19/09/2026 – Clent Hills Sky Watch – Red Orb Sightings & Photograph

Birmingham UFO Group Case Report

Author: Dave Hodrien

Release Date: 01/10/2026

Last Updated: 05/10/2026

Introduction

On the evening of 19^th September BUFOG headed to Adams Hill in the Clent Hills for a sky watch. We met at the parking area at the base of the hill at 7pm before making our ascent. Initially there were twelve of us present, including regular BUFOG meeting attendees Rachel Wassall-Lawrence and Ronald Sanchez, and BUFOG Investigator James Brodie, with others scheduled to arrive a little later.

We began heading up the trail that leads to the summit of Adam’s Hill. It was a dry but breezy evening, with partial high altitude cloud cover. On the way up we witnessed an absolutely stunning sunset.

By around 7:20pm we reached a flattened area with a low semi-circular wall displaying a number of metal plaques that indicate various towns and landmarks visible in different directions. Even though this wasn’t right at the summit it seemed the perfect place to set up for the watch. There was great visibility of the sky in most directions, with a wonderful view of the surrounding area from the North West to the South.

Later on we were joined by a number of others, including BUFOG regulars Nicola and Lawrence Hession-Kent, researcher and podcaster Andy Booth and his friend Dan Dunford.  

The Sightings

Around 9pm I was preparing to read out details of a number of UFO sightings I’d previously investigated from the surrounding area, going right back to 2007, the year Birmingham UFO Group was formed.

The initial witness I spoke with in depth about what took place was Nicola. As there was no space on the grass she and Lawrence had set up their chairs on the other side of the wall within the semi-circle of flattened ground where the metal plaques are situated. Nicola was looking round to her left in a Southerly direction at Lawrence as he went through his bag. Behind them to the South East on the path stood James. Dan was sat on the wall facing North West, Andy standing near the outer edge of the wall facing South East.

Nicola suddenly saw something red reflecting in the left corner of glasses. She moved head a bit and the reflection remained.

Thinking it might be James holding a red coloured torch she swiftly looked round (so fast that it nearly sprained her neck)! She was puzzled to see that he had no torch on. She did not mention what she had just seen to anyone, and her attention was drawn by Lawrence shortly afterwards.

I began my talk, discussing various UFOs that had been seen in different directions from the hills.

Around 9.15pm I was just wrapping up my talk when Andy shouted out he and Dan had just witnessed a red orb emerge from the trees alongside the path, fly behind Nicola and Lawrence's chairs and seemingly vanish into the wall of plaques!

Here is Andy’s testimony regarding what happened:

“I was stood chatting with Dan. From corner of my eye I saw something come round and down. It wasn’t until it was waist height till I turned to look at it. It was a small orb, no bigger than a 5 pence piece or fingernail. It was red in the centre and more orangey around the outside. It came down in a diagonal line and seemed to vanish into the wall. Dan saw it too. We thought there was someone with a laser pointer but nobody had one. The only laser pointers people were using were green.”

Here is Dan’s testimony detailing what he saw:

"I was initially looking towards you doing talk. It was about 9:15pm near the end of your talk. Lawrence was putting his jacket on, I briefly looked at him. I saw orangey red orb come flying past him and his missus about their head height, come over the wall past my left side, arc round to the right on a descending arc, hit the floor near my foot then bounce back into the wall I was sat on. It was a cm or less wide. It was pretty fast. It took 2 to 3 seconds from where I first saw it to when it went into the wall. Andy was stood opposite me, a second later I looked at him, he looked at me and we said to each other ‘Did you see that?’ It took a few seconds to register as it’s the first time I've seen something unusual like that."

Nicola immediately jumped up with excitement and told them what she had witnessed earlier on. She was pleased that someone else had also seen an anomalous red light. At this point James mentioned that he had also previously seen some red orbs of light in the distance to the South East!

Below is a statement from James on what he observed:

“Originally when you started talking what I was doing knew I was going to be doing a CE5 piece. I was just doing some meditation beforehand to see if anything occurred. I was welcoming any intelligences out there and reaching out for a response in my mind. As I was looking up to left of the trees I saw something briefly up in the sky. Initially I thought maybe it was my eyes playing up so I stared more closely. There were these two red dots in the distance to the East at an angle of about 45 degrees. One appeared then another appeared slightly to the right of it and above it. Then both vanished. 45 seconds later they reappeared again in the same manner, and then a third time soon afterwards. Initially I didn’t tell anyone. I didn’t see the orb come down behind us. It was behind me and I was facing the group. What I did see was these two red lights.”

