bright erratically flashing object that left a strange line in the sky with one of its flashes

A bright flash in the sky caught my eyes. I looked and saw a white light silently travelling across the sky from west to east. It was blinking erratically sometimes barely visible and then sometimes flashing very brightly. One particular flash actually left what looked like a relatively-large slightly-erratic solid illuminated yellowish-orange line in the sky. It looked like long exposure photography. It was visible for the time the light was lit during that flash, perhaps a second. The line was the length of maybe a quarter of the diameter the moon appears in the sky. I've never seen anything before like that in real life. The light continued moving in a straight line toward the East, blinking erratically with mostly dim blinking which made it hard to see as it traveled away.
I often watch the sky at night and see many planes and satellites at night and this definitely wasn't a plane. The flashing was irregular and I can almost always see the red light on planes and distinguish the different lights. It did not appear to be a satellite due to the blinking and the strange line artifact.
Afterwards, just to be sure, I thoroughly checked my glasses' lenses for scratches, thinking perhaps it was reflection in a scratch, but I didn't find one and I've been wearing glasses for decades and I've never seen anything like that.
Maybe ball lighting? I have no idea what this was.