Choisy-le-Roi, France, February 1956: she reached for one of the beings, and a beam of light froze her in place.
THINK ABOUTIT
UFO|UAP & ENTITY ENCOUNTER REPORT
1956: Choisy-le-Roi, France: The Woman Who Tried to Capture an Alien
She meant to grab one of them and take it to the newspapers. On a February night in 1956, a 41-year-old woman driving home alone near Choisy-le-Roi, just south of Paris, stopped her car beside a patch of waste ground. A glowing, hissing object shaped like a flattened pumpkin was hovering there about 20 centimeters off the ground, and small humanoids were moving around it. She walked straight toward them. The beings ran for their craft. The last of them turned and fixed her with enormous black eyes, and a beam of light from the machine froze her where she stood.
The Choisy-le-Roi alien encounter is one of the more unusual French close encounters of the third kind (CE-III) of the 1950s, because the witness advanced on the entities rather than fleeing. She described ten beings about 1.30 meters tall, in tight grayish-blue suits, with large protruding black eyes and slits for mouths. She also reported a paralyzing light beam, an orange-to-red departure at high speed, and after-effects she considered beneficial.
Completed Template
Date: Mid-February 1956
Sighting Time: 9:30 p.m.
Day/Night: Night
Location: Choisy-le-Roi, France (waste ground beside the No. 7 road, near a bridge)
Urban or Rural: Rural (undeveloped waste ground on a suburban roadside)
No. of Entity(‘s): 10 (eight outside the craft, two inside)
Entity Type: Humanoids
Entity Description: About 1.30 m tall and slim, as if they had no muscles. They wore tight grayish-blue one-piece suits. Their heads were larger than human proportions, with large, protruding black eyes, almost no nose (only nostril holes) and a slit for a mouth. Their arms were long relative to their bodies.
Hynek Classification: CE-III (close encounter with animate beings associated with the object)
Duration: Unknown (several minutes implied)
No. of Object(s): 1
Description of the Object(s): A shiny white, phosphorescent craft that made a faint hissing noise. It had luminous facets that appeared to be windows and an opening in its base, and a beam of light came from one of its upper windows.
Shape/Size/Color of Object(s): Shaped like a flattened pumpkin; size not stated; shining white and phosphorescent, turning orange and then red as it accelerated away
Distance to Object(s): Very close. The witness reached the last entity at the craft’s base.
Height & Speed: Hovering about 20 cm above the ground. It rose slowly to the height of the plane trees lining the road, paused, then left at very high speed.
Number of Witnesses: 1
Special Features/Characteristics: A paralyzing light beam; entities apparently studying the ground; a metallic scraping sound; the hissing grew louder on take-off; a color change from white to orange to red. The witness reported beneficial after-effects: better health, greater intelligence, precognitive dreams and precognitive abilities.
Case Status: Unverified (single anonymous witness, retrospective account)
Source: Claude Raffy, quoting Geneviève Vanquelef, Flying Saucer Review, Vol. 42, No. 3
Summary/Description: A woman driving home saw a hovering, pumpkin-shaped craft with ten small humanoids on waste ground near Choisy-le-Roi. She tried to seize one of them and was paralyzed by a beam of light before the craft departed at high speed.
Related Cases: 1956: February UFO|UAP & Entity Sightings Archive; 1956: Orly Airport, France radar-visual case, night of February 17-18, 1956 (a few miles from Choisy-le-Roi)
Detailed Report
In mid-February 1956, a 41-year-old woman was driving home alone on the No. 7 road after visiting her parents. At about 9:30 p.m., as she approached a bridge near Choisy-le-Roi, she noticed something shiny white and phosphorescent on the right side of the road. A faint hissing seemed to come from it. The object hung about 20 centimeters above a stretch of waste ground.
She pulled over for a closer look and saw a “person” about 1.30 meters tall moving near it. She suspected it was a UFO and had a sudden, bold idea: if she could catch one of its occupants, she could take him to the newspapers. By the time she was out of the car there were eight figures around the machine, all absorbed in something on the ground. The craft was shaped like a flattened pumpkin, with luminous facets that looked like windows. Through them she could see two more beings inside. The ones outside seemed to be examining the waste ground.
When the humanoids saw her coming they showed no sign of fear, but they quickly ran into an opening in the base of the craft. The last one, the one she was reaching for, turned and stared at her intensely with its large black eyes, as if it wanted to say something. Just as she was about to grab it, a beam of light shot from one of the upper windows and engulfed her. She could not move anything but her eyes.
Terrified, she watched the humanoids disappear into the machine. As the beam faded she was able to back away and get to her car, but inside it she found herself unable to move again. She heard a metallic scraping sound. A few minutes later the hissing grew much louder, and the craft slowly rose to the height of the tall plane trees lining the road. It stopped briefly, then shot away at great speed, turning orange and then red as it accelerated.
She described the beings as slim, as though they had no muscles, and dressed in tight grayish-blue one-piece suits. Their heads were proportionately larger than a human’s, with large, protruding black eyes, almost no nose apart from visible nostril holes, and a slit where the mouth should be. Their arms were longer in proportion than normal. She later reported after-effects she considered beneficial: her health improved greatly, and she said she experienced increased intelligence along with precognitive dreams and abilities.
RESEARCHER’S NOTES
A Vivid CE-III Resting on a Single Late Account
- Source chain: The case reached print through Claude Raffy’s article in Flying Saucer Review, Vol. 42, No. 3, quoting French investigator Geneviève Vanquelef, a longtime contributor to Lumières dans la Nuit. There is no known 1956 press report, police report or official file. The witness is anonymous, and the date is given only as “the middle of February.”
- Late disclosure: The account appeared decades after the event. Late-told CE-III reports can pick up details from later abduction-era imagery. The large black eyes, slit mouth and oversized head described here closely resemble the “gray” type that became standard only in later decades, which could reflect either accurate early testimony or later influence.
- Witness behavior: The detail that the witness tried to capture an entity to prove the story to newspapers is unusual and personal. It doesn’t follow the fear-and-flight pattern typical of CE-III reports, which gives the account a distinctive character.
- Paralysis beam: The light beam that immobilized the witness matches a recurring feature of French close-encounter reports from the 1950s, most famously the Quarouble case of September 1954.
- Orly proximity: Choisy-le-Roi lies only a few miles from Paris-Orly Airport, where radar and an Air France DC-3 crew tracked a large unknown object on the night of February 17-18, 1956. No documented link between the two cases exists, and the Choisy date is too imprecise to establish one, but the overlap in time and place is worth noting.
- After-effects: Improved health and precognitive experiences are claims of the witness that cannot be verified. They align this case with the “beneficial effects” strand of contact reports rather than the harm-and-trauma pattern.
The Choisy-le-Roi encounter is vivid, detailed and internally consistent, but it rests entirely on one anonymous witness whose story surfaced long after the event. It stands in this archive as an unverified CE-III: a striking account of a woman who stepped toward the unknown instead of away from it, and an open question until an earlier record or a named witness turns up.
She could not move any part of her body except her eyes.
The witness’s account, Choisy-le-Roi, France, February 1956, as reported by Geneviève Vanquelef
