Crowds spooked by UFO mystery

nlnews@archant.co.uk
06 February 2007

“Cars had stopped. It was kind of eerie,"" said eyewitness Tom Cull

PEOPLE screamed and cars came to a halt when dozens of mysterious lights hovered above Archway this week.

The "squadron" of flying orange objects left passers-by staring in disbelief at around 5.30pm last Thursday. Police received four calls within minutes.

Designer James Zafar, of Palace Road, Crouch End, watched the phenomena from Bredgar Road.

He said: "I parked the car and when I looked in the sky between the Little Angels nursery and the trees and there were balls of light in the sky. They were moving together."

Crowds also witnessed the spectacle from nearby Magdala Avenue and Highgate Hill.

Tom Cull, of Summerlee Gardens, Fortis Green, 27, a vision mixer, had just finished a guitar lesson when he noticed a crowd of people staring up at the sky in Magdala Avenue.

He said: "There were at least 30 people watching. Cars had stopped. It was kind of eerie. What I found strange about these things was the way they moved. "

Mr Cull saw the lights again when he returned home to Summerlee Gardens.

Another witness, a 49-year-old company director who did not want to be named, was about to enter Archway Tube station in Highgate Hill when he saw the lights.

He said: "There was screaming going on and everything. It was weird."

Less than 30 minutes later, similar "strange orange lights" were spotted miles away above Kings Lynn, East Anglia.

Alix McAlister, 34, a market stall trader from Bredgar Road, Archway, said: "I picked up my son from nursery in Bredgar Road. I had come out of the door when I noticed what was going on in the sky.

"There were a group of them - 10 to 15 moving together. They reminded me of a squadron of aeroplanes in formation.

"I thought something was happening in the centre of London. Bombs and planes crossed my mind but they didn't look like any aircraft I'd seen.

"They were coming from the north and moving south, then they kind of stopped and they were hovering. There was no sound. It lasted about 10 minutes."

He believes the phenomenon was caused by "sky lanterns" or "UFO balloons" - one-off miniature hot air balloons that can be ordered online for use at parties.

They consist of a plastic bag about 28ins tall which are lit with a paraffin block, burn for up to 10 minutes and float as far as 1,000 metres up into the sky.



The truth is out there

WHILE no-one is in any doubt something happened in the sky above Archway last Thursday, experts are at odds over what caused it.

The truth is out there - somewhere - and various experts have a mixed view on what the heart-stopping formation of lights could have been.

Police initially told a 999 caller that he had been "really really lucky" and witnessed a meteor or a shooting star, although no reference is made to either phenomenon in records filed after the sighting.

The Ministry of Defence said it had no reports of a "security incident" and that it would not attempt to identify the precise nature of each reported sighting.

The Royal Astronomical Society ruled out a cosmological explanation. A spokesman concluded that the lights were either military aircraft or some type of weather balloon.

"It was fairly soon after sunset so it could be that they were high enough to be reflecting the sun,"

"The other thing it could be is the break up of a satellite, but then that's usually like a shooting star and very quick."

Astronomer and self proclaimed "UFO sceptic" Ian Ridpath also dismissed any astronomical or climatic explanations.