GEIPAN Case 1965-07-00050 — VALENSOLE (04) 01.07.1965
GEIPAN case 1965-07-00050: a French farmer's July 1965 close encounter with a landed craft and two figures in a Valensole lavender field, with confirmed ground traces, classified by GEIPAN as Category D — unidentified.
Brief
On 1 July 1965 at 05:45, a farmer working a lavender field near Valensole, Alpes-de-Haute-Provence, heard an unexplained whistling, then discovered a dark, matte, unknown craft resting on the soil. He observed two figures near the craft for four to five minutes before they rapidly re-entered it; the object then departed at an oblique angle. Physical ground traces were documented at the site. The case was formally investigated by the French Gendarmerie, whose procès-verbaux are attached, and subsequently by CNES's dedicated UAP unit (GEPAN/SEPRA/GEIPAN), which assigned it the unit's highest-strangeness designation, Category D.
Metadata
- Agency
- GEIPAN / CNES
- Release
- 2007-03-22
- Type
- PDF • .pdf
- Length
- 18 pages
- Classification
- UNCLASSIFIED — GEIPAN Category D (phenomenon non identifié)
- Programs
- GEPAN, SEPRA, GEIPAN
- Tags
- landed craft, close encounter CE3, humanoid figures, ground traces, lavender field, Valensole, 1965, GEIPAN, France, scanned PDF no OCR
Key points
- Date and time of incident: 1 July 1965, 05:45 local, in a lavender field at Valensole (département 04, Alpes-de-Haute-Provence).
- Witness was an agriculteur (farmer) working his own field — a sober, named civilian whose account was taken under formal gendarmerie procès-verbal.
- Craft described as dark and matte, resting on the ground; witness had no prior referent for the object's design.
- Two figures observed in proximity to the craft; they returned inside it rapidly before departure.
- Duration of observation: approximately four to five minutes at close range.
- Craft departed at an oblique angle after the figures re-entered.
- Physical ground traces were recovered and documented (traces au sol), providing corroborating physical evidence.
- GEIPAN assigned Category D — phenomenon not identified — the unit's designation for cases that resist conventional explanation after full review.
- Attached materials include gendarmerie procès-verbaux and/or CNES technical notes, making this a multi-agency evidentiary record.
- Case was archived under the GEIPAN catalog and released publicly on 22 March 2007 as part of CNES's systematic disclosure of UAP files.
Most interesting
- Valensole 1965 is among the most thoroughly documented close-encounter cases in French official records, cited repeatedly in GEPAN's foundational analytical work from the late 1970s onward.
- The 05:45 observation time is notable: the witness was already in the field at dawn, establishing a routine work context that investigators found consistent and credible.
- Ground trace evidence at Valensole was physically analyzed; lavender plants in the affected area reportedly exhibited anomalous growth suppression for years afterward — a detail that drew early scientific interest from GEPAN.
- France's GEPAN (formed 1977) retroactively catalogued pre-existing cases like Valensole, meaning gendarmerie reports generated in 1965 fed into a systematic scientific program twelve years later.
- The GEIPAN Category D designation is the unit's strongest 'unexplained' marker — reserved for cases where witness reliability is high and no conventional explanation has been established after full investigation.
- The procès-verbal format used by the Gendarmerie Nationale carries legal weight in France, meaning the witness statements in this file were taken under conditions closer to sworn testimony than a civilian interview.