‘UFO was no Chinese lantern’
Monday 24th August 2009, 2:29PM BST.
Chinese lanterns are often to blame for UFO sightings - but not this time, say the Le Patourels.
A COUPLE claim to have spotted UFOs over Guernsey.
Kerry and Lorraine Le Patourel, who live in St Sampson’s, said they were returning from a barbecue on Saturday 8 August when strange, glowing orbs appeared in the sky.
Mrs Le Patourel, 32, raced to get a camera ready, but by the time she had, the objects had moved further away.
‘At first we thought they were flares, but they were the wrong colour and they came up slowly from the east, then seemed to change direction and disappeared quite quickly to the south,’ she said.
Her husband, Kerry, a 31-year-old carpenter, dismissed the idea they could have been Chinese lanterns, as recent sightings in the UK have proved to be.
‘The first one appeared to stop, then changed direction and moved off – I can only describe it as an orb,’ he said.
‘I have seen lanterns and satellites and stuff in the sky before, but this was totally different. It was definitely not a lantern, no way. And then the second one appeared on the same route as the first and also changed direction.’
A Guernsey Met Office spokesman said nothing untoward had been observed that evening.
‘Our best guess would be a fast moving aircraft coming up from France,’ he said. ‘This would appear slow moving as it flies towards the observer and with its lights on appearing orange, as it’s low in the atmosphere – similar to the way the moon appears orange and magnified when it is close to the horizon. As the aircraft then turns away from the observer, it would appear to speed up.’
* Anyone else who saw anything suspicious in the sky on Saturday 8 August can contact Thom Ogier via togier@guernsey-press.com.
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I wonder how much alcohol was consumed at the BBQ?
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WOW! I had seen the exact same thing on the same date, I was at my friends house with my fiancé in st peter port. I managed to get a video on my phone of the light shooting accross over us and then disappearing towards at st sampsons.
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This sounds like good testimony as the witness knows what lanterns look like when released and he also gives a description of its flight pattern. It looks like you’ve might have been lucky to be singled out by the intergalactic tourists.
The report says that it is proved that in other parts of the country, sightings turned out to be lanterns. This is not the case; nothing has been proved one way or the other in any of the encounters. Although some sightings are all most certainly to be lanterns, to make a definite claim that they were is wrong and gives the wrong impression. Although follow up reports have found people who claim to have released them around the time of the sighting, nothing has up to date been proven.
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Good point, Ben. I wouldn’t be surprised if they were high on swamp gas, too.
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No way!! I thought I was imagining things, but on the same night, I was crawling home from Mrs P’s Tea Party and I saw these glowing orbs rising into the air. They were about the size and shape of Chinese Lanterns, and glowed the same colour as Chinese Lanterns, but, you know, they definitely weren’t. No way. I watched them for a bit and they started coming towards me… that’s when I blacked out. I woke up 2 days later in a corn field near the airport with a headache, but in my dreams ever since, I see myself flying over Jethou towards Jersey whilst tall grey featureless figures warn me that widening L’Hyvreuse is a really bad idea…..
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Hi
I’m David Vincent.
Prologue:
You may know me from such UFO sightings as:
“It’s not a cigar, and it’s not very close up” and “Since when do yoofos have No. 43 in dulux gloss on the top, near a handle?”
Act 1:
I can assert that I WAS ON BOARD the Guernsey ship. I managed a brief wave before they made sure that I was the only one who knew they were here. Now it seems Guernsey can save the world.
Epilogue:
Look out for dead-eyed men in suits congregating around a warehouse that thrums with other worldly radiation. They will first take over Frossard House, and then run a few office worker snack bars for a while, before RETURNING TO DO EXPERIMENTS ON YOUR ORGANS.
This was filmed in front of a dead studio audience. They knew too much.
Yours earnestly, David Vincent.
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Evidently a slow-news day down at the Press Offices! A couple with no photo evidence, in fact no evidence of any kind get themselves on the paper for “spotting” a UFO.
I wonder what was in those burgers?
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Mystery solved.
A reliable source tells me it was Roger Perrot setting off one of his pro-independence kites. He got himself so worked up with indignation that he blew up like a balloon and was wafted into the air from his home in St Saviour’s on a warm southerly wind.
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