UFO alert sparked after strange lights spotted in skies over Horsham

Sightings of unidentified flying objects are being reported in Billingshurst, Barns Green, Warnham and Rudgwick.

And the sightings are baffling those who have witnessed them.

Earlier this week air cadet Alex Bridle reported seeing ‘a bright orange light’ over Billingshurst moving high and flashing before speeding up and disappearing.

He was on a walk with a friend at around 10.30pm when he spotted the phenomenon.

“It looked way too fast and too bright to be any sort of satellite,” he said. “It was a solid light for 10 seconds and then started getting lighter and brighter regularly. I watched it for about a minute. It came overhead and then disappeared. It was strange.

“I’m an air cadet and I know what different types of aircraft look like at night. I know it wasn’t something ‘normal’.

People in Barns Green and Warnham also reported seeing strange lights. Diane Stirling saw them at her home in Warnham at about the same time as Alex witnessed them. “I know we are due a meteor shower but they definitely were not meteors.

“I first saw a flash, almost like a plane’s light flashing, but just one, then a trail and it literally disappeared.”

She said both she and her husband had seen it. “It was very odd.”

Building contractor Kevin Leader spotted a strange object in the night sky while taking a photo of a plane near his home in Rudgwick.

“I saw an object at the front of the plane which then went to the back and then went vertically at speed.”

When he later studied his photo he saw a bright round-shaped object in the trail of the aircraft. “It’s clear to me it wan’t a weather balloon, satellite or Chinese lantern - it was shaped like what people call a UFO or space craft.”

Kevin’s sighting happened soon after lockdown in March when there were few aircraft in the sky.

“My view was that whatever it was it was fascinated that our human skies were empty because everything was grounded.”