The White Ball over Saint-Denis

At about half past four on the morning of 16 November 1992 a man in Saint-Denis, the capital of Réunion, was woken by a loud noise. He likened it to a jet engine. Two flashes lit up his bedroom. He saw a big ball of light, white and very bright. After about ten seconds a villa close by was lit up in red. With a second noise the white light vanished. A red point stayed above a tree, and a light mist hung where the white ball had been. The villa was empty at the time and was not damaged.

What is on the record

GEIPAN is the unit of the French space agency CNES that investigates unidentified aerospace phenomena. Its file here holds a description and two statement sheets, with no report or document attached. The first sheet logs a man of 40 watching from about 20 metres away between 4.30 and 4.45. He put the ball at four to five metres across. The noise is coded as a detonation or bang, and the sheet records an effect on animals.

The second sheet describes no sighting of its own and records only the effect on animals. GEIPAN's description explains it. A neighbour saw nothing at all, but he noticed that his dogs were badly frightened at around the same hour. He is a witness to the dogs, not to the light.

Despite the noise, the inquiry found no one else who had seen or heard anything. GEIPAN states only that "le phénomène observé n'a pu être identifié" (the phenomenon could not be identified). It names no ordinary explanation that it weighed and set aside. The case stays in class D, which means it investigated and could not explain it.

Why it sits where it does

The page grades L0, a single account. GEIPAN withholds witness identities, so the record carries no identified witness. The tier measures sourcing, not the quality of the inquiry. The record holds one man's account of light and noise at close range, plus a neighbour's frightened dogs. What lit up that corner of Saint-Denis is not resolved here.