disappeared behind a hedgerow. GEIPAN, the UAP investigation unit of French space agency CNES, assigned the case a D1 classification: unexplained, moderately anomalous, and of good witness consistency. Supporting materials include gendarmerie procès-verbaux and technical notes.
Metadata
- Agency
- GEIPAN / CNES
- Release
- 2007-03-22
- Type
- PDF • .pdf
- Length
- 2 pages
- Classification
- UNCLASSIFIED
- Programs
- GEIPAN, GEPAN, SEPRA
- Tags
- pebble-shaped, red lights fore-aft, low altitude, auditory-buzz, D1 unexplained, Normandy France, 2013, GEIPAN, night sighting, motorist witness
Key points
- Observation date confirmed by GEIPAN as 29 May 2013 — the witness's own questionnaire incorrectly stated 30 May.
- Object described as black and pebble-shaped (galet), at several tens of meters altitude — low enough for ground-level feature occlusion.
- Two red lights present simultaneously: one at the front, one at the rear of the object.
- An acute, high-pitched buzzing (bourdonnement aigu) accompanied the sighting — a rare auditory signature in UAP cases.
- Object tracked moving toward the northwest before disappearing behind a hedge, suggesting directed, controlled movement.
- GEIPAN classified the case D1: inexplicable, moderately strange, of good consistency — the agency's highest unexplained tier.
- Case file includes gendarmerie procès-verbaux, indicating the witness account was taken under official law-enforcement procedure.
Most interesting
- GEIPAN's D1 classification denotes a case that remains unexplained after full investigation — it is not a default or preliminary label but a concluded finding.
- The witness's date error (stating 30 May when the event occurred 29 May) was caught and corrected by GEIPAN through cross-referencing, illustrating the agency's document-verification process.
- The dual red-light configuration — fore and aft — mirrors navigation-light conventions on aircraft but does not match any known civil or military aircraft profile for an object described as pebble-shaped.
- A high-pitched buzzing is among the rarer sensory signatures in the GEIPAN database; most low-altitude French cases report either silence or a low hum.
- The Orne department (61) in Normandy has historically low UAP report density, making this a geographically unusual case within the French national corpus.
- CNES's GEIPAN unit (successor to GEPAN, then SEPRA) is one of the only government-run UAP investigative bodies in the world with a public, searchable case database.