GEIPAN Case 1994-10-01377 — SELESTAT (67) 30.10.1994

Brief

At approximately 01:45 on 30 October 1994, a couple driving in Sélestat (Bas-Rhin, France) observed a luminous circular object approximately 5 to 6 meters above their car. The object appeared to rotate on its own axis, with evenly spaced lights distributed around its perimeter, and held a stationary position directly above the vehicle. The couple accelerated out of the city, but the object reportedly continued to follow them; the description is truncated before the resolution is disclosed. GEIPAN, the UAP investigation branch of CNES, assigned the case a Class D rating, its designation for phenomena that remain unexplained after full investigation.

Metadata

Agency

GEIPAN / CNES

Release

2007-03-22

Type

PDF • .pdf

Length

6 pages

Classification

UNCLASSIFIED; GEIPAN Phenomenon Class D (unexplained)

Programs

GEIPAN, GEPAN, SEPRA

Tags

luminous circle, rotating disc, evenly spaced peripheral lights, low altitude 5-6m, stationary hover, vehicle pursuit, nighttime, France, Alsace, Bas-Rhin, 1994, GEIPAN Class D

Key points

• Incident occurred at approximately 01:45 local time on 30 October 1994 in Sélestat, département 67 (Bas-Rhin), Alsace, France.
• Two civilian witnesses (a couple in a car) corroborate the same observation, lending independent-witness weight to the report.
• The object was described as a luminous circle rotating on its own axis, with regularly and evenly spaced lights around its periphery.
• Estimated altitude was 5 to 6 meters, placing the phenomenon at or below rooftop level and firmly within close-encounter range.
• The object held a stationary position directly above the vehicle before the couple drove away rapidly, after which the object reportedly re-acquired them.
• GEIPAN assigned Class D, its highest unexplained rating, indicating investigators found no conventional explanation consistent with the available evidence.
• Case file includes gendarmerie procès-verbaux and/or CNES technical notes, indicating a formal multi-agency investigation with sworn witness statements.

Most interesting

• GEIPAN's Class D designation is reserved for cases where neither a prosaic explanation nor data insufficiency accounts for the observation; it represents a genuine investigative dead end, not a paperwork gap.
• The procès-verbal (PV) format of the gendarmerie attachment means witness statements were taken as part of an official legal record, a higher evidentiary standard than a civilian questionnaire.
• An altitude of 5 to 6 meters places the object below the height of a two-story building, making misidentification of high-altitude aerial phenomena structurally impossible.
• The incident occurred at 01:45 with minimal ambient light, meaning the object's luminosity was effectively the sole observable characteristic, ruling out shape ambiguity driven by daylight glare or shadow.
• The description ends mid-sentence ('La voiture sort rapidement de la ville mais retrouve le...'), suggesting the object re-acquired the vehicle after the couple fled, a pursuit dynamic that recurs across GEIPAN's Class D case cluster.
• Bas-Rhin (67), sitting in the Rhine Plain on the Franco-German border, has generated a statistically notable concentration of GEIPAN-logged sightings relative to its population density.
• The case was logged under CNES reference 1994-10-01377 and publicly released on 2007-03-22, consistent with GEIPAN's rolling declassification program initiated after the 2007 archive opening.