Westhoughton near Bolton, Greater Manchester-4th July 2009
Location of Sighting: Westhoughton near Bolton, Greater Manchester
Date of Sighting: 04 July 2009
Time: 00.05
Witness Name: Craig Howarth
Witness Statement: I to saw these orange lights, about 4 or 5 of them, they all came from the same direction all moving roughly the speed of a passenger jet, they came into view one at a time, about 30 seconds apart the shocking part is when they started slowing down as they passed overhead, only to fade away shortly after. These are defiantly not Chinese lanterns i keep reading about. when i saw the first orange light i thought it may have been a plane coming into land as i live under a flight path for Manchester airport, i see planes coming head on all the time with there bright white landing lights on. these sometimes look like lights hanging in the air as they come directly towards you, & often get mistaken for UFOs'. these orange lights i saw were totally in explicable. i must admit i was a bit shook up to see something like this with my own eyes. it would be interesting to see if anybody else saw these last night.
Source: Direct request on UK-UFO
Comment : If you can provide further information on this or other possible UFO sightings in the Westhoughton near Bolton area then please leave a comment or send details through our "submit sighting" form.
July 5th, 2009 at 11:02 pm
hi craig i live in Marston Green birmingham 1mile from birmingham international airport last night 11.25 our dog became uneasy and try to get under shelf in toilet knocking off tins off paint very strange behavior for our dog then seen one orange light in sky coming from airport it flew over our house then another came and at least 20 more they flew in a silent straight formation estimate speed 600 to 800 mph at approx 30 second intervals but 3 did travel together. i could not make out disc shape as they were bright they flew over chelmsley wood and off into coleshill.all of my family and children seen this amazing event and we also phoned more freinds and family in chelmsley who also saw it, i have reported it to MOD and suggest you do also.i belive that what i saw was or could not have been made on earth.i after this event there was no activity from our airport for about 2hrs
July 6th, 2009 at 7:19 am
Hi Craig, i live in south London. Around 10.45pm, 4th July 09 myself and 2 friends saw exactly what u described. We only saw three of these orange lights but they came one after another in about 2-3 minute intervals. They were very bright and very orange, they also seemed to have a transparent field/ora around them. I was unable to work out their speed but it was at least jet speed, completely silent and maybe around the average height that a helicopter may hover at. I also managed to get a short video on my mobile phone, although the quality isn’t very good. I could prob post it if anybody is interested.
July 6th, 2009 at 12:44 pm
Hi all,
I live in South West London and at aroun 10.30pm my father saw a light in the sky, followed by 3more which he couldn’t explain. When I tell you my father is unlikely to claim he’d seen a UFO, that would be a massive understatement – he is an intelligent man who if he thought it could have been anything else, he would have said as much. I have a photo he sent me but it doesn’t look like much on the camera phone. What he thought was most interesting was that a couple of minutes afetr the lights passed over, a couple of british fighter planes chased after them.
July 6th, 2009 at 2:39 pm
Hi Craig
I was visiting my dad in East Yorkshire, Brough / Elloughton that night. I too saw exactly what you saw at 10.30 approx. There were 9 altogether – First three, then two, two, one and one, over the space of about 20 minutes. We first saw them coming from over the river humber, from lincolnshire way and they were heading pretty much due north. They were so bright – like balls of fire in the sky and were moving with some speed despite there being no wind that night. They were climbing at speed and then disappeared into the ether! My dad works in a military aircraft factory and he said there’s no way they were aircraft he knew of – all we could see through binoculars was light so bright! I have looked into the chinese lanterns theory and remain unconvinced that lanterns could fly in a procession, with such precision of direction and speed, be so bright and then just disappear in altitude. To me they seemed like craft of some sort. I could well be wrong and remain open minded to ideas! I just wish I knew what they were as I think it’s exciting. I’m also going to buy some of those lantern thingys of ebay to do my own sort of experiment and see if they act the same!
July 6th, 2009 at 8:50 pm
Hi – I saw these too. I live in Nottingham and saw them at about 10.30pm, only 2 of them though. 2 balls of red light moving horizontally across the sky. Clearly not planes, which I too see regularly as I live fairly close to East Midlands airport. They disappeared pretty quickly too, just fading out of view. I was quite shocked to see them, as I am generally not a believer in UFOs!
