Several Worksop residents had a close encounter of the third kind on New Year's Eve with reports of UFOs over the town.

As the champagne corks popped to welcome in the new year some unexplained lights are reported to have been hovering over Worksop skies at about 12.15am.

Jan and John Harvey, of Carlton Road, were getting ready for bed when they looked out the window and saw something they couldn't explain.

"At first my husband thought I was seeing things. I said it wasn't fireworks or a police helicopter. They were these strange lights drifting along like a helium balloon. They were in a line like pearls lined up in a necklace," said Jan.

"There were eight or nine red and white lights. They weren't making any noise and they just disappeared without coming over the houses."

Not convinced that these lights were from alien spaceships, the couple are thinking hard about a more logical explanation:

"We think it was probably something like hot air balloons or hang-gliders. Though our friends all reply with the same answer - 'You obviously had had far too much to drink'. We had not even started then."

Another couple in Gateford told the Guardian about a similar sighting at the same time on the same night.

"I'm not normally one to believe in these things but I am one hundred per cent definite about what I saw that night," she said.

They first noticed something strange in the air when their two cats started behaving strangely.

"The cats were hiding behind the sofa and seemed really spooked. At midnight when I saw some lights going off outside I thought they were just fireworks."

"I saw about eight lights going over the rugby club. It was like they were all trying to get in a line. They started as a kind of red light and changed to an amber glow. They began moving quite slowly and speeded up. After about 15 minutes they vanished."

There were two similar UFO reports in other parts of the county on this website.

A posting from six people in Carlton read: "They seemed to wait for each other as they stopped mid-air before slowly disappearing. I also saw bunches of blue lights which were harder to see. Everything was quiet, no engine sounds."