The Black Pyramids of Neufchâtel-en-Bray

It was around 11 in the morning on 27 June 1994. A driver near Neufchâtel-en-Bray saw two dark pyramid-shaped forms standing still at an estimated 8 kilometres. They carried no lights of any kind. At a bend in the road they passed out of sight. A little further on he found a third form, a black triangle, flying above the car at the car's own speed of about 80 km/h. Within moments it accelerated and was gone "avec un bruit sourd et un chuintement aigu", with a dull boom and a sharp, high hiss.

What is on the record

The case sits in the public archive of GEIPAN, the unit of the French space agency CNES that investigates reports of unidentified aerospace phenomena. Its page holds one testimony and no documents. The description ends: "Le phénomène constaté par le témoin reste inexpliqué."

GEIPAN's two texts do not quite agree. The one-line summary has three triangular or pyramidal objects "survolant la voiture du témoin à basse altitude", flying low over the car. The fuller description puts only the third form over the car and the first two far off and motionless. It is the fuller account that is followed here.

The witness form fills in a little. The driver was a man of about 60, the sky was fair with few clouds, and the noise is logged as engine-like. The page names no hypothesis that was weighed and set aside. It gives no direction for the road or the objects and does not say whether anyone else saw them.

Class D is GEIPAN's category for a case it investigated and could not explain. It rates this one strange to very strange, with medium to strong consistency.

Why it sits where it does

The page grades L0 · SINGLE ACCOUNT. GEIPAN withholds its witnesses' identities, so the record carries no identified witness. A tier measures sourcing, not the quality of the investigation. What paced the car outside Neufchâtel-en-Bray is not resolved here.