July 7th, 2009 at 3:56 pm
I live in Hemel Hempstead and saw these lights as well. It was round 9pm i was out in my garden having a BBQ with friends when we saw these lights but we did not see 3 or 4 we saw around 50 odd lights. They where rising from behind a hill within the Amersham direction and heading east. This was the direction of the wind that night and after closer inspection through binoculars i can confirm they where chinese lanterns such you get from:
http://www.iwantoneofthose.com/light-a-lanterns/index.html
watch the video on the page.
with regard to hannahs comment about ‘unconvinced that lanterns could fly in a procession, with such precision of direction and speed, be so bright and then just disappear in altitude’. If the lanterns are released at set intervals then they will travel in procession. The wind speed will also make them travel in precision the same direction and speed and they don’t actually disappear in altitude they fuel that is supplied with them burns out. They are only made of tissue paper and have a light wire frame with a small block of fuel like a fire lighter.
I actually had them at my wedding instead of favors. We lit one for every person attending to make a wish. It looked amazing when they where all lit and flying across the sky.
Im sorry to let you know they where chinese wish lanterns but nice idea that they where beings from another planet
July 7th, 2009 at 10:40 pm
In regards to marks comments. I’m not saying that people don’t mistake Chinese lanterns as UFOs’, but in this case we are talking about multiple sightings, also the fact that people can distinguish between Chinese lanterns & bright orange lights, because in the case of my sighting, these lights..(UFOs’) were doing a real bad job of disguising there selves as Chinese lanterns. that’s unless there’s a new [extra bright rocket repealed ones]. as i said there will be people on this & other websites that have mistaken these lights as UFOs’, but its how some of these sightings have been described, with there speed & movement ect. its more or less impossible that the explanation for these lights are just £1.50 Chinese lanterns.
July 24th, 2009 at 9:13 pm
I live in Lowton near Leigh tonight at 10.00pm myself and my wife were stood at the front of our house and 3 bright orange lights appeared,all equally spaced out and travelling at some speed.One seemed to move away from the other two and suddenly dissapeard the other two continued to travel towards warrington and then they just dissapeard. I have never seen anything like this before. Did anyone else see these.
August 25th, 2009 at 8:45 pm
hello,at approx 21.30 25th aug in the bolton area tonge fold i saw a very strange object in the sky,it looked like a ball of fire flying straight towards us,as it got closer the light dimmed down then changed direction then disapeered,at the same time there was also a police hellicopter flying overhead,if anybody else saw this strange object would love to know.thanks.
September 8th, 2009 at 6:47 pm
Hello…I was in Stretford on the 7th September at approx 8:45pm and I suddenly saw a very bright red/orange light. It was gliding across the sky like a plane. At first I thought it was a plane on fire but then realised it would NOT be flying the way it was if it was, there was only one light though. It carried on gliding and people in the car parked infront of ours recoreded it. It was an amazing thing to see and I have NEVER seen anything like it.
If anyone else saw this it would be good to know. Thanks x
September 12th, 2009 at 3:03 pm
hello, this happen last night for me we were coming back form the movies when i saw a orange light. At first i thought it was a planet but then i saw it was moving then i saw two more moving parrel to each other and when we were home thgey went right over us and were still parrel and then they went
if anyone know’s what it is i would to know
December 4th, 2009 at 4:16 pm
Hi,
I live in Westhoughton Bolton, on Tuesday 3rd December about 7.20 I saw a huge orange ball in the sky. It looked like a mass of fire, I watched it for about 5 mins and some sparks appeared to fall off from it. It continued on it’s path until it eventually just either disappeared or went out of our sight. I have never in my life seen anything like this, my 85 year old father was with me and he couldn’t believe what he saw, my partner was also there. I thought it would be in the paper the next day or on the news.
April 15th, 2010 at 9:24 pm
weird reading all this!! sometime over the winter, late evening, i watched a similar event but just dismissed it as the ‘chinese lantern’ theory. there were about 6 of these orange lights going across at the height of probably a light aircraft. i too live in westhoughton and under the flight path for manchester airport and have never in the 18 years i have lived here have i seen a large aircraft travel in that direction. the lights came from over the market street area and followed the line of church street northwards. the lights were all a similar distance apart and this distance never altered between them. eventually the lights just seemed to disappear. on relection, 6 chinese lanterns wouldn’t be equa-distant apart, drift at the same height and all extinguish at the same time…! now i’m actually thinking i may have seen something different
May 3rd, 2010 at 10:51 am
Hi all, really wierd, Im in Westhoughton too, last night I saw this too. 6 lights one behind eachother, moving quickly towards Wigan area, from Winter hill area. Couldn’t believe my eyes, Also on new years eve 09/10, me and my gf were walking home, and we thought there was a plane going to crash , looked like it was out of control in the sky, unfortunately we didnt get a pic of either. next time Im gonna get my camera out