This aurora borealis took place on the evening of 25 January 1938. I've looked at the French press of the following days - there's a corpus of more than 120 articles about the aurora published from 26 January to 1 February. Here is how the event was received in France.

The aurora was seen from 7pm to 10pm, though it often lasted only one hour or so, depending on the place and local meteorological conditions. In Rennes (Brittany), for instance, it started at 7pm and ended at 8:15pm. It was not visible everywhere in France: people in the big cities - Paris, Marseille, Bordeaux - missed out on the show, due to fog and haze, though some people of these cities later claimed to have seen it! But lots of people watched it all over France, and numerous testimonies were collected by reporters in the following days. All newspapers called it an aurora borealis on 26 January, with scientists and experts explaining the phenomenon. Some old people were reminded of the aurora borealis that they had seen in October 1870 (Ce Soir, 20 January).

The "magic show" was impressive, notably on the Atlantic coast and over the Alps. Most witnesses described it as moving clouds glowing red (or pink), with beams of white or green lights. In many places, people gathered in the streets to watch it. In Saint-Malo and other coastal towns in Brittany, groups of people massed on the seashore watched it until the phenomenon disappeared (L’Ouest-Éclair, 27 January). In Normandy, near Rouen, the show on the ocean was found particularly beautiful (La Gazette de Biarritz-Bayonne et Saint-Jean-de-Luz, 26 January).

On land, due to the flaming red glow, the most common and immediate explanation given by people watching it was it was caused by a large fire nearby. For instance, in small town near Marseille (Le Petit Marseillais, 28 January):

In Saint-Antoine, in the Pradel district, a reader saw the aurora borealis, which she saw at about 8pm. Her milkmaid told her of a tremendous redness in the sky. When she arrived in the street, she saw the "dark red" firmament, in the direction of Les Pennes-Mirabeau or Salon, towards the north, and thought it was a forest fire.

In some towns, people even called the authorities. In Rouen, a rumour claimed that the oil tanks on the harbour were on fire (Paris-soir, 27 January). Several anecdotes were repeated in the newspapers. In Briançon, in the Alps, the glow was so strong that postmen were able to work without having to turn the lights on (Le Figaro, 26 January). Fishermen of the North Sea, fearing a storm, refused to go to sea. English fishermen did go to sea but "did not dare to cast their nets because the ocean was so calm and beautiful" (Le Petit Marseillais, 28 January).

There were other explanations given on the spot: some thought that the lights came from a nearby town and were diffused by the fog. Others thought that the lights were caused by spotlights, by anti-aircraft exercises, etc. (La Gazette de Biarritz-Bayonne et Saint-Jean-de-Luz, 26 January).

Globally, people seem to have been more curious than concerned, thought there were mentions of people praying (Le Jour, 27 January) or retrieving cash (L’Ouest-Éclair, 29 janvier). In the area of Perpignan, next to the Spanish border, some people panicked as they believed that the lights were caused by aerial bombings in the Spanish Civil War (L’Ouest-Éclair, 27 January). In Brittany, in Saint-Brieuc, a woman soothsayer was briefly famous for having predicted "a bloody light", followed by three days of thunder, her own death, and a world war "so horrible that all nations will sink into turmoil" (she was mocked in the newspapers but she was not totally wrong about this one...) (L’Ouest-Éclair, 29 janvier).

Other phenomenons were reported: interruptions in phone communications between France and Great Britain, and between Great Britain and the US. The French press also told on what had happened in other countries, but in a more sensationalistic fashion: anxiety in Italy and Portugal, mobilization of firemen in London, rumors of war and cataclysm in Vienna, Yugoslavian peasants praying to appease God's wrath and prevent the Apocalypse... (Paris-soir, 27 January) It was reported that a train station employee in Brno, Tchecoslovakia, believed that his building was on fire, and jumped to his death from a window (Ce Soir, 31 January).