Soon after finishing my talk Andy and James began to observe some distant activity in the sky to the North, some white and red lights shooting upward at intervals. They quickly drew our attention to what was going on. I stared closely but was unable to see anything directly. Whatever it was it was quite far away and indistinct. It did not seem to be related to the red orbs which were being seen in our more immediate vicinity.

Here is Andy’s statement on these other lights:

“Even when I was looking I had to refocus, you had to know where to look, they weren’t always visible. I don’t think they were spotlights because you’d see the beam, it would have ended and been flat up against the cloud. It was nothing like that. They were little tiny dots. You’d see one or two shoot off in different directions. The last one I saw was most exciting. I saw two morph into one and it went left, slowly came across to right in a straight line, stopped dead then performed a 90 degree turn, moved up a bit then suddenly shot straight up extremely rapidly. That was weird.”

Below is a statement from James on what he saw to the North:

“About 5 minutes after you completed your talk we saw was a red light and white light in the distance to the North. It would be lower down in the sky and then literally shoot up and disappear with a blurring effect of the light. Thirty seconds later it would appear and do the same thing and shoot up. You were with us and trying to see it but couldn’t see it. It shot up in a straight line leaving blur behind it. Think it did it two times. Other people said they could still see it but I couldn’t.”

Like myself Dan did not see these lights directly. I asked him about this and he stated:

"I was trying to see the lights and couldn't see them but Andy and James were definitely seeing something."

Around the time the activity to the North seemed to have stopped Nicola had got up out of her chair. Rachel approached her for a chat. At this point Nicola had turned around, so the nearby copse of trees was on her right. As they were talking they both suddenly saw the red orb (or another similar one) appear a short distance above the trees. They looked round fast enough to witness it immediately descend diagonally downwards towards the trees and vanish from view. Nicola says it appeared to be about the size of a football.

Below is Rachel’s statement on what she recollects:

“When I first walked over, Nicola was standing up. I stood facing towards her in the direction we had walked up the hill, with the horseshoe on my right and the raised bit of ground with trees on my left. We were just having a chat when we both saw it at the same time. Out of corner of my eye to my left I saw a red light. It was quite bright which made me immediately look round to my left, as did Nicola to her right. I saw a red ball of light, it didn’t really look like a translucent orb, it was a really strongly glowing red ball. It looked even brighter than the brake lights of a car. It looked about the size of a fist, maybe a little bigger. In a flash it really quickly went down in a diagonal to the left towards the trees, literally in a split second. I didn’t feel like it had gone into the trees. It was if it was going to go behind them but then vanished just before it was hidden by them. The trees weren’t that thick, so if it had gone into or behind the trees I assume I would have still seen it through them but didn’t. I exclaimed ‘God, did you see that?’ Nicola confirmed that she had. I was so shocked that Nicola explained seeing the same thing. I looked round to my right to see if anyone was shining any red lights which could explain it but nobody was. It was too intense to be a torch. Both myself and Ron had red light modes on our head torches but they were off at the time. The only laser pointers people had with them were green, and we would have seen the beam so it can’t have been that.”

About 10 minutes later around 9:30pm Nicola had finished talking with Rachel and was relaxing. She says that she briefly saw a red coloured glow coming from either within the trees or beyond them. It was only visible for a moment so didn’t have enough time to tell everyone else to look.

The Photograph

When Ron looked back through his photographs he noticed a red orb of light on one of them which he did not see at the time. This photograph is taken towards the South East in the direction that Nicola and Rachel had their sightings. The orb is in front of the trees at the right side of the image:

Zoomed and enhanced view of the red orb:

Below is the metadata of the photograph:

The Camera Info, Creator Software, Make, Model, LensID, LensMake, Software, LensModel, ProfileCMMType and ProfileCreator, PrimaryPlatform and ProfileCopyright all prove that the image was taken on an Apple iPhone 15 Pro Max and has not been tampered with using image manipulation software.

The CreateDate and DateCreated confirm that the photograph was taken at 10:12pm, just over an hour after I gave my talk.

The GPS and GPSPosition confirm the exact position the photograph was taken. The GPSImgDirection confirms that the photo was taken to the South South East (160 degrees). Using this information, it is possible to determine where Ron was standing, the approximate field of view and position of the orb:

It is likely that the line behind it is because it was moving t the time. It does not appear to be camera shake as if this were the case you’d get the same tracing path emerging from the visible fence posts. It is clear that it is just the orb which has this path behind it. The blurriness of the photograph is because it was taken under low light conditions using night mode.

