The Red Ball in the Lane

At about 10.15 on the night of 28 January 2014 a woman was out with her dog in They-sous-Montfort. She stood in an orchard on a bank above the road, facing her house. A halo appeared at the top of the street. As it faded a very bright red ball took its place and came slowly down the sloping street at about first-floor height. It stopped roughly five metres away, level with her living-room window, and held there for 30 to 40 seconds. Then it dropped almost to the road, reversed and climbed back up the street trailing a short red tail with blue glints. After a pause of about two seconds she heard a sharp click, "comme une vitesse que l'on enclenche" (like a gear engaging). The ball accelerated diagonally and was gone. The dog, a boxer, took no notice.

What is on the record

GEIPAN is the unit of the French space agency CNES that investigates unidentified aerospace phenomena. She sent it a questionnaire in May 2014. An investigator interviewed her at home that August, walked the site with her and returned to film and measure it. His report of October 2015 logs her drawings and her estimate of the ball at 10 to 20 cm across. It also logs the wobbles: a halo first called red and later white, a size that grew from a little over a tennis ball, and a direction the site visit corrected.

The report scores four explanations. A laser spot rated very weak because it would have followed the ground and the ball was too big. A drone rated very weak for its silence, its shape and its exit. So did hallucination. Ball lightning rated weak to medium, though the night had no storm and the Météorage network recorded no strike that day. GEIPAN concluded there was "l'impossibilité actuelle de donner une explication prosaïque argumentée" (no reasoned ordinary explanation for now). It classed the case D1, unidentified after investigation, and said the lone witness and the likeness to ball lightning kept it from D2.

Why it sits where it does

The page grades L0, a single account. GEIPAN withholds witness identities, so the record carries no identified witness and no independent testimony sits beside hers. The tier measures sourcing, not the quality of an inquiry that was careful and well documented. What came down the lane is not resolved here.