The Dark Mass over Étrelles

The service car was doing 15 to 20 km/h through the Piquet industrial estate on the northern edge of Étrelles. At 23.07 on 1 June 2014 the two people inside saw, through the windscreen, two small round lights of a greenish white. They sat under what looked like a compact black mass, almost straight above the car. The driver had to lean forward to see it. The mass blotted out the stars, and he put it at about the size of two Renault Espaces. It held still for about two seconds, then shot away east towards Laval at a speed both called dizzying and dropped behind a wooded skyline some ten kilometres off. There was no sound. The passenger saw it come in from the right over a factory roof before it turned.

What is on the record

GEIPAN is the unit of the French space agency CNES that investigates unidentified aerial phenomena. It holds this case as ETRELLES (35) 01.06.2014 and classes it D1. Class D means GEIPAN investigated and could not explain what was seen. Two investigators interviewed the witnesses separately on site that month, took bearings and later rang each of them back.

A meteor was the strongest candidate. The BOAM meteor camera network recorded one that night. It broke into two pieces, which could match the two lights. But it passed at 23.12, some five minutes after the time the driver fixed from a phone call he made just afterwards, and its bearing differed by about 40 degrees. Military air control reported only airliners and no unusual radar track. Aircraft and drones, ball lightning, a lantern, the space station, a laser show and a reflection in the windscreen were all rated very unlikely or ruled out. GEIPAN calls the witnesses highly reliable and the conditions ideal. It holds back from its stronger D2 grade because the approach path is uncertain, the sighting was so brief and the two talked it over at once, and there is no photograph.

Why it sits where it does

L0 · SINGLE ACCOUNT. GEIPAN withholds the identities of its witnesses, so the released record carries no identified witness, although two people saw it. The tier measures sourcing, not the quality of a thorough investigation. What passed over the car at Étrelles is not resolved here.