Orange glowing ufo
© St Andrew's CrescentThe UFO photographed by the St Andrew's Crescent on New Year's Eve.
When two strange objects were spotted hovering in the sky above Bilton on Christmas Day, the Harrogate Advertiser was inundated with further sightings of UFOs.

However many readers believed the glowing orange balls, spotted by Maureen Withers at 7.30pm, to be Chinese paper lanterns.

And this was the explanation given by two children who launched the lights from Pannal.

After spotting the report, Beth Prideaux, 11, and brother Jordan, nine, wrote to the paper.

They said: "It was us on Christmas day at my Mum's boyfriend's parents house in Pannal! My Mum's boyfriend's Dad had got given these Chinese lanterns for a Christmas present and so we decided to go and let two off around 7.30pm.

Orange ball

"We just thought we would let you know more about what had really happened as they were not UFOs or an RAF experiment."

Meanwhile a St Andrew's Crescent resident managed to photograph a glowing orange ball hovering above her home just after midnight on New Years Eve.

She said explanations such as Chinese lanterns, ice crystals or aircrafts didn't add up.

"It was really weird - if it was an ice crystal, why didn't it hit the ground?" she said.

Took off

The woman and three other family members all saw the weird object. "It was just floating about above the house and there was no noise," she said. "It wasn't scary. It was quite lovely to look at actually - it was very bright.

"Small round shapes came off the big one and were just hovering about. Then it went into one and took off into the sky."

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