Incident · 1 July 1965 · Valensole, Alpes-de-Haute-Provence, France
Valensole landing: a craft and two small beings in a lavender field
Also known as Valensole, Valensole 1965, Maurice Masse, Valensole UFO
On the morning of 1 July 1965 Maurice Masse, a lavender farmer at Valensole in Provence, said he came upon a small craft, about the size of a car, standing in his field, with two child-sized figures beside it; one pointed an object at him and he found himself unable to move until they climbed back in and the craft flew off. The gendarmerie took his statements and recorded a star-shaped mark in the ground that hardened like cement; he later said lavender would not grow back on the spot for years.
It is France’s best-known close encounter, and one of the few cases GEIPAN classifies D, unexplained, on the strength of the gendarmerie’s reports and its strangeness, though without an investigation of its own. It rests on a single witness.
Source: GEIPAN (CNES), case 1965-07-00050, classified D (unexplained)
Facts and claims
- claimed At 5.45 am on 1 July 1965 a farmer working his lavender field heard a whistling sound and found an unknown dark, matt craft standing on the ground; for 4 to 5 minutes he watched two figures, who quickly climbed back aboard before it took off obliquely and vanished towards Manosque. Source: cnes-geipan.fr (archived)
- documented About ten minutes later he found traces where the craft had stood: a star-shaped mark with a cylindrical hole in the middle, in soaked ground that by evening had become “dure comme du ciment” (hard as cement). Source: cnes-geipan.fr (archived)
- documented The gendarmerie heard the witness on 2 July and again on 18 August, when he added a very detailed account, and another brigade recorded the site and the ground traces on 3 July with measurements and photographs (reports nos. 445, 105 and 145). No other witness or physical clue was found. Source: cnes-geipan.fr (archived)
- documented GEIPAN notes that its predecessor GEPAN did not yet exist in 1965 and never published its own investigation, after the gendarmerie and investigators including Pierre Guérin and Jacques Vallée: “Vue son étrangeté, ce cas est classé « D »” (given its strangeness, the case is classified D). Source: cnes-geipan.fr (archived)
Connected files
Organizations
- GEIPAN (CNES, France) (investigated by)
People
- Maurice Masse (witnesses) — Found a small craft and two beings in his lavender field on 1 July 1965; heard by the gendarmerie on 2 July and 18 August
Videos
- “Valensole 1965”: INA on the French close encounter, with GEIPAN's head Frédéric Courtade (subject of)
- Maurice Masse interviewed on the Valensole encounter, about ten years on (subject of)
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