Chinese lanterns being mistaken for UFO's

Many of the current "UFO" sightings in the UK, are no more than Chinese lanterns it was revealed today on Glastonbury Radio.

After studying many pictures of "glowing orange balls of light" they appeared to be celebratory lanterns let off at functions such as weddings etc.

This is not to say ALL sightings can be so easily dismissed, but generally speaking if you see a slow moving, silent orange ball of light it could well be a Chinese lantern, and to avoid giving the sceptics even more amunition I would suggest ruling out all logical alternatives before yelling "UFO!!"

Ross

Originally posted by nomadrush
...I would suggest ruling out all logical alternatives before yelling "UFO!!"

Ross

I agree. Too many people see something as simple as a bird but think it's a ship from outer space. Somebody even posted a video here, calling it "incredible alien morphing technology". It was a BIRD!

what if they are really ufo and uses made in china lantern camouflage technology to easily prey on cow genitals and are just tired of being debunk subjects here in ATS?

reply to post by beastamerica


You may be on to something there. Ingenious!

All I know is I am either going to open up a Chinese Lantern company, or invest in stock in said same. There are more Chinese Lanters flying around in the sky these days than ever before. I didn't realize the flying lantern business was booming so nicely!

Chinese lanterns lol! UFO Orbs are very real, do you honestly believe all those WW2 pilots reporting Foo Fighters were actually encountering chinese lanterns let loose by the people from continental war torn Europe? The UFO Orb is very real my friend. The chinese lantern excuse by the powers that be is nothing more the (modern) weather balloon of the Roswell era. I've seen real UFO Orbs and they were definitely not paper bags, much more like what Spielberg portrayed in his film Close Encounters which I believe was from very serious research (the pair of amber/orange ufo orbs).

reply to post by nomadrush


This happened at a 4th of July fireworks. People were launching 3 or 4 of them (Chinese lanterns) at a time before the fireworks and they easily went up to about 2,000 feet before you lost track of them. It surprised me how long they stayed lit. If you didn't see them launched, you would have wondered what they were. In fact, a local news radio station was getting reports in about UFO's in that very area. I had to call in and tell them about the Lanterns.

reply to post by pavil

Chinese lanterns and UFO Orbs are very different. Not even close. The Star of Betlehem and the Foo Fighters were not paper bags.

Originally posted by nomadrush
Many of the current "UFO" sightings in the UK, are no more than Chinese lanterns it was revealed today on Glastonbury Radio.

After studying many pictures of "glowing orange balls of light" they appeared to be celebratory lanterns let off at functions such as weddings etc.

This is not to say ALL sightings can be so easily dismissed, but generally speaking if you see a slow moving, silent orange ball of light it could well be a Chinese lantern, and to avoid giving the sceptics even more amunition I would suggest ruling out all logical alternatives before yelling "UFO!!"

Ross

First of all Ross before they claim something that results in an ordinary speculation
they must conduct a real research, a legitimate investigation on this subject in order
to have proof to sustain their arguments other than just statements and I will
tell you what they must do in this case.

They must search any store in the city that sells the chinese lanterns, writing the
names and address of the stores found, talking to the owners and asking how much
of these chinese lanterns have been sold in the past months and if they remember
who bought them, young people, family people, kids etc.

Visit regularely these stores that sell chinese lanterns specially after a sighting of
this kind is reported and check if they sold lanterns recently, this is important.
Check how expensive thew chinese lanterns are and if they sell large quantities
to any person lately. Check if posible if they keep record of the buyers to locate
posible pranksters.

Buy a large amount of these chinese lanterns and make a recreation, film the
experiment and compare it to the alleged ufo fleet videos suspected to be
chinese lanterns. Once completed the experiment post here the results of your
investigation providing names, locations and necesary information to sustain
your proposal. You see their theory is vague and inconclusive, they said “after
studying many pictures - they appeared to be” This is a matter of criteria, not
a fact therefore is considered just a personal opinion but not substantiated by
any proof other than their logic wich is not conclusive in the research field.

To conduct a good research is not easy, it's required to invest time and effort to
get tangible evidences that will support the proposals.

reply to post by ufoorbhunter



Relax dude, I give you a factual true story of how some Chinese lanterns were mistaken by people and it got reported on the radio and you go off on me. There are some compelling cases out there, but someone seeing "mysterious lights" way up in the sky doesn't cut it for me.

