The Taizé "Holy Ship": a landing seen by young people at the Taizé Community

Summer 1972. The Taizé Community, an ecumenical monastery about 10 km from Cluny, was hosting young people from several countries. Some thirty of them were camping there. On the night of 11 August, a group was gathered at the open-air theatre, an amphitheatre circle known as the Cratère. Among them were Renata Faa, a student living in Sardinia, and François Tantot, a second-year psychology student from Mâcon.

About 2 a.m. Renata saw a "star" come down from the sky and cried out. Before the others could turn round, it had landed on the slope opposite, at a place called La Cras. It was dark and elongated, about 30 m long, larger than a coach. It seemed motionless, at their level. Everyone heard a continuous whistling.

Then it lit up. Seven yellow lights came on, then two orange ones. Five of the yellow lights began to sweep the ground, and the object seemed to rest on its beams. The witnesses described them as solid, like lit-up pillars.

Red sparks gave way to three small discs, each marked by two points of red light. They began circling the main craft. Tantot and a student from Dijon felt tingling in their hands and knees.

Around 3 a.m. four of them crossed the field with torches. In the middle they found a dark mass 5 to 6 m high, shaped like a haystack, with a red light moving irregularly around it. About 3 m ahead stood a hedge they were sure did not exist. One of them pointed a torch at the mass. The beam suddenly rose about 50 cm from the hedge and was lost in the darkness.

Tantot tried again. The object turned its bright beam onto the witnesses, and they shielded their faces from the glare and from heat. A rain of red particles poured down. A row of white-lit portholes appeared, then disappeared about 20 minutes later. At 4:40 a.m. the object took off and quickly disappeared towards Cluny.

Driving toward Mâcon, Tantot found several motorists stopped near Jalogny, watching an object in a field. It vanished as he approached. Two days later he gave a taped statement to the Cluny gendarmerie, then contacted Lumières dans la Nuit. Jean Tyrode investigated, and his report appeared in English in Flying Saucer Review in 1973.

Scorched or dried areas marked the apparent landing site. A broken aspen branch carried white dots and powder on its leaves. Analysis found nothing conclusive. A local farmer said the marks came from burning wet, mouldy hay.

In 2012 R. Alessandri, J.-M. Abrassart and Patrice Seray revisited the case in OVNI Lueurs Sceptiques. A farmer near the site owned a WWII searchlight and joked that he was giving the community "apparitions". In fog, such a beam can look like a solid pillar. A nearby boules court was lit by lamps of over 1000 W, though nobody knows whether anyone played that night. Others suggested a local son et lumière event.

No GEPAN file exists. GEPAN was only created in 1977. Tantot later became a painter and, according to Bertrand Méheust's biography, returned to the site for about thirty years. In 2014 the case reached television as "Holy Ship" in the Close Encounters series, paired with the Belgian UFO wave. The case remains, as Flying Saucer Review put it, right out of the ordinary.