By Nathan Lockley, 21st January 2022
This week there seems to have been a flurry of sightings of orange lights in the skies over the UK, four of which have been reported or shared by U.P.R.I.S.I.N.G group members. I was contacted by Paul Langley on Wednesday night a few minutes after he had seen a small group of orange lights while out for a walk. He was in the Eaglescliffe area in Middlesbrough, between 7:30 pm and 7:45 pm when he noticed the objects in the distance above the houses. He claimed there were five lights, to begin with, and in the footage he captured, three lights can be seen at the start but one light quickly fades away and just before the end of the video only one light is visible.
I checked flightradar24 for the time and date specified and there was no air traffic. Unfortunately, the objects were too far away to see any further details so it is hard to rule out any other possibilities. Paul claims to have said to his partner only 30 seconds before “imagine if a UFO flew over us now” having never seen anything not easily explained and so was even more shocked to see this.
The original footage is available to find on the U.P.R.I.S.I.N.G Facebook group.
There have been three more, very similar, sightings this week. Once I have more details and permission to share the stories I will add them to this increasingly intriguing story.
But, this is not a new phenomenon. The UK alone has had dozens of similar sightings over the years, many even making appearances in local and national newspapers. There were mass sightings up and down the country over a few weeks in 2009. Eyewitnesses claim to have seen over one hundred at a time, appearing in clusters. Others saw fewer lights but claimed they were “as big as houses” and seemed to be intelligently controlled as they were weaving in and out of each other. There were also mass sightings of orange lights all over the UK just after midnight on new years eve/new years day.
Obviously, a group of orange lights moving seemingly on their own would look strange to anyone. So it’s no surprise these sightings get labelled as UFOs and as such, ‘experts’ are called in to give interviews etc. In 2009, Nick Pope gave one such interview to the Daily Mail and claimed that “99% of sightings of orange lights in the sky can be explained by Chinese/sky lanterns”
So what do you think? Were these mass UFO sightings? Someone releasing the now controversial lanterns en masse? Or are they something else all together?
