UFOs at Christmas as ‘aliens’ spotted all over the world during festive period

If you think you’ve spotted Santa’s sleigh in the sky this Christmas, watch out – it might be E.T.!

This week we revealed a warning from boffins that humans would suffer “massive anxiety” if we ever met aliens – as we’re not mentally ready.

But beware, because they might be set to visit this Yuletide, with experts saying there is an annual uptick in freaky sightings of UFOs over the festive period.

READ MORE: Bloke’s ‘mind blown’ after spotting spherical UFO following plane in British countryside

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Here, James Moore looks at some of the most Noel-torious incidents…

UFOs Down Under?

Over the Christmas and New Year period in 1978, a series of UFO sightings rocked New Zealand. A cargo plane reported seeing flashing lights whizzing around their aircraft above the coastal town Kaikoura.

The objects were tracked on air traffic control radar with reports they were moving at lightning speeds. There were several more sightings of shining objects above the town and a news crew even managed to capture fuzzy footage of the mysterious pulsating lights from another flight.

The incident was so puzzling, the country’s prime minister Sir Robert Muldoon took a keen interest. Officials suggested reflected lights from squid-fishing boats or meteors could be to blame, but the case was never fully explained.

Boxing Day landing?

In the early hours of December 26, 1980, a series of bizarre sightings began at US air bases near Rendlesham Forest in Suffolk. Servicemen went to investigate strange lights in the wood beyond the perimeter.

One of them, Sgt Jim Penniston, later claimed to have encountered a strange 3m-tall craft, made of “smooth, opaque, black glass” that had seemingly landed there. Then, he said, it suddenly disappeared

.In the following nights, other witnesses included the deputy commander at RAF Woodbridge, Lieutenant Colonel Charles Halt, who described seeing a hovering object and “a beam coming down to the ground”.

It was alleged there were strange radiation readings from the site too. Former Ministry of Defence UFO investigator Nick Pope has described it as Britain’s “most convincing case”.

Festive foo fighters

During World War Two, many Allied airman reported seeing unexplained craft in the sky, which were dubbed “foo fighters”.A few days before Christmas in 1944 two US airmen, David McFalls and Edward Bake, were flying over Hagenau in France and reported “intense orange lights” that popped up and then flew beside their aircraft, before moving away.

On Christmas Eve, they saw another bright light come close to their plane.It then appeared to turn into a craft capable of highly acrobatic manoeuvres before vanishing.

E.T. or baubles?

Among the MoD files relating to UFOs is a case from Christmas Eve, 2008, when 15 bright lights were seen hovering over the hills near Brighton. The following day there was a reported sighting of an unidentified craft over Perth in Scotland and another in Glasgow too.

Among the many other records for Christmas Day is a report from 1983 where three single orange lights were seen in formation over Groombridge, East Sussex, and a sighting of a pyramid-shaped craft with two bright lights spotted over Newport, south Wales in 1985.

Quality Street encounter?

Plenty of us will be tucking into green triangle Quality Street chocs over the coming days – and it seems they might have an uncanny resemblance to a craft seen in Canada. At around 1.30am on Christmas Day 2017, a person reported driving near Montreal in Quebec when they saw a bright light “like a photo flash”.

A strange triangular object, with three turbines, then flew directly over their car. The incident remains unexplained.

Star struck in Nam?

American air force veteran Cheryl Costa believes she may have seen a UFO on Christmas Eve in 1971 while stationed in Vietnam. Then aged 19, she saw a “bright star-like object zooming from the north” across the sky that then stopped and hovered.

She added: “It seemed to dance or dart around before it dashed toward the south at tremendous speed.»

Buzzed on bikes?

In 1957 gardener Olaf Davy and a friend were cycling home from a Christmas party when they saw a strange craft in the sky near Shotesham in Norfolk. The pair who “hadn’t been drinking” agreed it wasn’t an aeroplane.

Davy says: “It was coming towards us. A long thing like an airship but not so big. There were various lights on it. “It was a dark night and it came so close to us that we dived off our bicycles into a ditch.”

Saucer, Santa or Soyuz?

On Christmas Eve 2011, hundreds of people across Germany reported seeing strange lights moving across the night sky. The glowing orbs seemed to have tails the colours you’d normally associate with the festive season – red, green and white .

Some thought they’d seen a UFO, others that they’d had a close encounter with Saint Nick and his reindeer. Researchers later claimed the lights were actually pieces of a Russian Soyuz rocket falling back into the Earth’s orbit.

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