A young man from Crawley says he's had a genuine close encounter of the third kind - and it certainly didn't involve Chinese lanterns.

With the festive, glowing orbs - popular at weddings and summer parties - being blamed for many a UFO sighting, Josh Woodburn believes what he saw was the real deal.

He said: "I was with a friend in Horsham and driving home, I didn't see it at first, it was my friend, he saw this kind of quite bright pink shape that was like darting about.

"I tried to find somewhere to park up to see it, I got out of the car and ran out into the fields.

"It turned diagonally and two big strobes of light came out either end of it. It turned the other angle and this other one came out of nowhere, went over and came next to the other one, then they went off together."

And Josh said the strange objects was followed by a military helicopter.

He said: "Ten minutes later I heard this noise like an army helicopter, a couple of people have said to me 'how did you know it was an army helicopter?' but one of my friends is in the army and my dad works on them, so I know what one sounds like.

"It kind of flew over in the direction of where they were coming from, but it didn't even get very close to them - there were three of them by then - and they flew upwards and disappeared."

Josh is convinced what he saw was the real thing. He said: "It kind of made me believe a bit more, that's the first personal experience I've had of them, my friend's mum and dad are quite into it, they've seen a couple of them.

"I believed in them but because I'd never seen them I didn't think they'd come here, but after seeing what I saw that night I kind of have to believe it now."