The Triangle Past the Ninth Floor

On a Sunday evening in November 2010 a resident of Le Mans opened the kitchen window of a ninth-floor flat to check the temperature before a walk. Three lights, one red and two blue, stood out from the city lights and came fast towards the building in a triangle. As they closed in, the witness made out a darker triangular shape joining them. The shape was "plus noir que la nuit environnante" (blacker than the surrounding night). There was a soft "froissement de l'air", a rustling of the air. Then it passed over the roof and was gone. The witness counted about fifteen seconds.

What is on the record

GEIPAN is the unit of the French space agency CNES that investigates unidentified aerial phenomena. The account reached GEIPAN two months late, after the witness had tried a local aerodrome and then the civil aviation authority. An investigator visited the flat in May 2013. The published report puts the lights at 20 to 50 metres above the ground, skimming a four-storey roof and a bus shelter. At its closest the witness judged the triangle about two metres a side.

GEIPAN worked through the usual suspects. A north wind of 13 km/h could not have carried a lantern or anything else airborne the 1.6 kilometres from where the lights appeared in fifteen seconds, and the bright blue lights did not match a candle flame. The low path and the lack of engine noise ruled out aircraft and helicopters. The civil aviation report showed no matching flight. A hobby drone fitted with coloured LEDs was raised and left as an open question, since such drones were usually far smaller and hard to fly at night in mist. Neighbours and the concierge had seen nothing.

GEIPAN calls the account of "bonne consistance" (good consistency) and "d'étrangeté élevée" (high strangeness). It still notes that the movement "reste dans la dynamique des objets volants actuels" (stays within the dynamics of present-day flying objects). It classes the case D1, meaning it investigated and could not explain it.

Why it sits where it does

The page grades L0 · SINGLE ACCOUNT. GEIPAN withholds the identities of its witnesses, so the record carries no identified witness, and nobody else came forward. A tier measures sourcing, not the quality of the investigation. What passed the ninth floor is not resolved here.