UNEXPLAINED lights, mysterious fireballs in the night sky - it seems Keighley has its very own case for the X-Files.

The Keighley News received a flurry of reports about bizarre lights after people in the west and south-west of the town spotted the phenomenon on Saturday evening.

One woman was even worried she may have been witness to an "Independence Day" style event.

Andy Webb, a 32-year-old recruitment consultant who took photographs of the lights, said: "They were like orange and yellow fireballs and they were moving silently across the sky.

"They were going very fast and all heading in the same direction."

But a member of the Royal Astronomical Society, based at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, rejected any suggestion that the lights could be of "extra terrestrial" origin.

The latest sightings follow similar reports of bizarre airborne lights in the skies over the district last month, when an Oxenhope resident saw a succession of drifting, orange lights on August 29.

And Simon Oxley, a 36-year-old man from Oakworth, said he and several neighbours and relatives saw two unexplained "balls of flame" moving across the night sky on August 11.

Mr Webb, of Goose Cote Lane, Oakworth, said he witnessed last Saturday night's eerie display from his front garden. Watching the lights with him were his wife, ten-year-old son and three neighbours.

Mr Webb said the first light appeared by itself but was followed at brief intervals by about five or six others, all moving northward from the direction of Haworth.

He said the lights were moving against the wind. "They were nothing like balloons or fireworks - we'd no idea what they could have been," he said.

Jane Anderton, 25, of Braithwaite Edge Road, said she also saw strange lights in the sky at about the same time last Saturday evening.

Jane, who works as an administrator in Keighley, said she and a friend saw up to a dozen "reddish" coloured lights moving smoothly through the sky, one after the other.

She also thought they were travelling from south to north and heard no sounds to connect them to planes or helicopters. She said: "I'd watched "Independence Day" a week before - which didn't help!"

Linda Schofield, 52, saw the lights on Saturday evening from her allotment at Selbourne Grove.

She said: "I noticed an orange light appear over the roof tops of Grafton Road, followed by at least another six, all rising from the same direction and passing overhead.

John Phillip, a Keighley town councillor, who lives in Shann Park, said he first saw three orange lights following each other rapidly across the sky from the direction of Haworth.

Katy Town, of Malsis Road, saw a pair of lights in the sky above Timothy Taylor's Brewery.

She said: "They came from the direction of the brewery, travelling towards the town." Dr Robert Massey, of the Royal Astronomical Society, said: "Without seeing this for myself I wouldn't really want to comment on what people saw."

However, he went on to stress that an overwhelming proportion of these sorts of sightings involved misidentified planes, balloons and even hoaxes.