Saw one about a month ago over here in NY State. I was transfixed for a moment, but then realized what it was as my eyes correlated their data with the archives of my mind. I let my girlfriend go on to be amazed until she went into her apartment to grab something and forgot all about it. Didn't even bother to tell her sister and father, "Hey, check out the UFO flying over!."

After it was out of sight, I explained to her what it was. But aparrently it didn't register because a week or two later I was on the phone with her while she and her sister were sitting outside. Suddenly they were amazed by a bright glowing object in the sky. She thought I didn't believe her because I asked a few questions about it. To the contrary, I totally believed her and knew exactly what it was. Especially since it was of similiar "glowing" class of sighting, and the object was again travelling in the same direction as the general prevailing winds here.

I think this experience taught me more about human psychology than UFO's themselves.

Also, when I was a kid we used to make "UFO's." We could only get them to fly on really cold nights though. We would make a cardboard "X" and melt birthday candles to it. Had to use just the right number. (There was a little "trick" to it, or it wouldn't fly.) The "X" was then mounted in the open end of a medium-sized clear trash bag. We almost set a house on fire when the thing crash-landed on a leaf-covered roof. We also had the police after us when another one wound up over an airport a few miles away. Ooops.

[edit on 9/5/0808 by jackinthebox]

reply to post by fleabit


The thing is the Chinese lantern business IS booming, it HAS become massively more popular in recent years, a lot of it is to do with the internet and youtube, especially images from those festivals where they release thousands, I've seen photos of such events in national newspapers and photography magazines etc etc

Personally I had no idea about them before about 2004 and once I had seen them and read about them in 2006 I looked for some to buy online and on ebay and found nothing. This summer I looked for some on ebay and was literally spoilt for choice, there were hundreds of them on there.

It is a matter of fact that they have suddenly become a lot more popular and widespread.

I'm a believer in UFO's of alien origin. I do not however jump to conclusions immediately upon hearing about or seeing something. I discount all other possibilities before I begin to explore the unknown. I learnt this through my own experience.

A few years back my friend and I were driving home late at night on a rural country road when we spotted a glowing orange light that appeared to be floating over a nearby field, approximately 50 metres off the ground. My friend slammed on the brakes and pulled over and we sat transfixed for about two minutes watching this object move slowly over the field. It wasn't until a few minutes later, when our eyes had adjusted to the darkness, that we could make out that the glow appeared to be flickering and it appeared to have a parachute-like feature above it.

It turns out that it was just a small home-made hot-air balloon made from a burning firestarter slung below a garbage bag. But if we had've kept driving past, and not stopped to look, I would have been eternally convinced that it was a UFO of military or alien origin.

It still doesn't sway me from believing though

reply to post by Kryties


I find it simply illogical to discount the possibility of UFO's from other and/or parallel worlds. To find proof that there weren't, would surprise me more than proof that there are.

To date I have not personally seen first-hand proof of such however. I have seen strange things for certain, but nothing that would constitute solid proof in the first-hand. I do think however, that based on the preponderance of evidence provided by the experiences of others, that society should embrace as fact that we are being "visited" by un-indentified and intelligent specie(s). Wether it be from far-off distant worlds, or within our own in some way has yet to be determined.

As far as extraterrestrial beings, I would say logic dictates that in the vastness of the third-dimensional universe, there is indeed intelligent life the likes of which our minds do not even have tha capacity to imagine. That does not constitute proof however, that they would have the means to visit us here on Earth.

We may be being "visited" by something from right here, from out there, or both.

Originally posted by jackinthebox
We may be being "visited" by something from right here, from out there, or both.

I think it's more likely it is from here, but the question is: From when?
Kinda totally off topic, but what is more plausible: being visited from aliens millions of light years from us who just happened to notice us, or us being visited by future residents of the Earth looking to mess around in their past, our present.

Me and my family have just seen orange glowing balls moving slowly across the sky, at first I thought they were ufo's but came to the conclusion they were chinese lanterns. They do look very odd in the sky so I bet many people think they are ufo's.