Nord, France · 1963-11-11 · from the GEIPAN archive
Observation made in November 1963 by three witnesses and reported to GEIPAN in April 2008. On November 11, 1963, around 3 or 4 p.m., a father and his two sons (aged 18 and 13) were walking on a country path and observed a luminous phenomenon that intrigued them. An orange glowing ball was stationary below dark clouds for over a minute. Then rotating, it oscillated from right to left for a few seconds before disappearing at very high speed into the clouds along a straight trajectory curving upward. No noise, no trail was noticed. No other testimony concerning this phenomenon was reported. The account of the facts was reconstructed gradually between 2003 and 2007 by one of the witnesses (the 18-year-old student). The hypothesis of observing the movement of ball lightning (plasma) was refuted, because on the one hand the witness does not confirm the presence of a thunderstorm during the family walk, and on the other hand there are differences between the characteristics of the phenomenon observed on November 11, 1963 and those known for ball lightning. GEIPAN classifies this case as D1: unexplained phenomenon, moderately consistent (single testimony, old, and distant phenomenon) but with a marked strangeness character.
Recent testimony (2016) of an old observation (July 2007). On July 7, 2007 at around 3 a.m., a motorist and his friend traveling on the N118 in the Bordeaux-Nantes direction are surprised to…
the accounts read alike, found by meaning rather than by shared details
On February 24, 2017 at around 7:25 p.m., a motorist and his son, front passenger, were driving on a small country road surrounded by woods. Suddenly, the driver spotted on his right a whiti…
the accounts read alike, found by meaning rather than by shared details
GEIPAN received a brief testimony of a particular observation made on September 16, 2009. A single witness observed the rapid passage toward the North of a luminous phenomenon changing traje…
the accounts read alike, found by meaning rather than by shared details
There are thousands more like this in the record. Open one at random, or read the ones the most people recognise.
Read anotherMost recognisedOr if something like this happened to you, write it down and we will look for the others who saw it too.
If this reminds you of something a friend or a relative told you once and never mentioned again, send them this page. Reading that a stranger described the same thing is usually the part that helps.
Nothing is tracked back to you and nothing is sent on your behalf. The link is just the page you are reading.
This is an official case file of GEIPAN, the French space agency's unidentified aerospace phenomena office, machine translated from French. The original text and the full investigation file are at geipan.fr. We reproduce it with thanks and remove anything on request.
Anomaly