Nicola confirmed that what was captured on the photograph looks exactly like the orb that she witnessed. I am convinced that there was no permanent red light in that direction coming from beyond the trees. This would have been obvious, especially after we were on high alert for such a light after hearing about what was sighted.

The orb appears to be around the area of the path to the South, although this is hard to accurately judge. Even though it is dark, there does not appear to be anyone standing at that location who could be holding a red torch light or other electrical equipment lit with a red LED such as a vape. If there had been, you would expect the red light to be at least partially lighting them up, especially with the high exposure.

This edge find zoom picture of the orb highlights the fact that there is no figure-like shape around its vicinity:

Also, it seems likely that Ron would have seen it at the time, or others would have seen it slowly moving along the path. Looking at the angle it also looks a little too high up to be a light held by someone. However, this explanation cannot be completely ruled out.

Conclusions

What is particularly interesting about the orbs seen on this occasion was the number of independent witnesses to them, and the fact that two of these witnesses initially kept this information to themselves. It clearly wasn’t just one person stating they’d seen something and then everyone else imagining things as a result of what had been described. I am of course a little disappointed that I didn’t get to observe any of these orbs directly, but I completely trust all of the witnesses involve and believe they saw what they said they did.

From the various statements gathered from the witnesses it is obvious that they have assessed what they observed and been able to largely rule out mundane explanations. The first sighting was the red glow seen by Nicola out of the corner of her eye. While it is not possible to rule out a red light being very briefly switched on elsewhere on the hill by someone, we can rule out it being caused by James, who was the only sky watcher standing in the direction the light was seen, as Nicola immediately looked round and could see that he had no red torch light on. As an investigator for the group it is extremely unlikely that he was playing a prank on the other sky watchers by briefly shining a red light.

The red orbs of light which James briefly saw appear in the sky to the South East cannot have been aeroplanes as other navigation lights would have been seen and the lights would have been seen continuously not simply flash up a moment then vanish in a repeating pattern. Aeroplanes also continuously move across the sky, these lights were stationary. Helicopters and drones can also be ruled out due to the fact that the lights were not continuously on. The sound of the rotor blades would likely have been heard. The orbs appeared to be below the cloud layer, and it was not completely dark so it would have been obvious to James where the edges of the clouds were. The close sighting of the tiny orb by Andy and Dan was clearly quite different. I do not believe that this was a red laser pointer being briefly shone by someone, either at the sky watch or from elsewhere on the hill. Red lasers are notoriously weak in comparison to green. While several sky watchers, myself included, had green lasers with them, at no point did I see anyone shining a red laser.

More importantly, the laser would need something to reflect off. Therefore the orb itself would have been on the ground, not up in the air as described. Both witnesses described it as being up in the air initially, descending as it came towards them. Dan described it reaching the ground by his feet, which entirely rules out someone higher up the hill shining a laser, as at this low height it would logically have hit the side of the wall with the plaques on and no longer been visible.

The orb was too small to have been caused by a red torch light, this would have made a wider rounded patch of light, again at ground level. I, Ron and Rachel all had head lamps on which had a red colour setting, but these were not engaged at the time (I had it set to white light in order to read my sighting notes as can be seen from the photograph).

The red orb briefly seen above the trees by Nicola and Rachel could not have been a laser pointer or red torch light as at the position it was at there was nothing for it to reflect off. A drone over the trees would have been audible, and would have not suddenly appeared, we would have seen and heard it it approach. It was the wrong colour and moved too rapidly for a red LED balloon or sky lantern. This object seemed to be larger in size and completely red in colour, so was likely to be different to what Andy and Dan saw.

Most of the sightings of the orbs appeared between 9 to 9.30pm, with the photograph being taken roughly an hour later. Before and prior to this time period nothing out of the ordinary was seen. Why the activity spiked around these times is unknown. James was attempting to send out a message in his mind, but it is unknown whether this in some way led to the activity or not. Nicola also stated that she is a magnet for this kind of thing so maybe it was down to her presence on the sky watch.

It is unknown whether the photograph Ron took unintentionally captured one of the orbs. If so it looks closest to what Nicola and Rachel described. It is not high enough in the air to completely rule out the idea that it was someone holding something with a red light on, but there are aspects of what happened which point away from this explanation.

The white and red lights seen in the distance to the North are more spurious. While unusual, some of those present could not see them at all, and they only lasted for a short period of time. It seems unlikely that they were in any way related to the other activity going on in the vicinity.

This is not the first time that activity has occurred during one of our sky watches. At our Cannock Chase sky watch back in 2023 a number of erratic orange-coloured orbs were witnessed. Click here to check the separate report on this incident.

Copyright Dave Hodrien 2026