The Lights in the Cloud at Lamnay

Between 9.30 and 11pm on 26 October 2011 a woman at Lamnay, in the Sarthe, looked out over the trees about 200 metres from her house. The sky was clear except for one thick cloud. Inside it several blue, pink and yellow lights came on and went out. She woke a friend, who saw them too but soon went back to bed. For more than an hour she kept returning to different windows to watch. There was no sound. In the end she was frightened and went to bed herself. No photograph was taken.

What is on the record

GEIPAN holds one testimony and a one-paragraph description. In the days that followed the witness and her husband looked over the area and saw no marks on the ground. No one else came forward.

GEIPAN considered three explanations: aircraft, a laser and an ionisation effect in the air. It judged none of them convincing enough to keep. It classed the case D1, citing its strangeness, the single testimony and the lack of any recording or trace. Its label is "phénomène étrange de consistance moyenne ou forte" (a strange phenomenon of medium or strong consistency), with a strangeness score of 0.62. After an update in June 2026 the case page shows plain class D, while its text still says D1. Either way GEIPAN investigated and could not explain it.

The description has a loose end. On the night the witness wakes "son ami" (a friend), yet it is "son mari" (her husband) who checks the ground with her later. The file does not say whether these are one person. GEIPAN points to its investigation report for the reasoning, but no report is published on the case page.

Why it sits where it does

L0 · SINGLE ACCOUNT. GEIPAN withholds its witnesses' identities, so the released record carries no identified witness. The second person saw the lights only briefly and gave no separate account. The tier measures sourcing, not the quality of the investigation. What lit the cloud over Lamnay is not resolved here.