Was orange UFO a Chinese lantern?

Sharon Elliff was putting some rubbish out when she saw a large orange light coming from the nearby woods.

She called her husband Paul and the two watched in amazement as the orange light moved then lifted higher up before disappearing.

The couple are still uncertain about what they saw.

Mr Elliff, 49, of Barnsley Road, said: “My wife was putting some rubbish out and she shouted for me to come and look at something.

“When I got there I could see a huge orange light out towards Emley; I’ve never seen anything like it before.

“My first thought was it was a plane on fire.

“It veered north west, not towards any of the airports, and went up into the air.

“Everything was quiet, there was no noise and I couldn’t hear any sound of an engine.

“I’d describe it like a candle flicker but on a massive scale.”

The couple’s house is south facing towards the woods and they saw the mystery object at around 7.05pm on Christmas Day.

They say it was in sight for up to four minutes around the Emley mast.

Mr Elliff, a former security worker, added: “I don’t believe in little green men and it certainly wasn’t Santa Claus going back to Lapland.

“But it was very, very strange and neither me nor the wife can describe what we saw.

“Of course you doubt yourself and question what you know you saw, but it definitely was unusual.

“Unless someone says for certain, we’ll always wonder what we saw.”

One theory is that the object may have been a large Chinese lantern.

The paper lanterns first appeared last year in Huddersfield and prompted several calls about suspected UFOs.

They work like hot air balloons, burning up into the sky with an orange glow before the burners go out.

Police say no mystery objects were reported in the area that night, so the mystery remains unsolved.