A retired Carrbridge couple had a close encounter of the eerie kind as they were left mesmerised by a silent red "blob" in the sky above their home.

Sixty-four-year-old David Cliff and his wife, Angela, (63), were both stunned to see the glowing red and orange light flying through the night's sky late on Sunday evening.

"I was going to bed and we have a velux window in the spare bedroom which I often go to to look at the stars," said Mrs Cliff, a former teaching assistant.

"I saw this red thing moving across the sky. I didn't know what it was and said to David to wake up fast!

"We are really curious to know what it was."

Mrs Cliff described the moving light as a blob of red-orange, similar to a fire, but whatever emitted the light was not in flames.

"It was very eerie because it was silent," she added.

Her husband David said they watched the UFO moving over Carrbridge in the direction of Grantown at around 11.15pm.

Mr Cliff said: "It was coming from the south-west, over Landmark. It took three of four minutes to go right down the valley.

"It was not going that fast because we have lots of RAF flights coming from Lossiemouth and they go much quicker.

"I would say it was flying at about 5,000 feet."

Mr Cliff said before moving to Carrbridge three years ago he and his wife had lived close to Birmingham airport and were familiar with the sound of air traffic.

"It obviously wasn't a plane as there was no noise," he said. "It was a continuous red blob like following a car's brake light.

"I asked all of my neighbours about it and one asked if I'd been drinking! There were was no noise, just complete silence. I was mesmerised," said Mr Cliff.

"I would have gone downstairs for my camera, but I was too busy staring at the thing."

The couple also ruled out the light being from a Chinese lantern.

"It was too big and I assume with a lantern you would see something around it; this was just like a ball of fire but without the flames," said Mrs Cliff.

A Northern Constabulary spokeswoman said they had received no reports of any UFO sightings in Strathspey late on Sunday night.

It's the first UFO reported to the "Strathy" since April last year which was the last in a spate of sightings around the turn of 2009 in the area.

Jennifer and Andy Hill of Kingussie spotted a UFO on December 29, 2008, and were amongst dozens of people in the Highlands who reported that they had seen an unexplained orange light in the sky around that time.

Primary school support assistant Lyn Meall, her partner Stephen Hebson, son Nathan and parents-in-law Colin and Christine Hebson, also described as they watched six orange UFOs gathered in the sky above them as they drove from a Hogmanay party in Grantown to their rented cottage in Nethy Bridge.

There were similar reports of UFOs coming in from across the whole of the UK and Ireland at the time.